electoral system Quick reference
A Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics and International Relations (4 ed.)
... system Any set of rules whereby the votes of citizens determine the selection of executives and/or legislators. Electoral systems may be categorized in several ways. The most useful is probably a three‐way division into plurality , majoritarian, and proportional systems. For national elections, plurality systems are found only in Great Britain and some former British colonies (including the United States and India) ( see first-past-the-post ). Majoritarian systems are found in France and Australia for legislative elections, and in about half of the...
electoral system
Dictionary of the Social Sciences
...of victory, in order to make the total number of representatives proportional to the popular vote. While PR systems more closely represent actual voter preferences, they tend to encourage multiple-party systems and coalition governments. Variations of each of these systems also exist, as do a variety of other possible rules for electoral systems. Voting, for example, may be voluntary or required by law. In nearly all modern political systems, each citizen's vote is equally weighted, but elections held in other kinds of organizations sometimes follow other...
Australia, electoral system of Quick reference
Kenneth Morgan
Dictionary Plus Society and Culture
...Australia, electoral system of The Australian electoral system has evolved over 150 years or more of democratic government. Among its distinctive features are compulsory voting for the state and federal parliaments, with fines for non-compliance; the use of secret ballots; full preferential instant run-off voting in single member seats to elect the lower house, the House of Representatives; and the use of group-ticket single-transferable proportional voting to elect the upper house, the Senate. Since 1984 the distribution of the preferences has occurred for...
New Zealand, electoral system of Quick reference
Rebecca Lenihan
Dictionary Plus Society and Culture
...New Zealand, electoral system of Since 1996 the electoral system of New Zealand has been one of mixed member proportional representation (MMP), following a referendum in 1993 . Under MMP voters receive two votes, one for the political party they want to represent them in parliament, and one for the candidate they would like to represent their local electorate. The number of MPs a party receives is determined by the share of the party vote it receives; for example if a party were to receive 15 per cent of the party vote, that party would receive 15 per cent...
Electoral Systems and System Reforms in Latin America Reference library
Brian F. Crisp and Patrick Cunha Silva
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Latin American Politics
...Electoral Systems and System Reforms in Latin America This article will detail the wide array of electoral systems that have been used in the democracies of Latin America. It discusses the differences in incentives electoral systems can create for parties and party systems and then catalogs where the systems used in Latin America (since 1980 ) fall in terms of those. In addition to identifying patterns in electoral system choice, it will look at the frequency and direction of changes made in electoral systems. The frequency with which regimes have engaged...
electoral system
electoral systems Reference library
The New Oxford Companion to Law
... systems Whilst there are innumerable ways of organizing any system of elections , there are four broad models that have been adopted for electing political representatives in the democracies of the world: ‘first past the post’ (the simple plurality system), the alternative vote, the single transferable vote, and the party list system. For elections to the House of Commons (that also determine which party forms the government), the system remains ‘first past the post’. Under this electoral system, the United Kingdom is divided into geographical...
Electoral systems Reference library
Oxford Companion to Australian Politics
... systems Whenever an office‐holder or a representative to sit in a legislative body is to be chosen by a number of persons, known as electors or voters, an electoral system must be devised to manage and regulate the election process. The franchise by which electors qualify to vote and the electoral system that converts their votes into seats in the legislature will be controversial. Two centuries of experimentation and debate have left a wide assortment of electoral systems. The authoritative handbook by Reynolds and Reilly ( 1997 ) identifies nine...
Legislative Authority Reference library
Muhammad Khalaf-Allah
Liberal Islam: A Sourcebook
...Imam [‘Abduh] lead us to the conclusion that there are two rules: the rule of selecting “those in authority,” and the electoral rule that is applied in those countries that build their authority on the basis of counsel. The Professor Imam's [‘Abduh's] mention of the second rule indicates that general elections had not yet been mandated during his lifetime, and that governing was not parliamentary. Today, we practice our electoral life based on the second rule. We have a parliament, and in it there are a variety of specialized committees...
Democracy Reference library
An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age
...themselves effectively, they often elected notably radical representatives. Middlesex as well as the City of London, Westminster, Norwich, and other large towns were able to elect reformers to parliament, and it should not be forgotten that it was under the unreformed electoral system that the *Whigs secured a substantial majority in favour of *parliamentary reform in the general election of 1831 . National issues often did not interest townsfolk as much as the need to solve the various local problems associated with urbanization, such as regulating...
African‐Caribbean Genealogy Quick reference
Guy Grannum
The Oxford Companion to Local and Family History (2 ed.)
...are the colonial equivalent to the London Gazette and most start in the mid‐1800s. Many early newspapers are the predecessors to the government gazettes and contain similar information. The information in the gazettes varies from colony to colony but can include tax lists; electoral registers; grants of government lands; arrears of rent on government land; letters at the post offices; licences (for example, for guns, dogs, boats, and chemists); changes of name; first‐class passengers; lists of jurors, midwives, constables, nurses, and militia officers;...
Novels Reference library
An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age
...character and motive rather than outward to the changing world of ideas—scientific, economic, religious, and political. In Melincourt ( 1817 ) Peacock turns to the romance, creating a heroine in search of a knight errant in a modern society stained with mercenary marriages, electoral corruption, and paper money. Maid Marian ( 1822 ) further extends the use of romance and folk-tale in a mock-medieval satire on modern politics; while in The Misfortunes of Elphin ( 1829 ) Peacock blends Arthurian and ancient Welsh legend, a contest of the bards, and an...
Law Reference library
An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age
...Crown ( 1776 ), and (more gradually) on the freedom of contract. Indeed, the centrality of individualistic rights to politics and the constitution in eighteenth-century England ensured that sensitive political and constitutional issues (for example the questions of personal, electoral, and press freedom raised by the *Wilkites in the 1760s and 1770s) were still frequently fought out in the courts rather than in parliament. So while formal constitutional principle meant that the courts were ultimately vulnerable to the assumption of positive sovereignty by...
Democracy or Shuracracy Reference library
Murad Hofmann
Islam in Transition: Muslim Perspectives (2 ed.)
... once and for all. (Cornerstone number 11.) Abu Bakr, his first successor, was elected after a heated argument between the Muslims from Makkah and those of al-Madinah, ‘Umar, the second successor, was appointed by acclamation. The third successor, ‘Uthman, emerged from an electoral council of six. It follows that Islam understands monarchy, too, only as an elected monarchy. Any new king must be confirmed, at least by accla-mation, and preferably through the described baya’ —the process by which the successor to the throne and the people's representatives...
Policing Reference library
An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age
...and showed no great concern with ordinary people's civil liberties; it suspended habeas corpus to deal with the radical agitations of the 1790s and the immediate postwar period, it resisted initial moves to reduce the number of capital crimes, and it defended their narrow electoral base against calls for *parliamentary reform and *Catholic emancipation . The opposition to a paid police was mainly a fear of the consequences of a police in the hands of a potentially over-mighty central government. Back-bench country squires, in particular, felt that the...
Liberation Theology: Latin America Reference library
M. Daniel Carroll R.
The Oxford Illustrated History of the Bible
...situation over the last decade have had a profound effect on the fortunes of liberation theology. For example, the collapse of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and the electoral defeats of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua (1990, 1996) have created a crisis in the Latin American left and influenced liberationists as well. The hope of a more equitable socio-economic system, embodied for some in the socialist hope, appears to have disappeared before the pressures of a global capitalistic economy. From a very different angle, among those who champion...
Central Government, Courts, and Taxation Quick reference
R. W. Hoyle
The Oxford Companion to Local and Family History (2 ed.)
...are extant for the subsidy before 1332 , and virtually none for the early Tudor subsidies; nor for the hearth tax in the periods when it was administered by farmers; nor for the land tax before 1780 (after which returns had to be deposited with the clerk of the peace for electoral purposes). The historian is forced to rely on a small number of oft‐cited taxes: 1377–81, 1524–5, 1664 , and the first extant land tax return. Moreover, the returns which do survive vary considerably in their utility. This is especially true of the Henrician lay subsidies....
Surnames Quick reference
David Hey
The Oxford Companion to Local and Family History (2 ed.)
...time by using genealogical methods. Free maps of the most frequent 25 000 surnames in the 1881 census are also available online, but these are arranged only by counties. This web site also provides distribution maps, colour‐coded by counties, of surnames taken from the 1998 electoral registers. Support for the idea that very many surnames have a single‐family origin has come in recent years from genetics, using DNA samples to compare the structure of Y chromosomes which, like surnames, are handed down from father to son. Indeed, Bryan Sykes has argued in ...
On the Future of Women and Politics in the Arab World Reference library
Heba Raouf Ezzat
Islam in Transition: Muslim Perspectives (2 ed.)
...focus on local governance is the key to engaging more people in the public domain to influence policies that affect their day to day life. This does not mean that official political bodies should be neglected, nor undermined. On the contrary, this approach should strengthen the electoral process but also allow women to have constant influence and power over policy making and decision taking. 9 Women's movements engaged in formal politics may risk being co-opted by the state, or making concessions regarding the wider democratic transformation, in order to guarantee...
Local and Regional History: Modern Approaches Quick reference
David Hey
The Oxford Companion to Local and Family History (2 ed.)
...is to identify these local societies, which, despite the mobility of recent generations, often survive to the present day. Genetic evidence, based on DNA samples, together with localized patterns of †surnames, revealed by an analysis of UK telephone directories and electoral registers , show that Britain is still composed of numerous local societies with marked individual characteristics. Many of these are of ancient origin, though, of course, they have never been static. In Victorian times their identity was much stronger than it is now; it was...
