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ELECTORAL ENGINEERING IN THE DEVELOPING DEMOCRACIES. SOME CONSIDERATIONS ON GIOVANNI SARTORI'S FRAMEWORKS OF ANALYSIS
Abstract
The electoral systems represent a very important element of the entire political process which connects the people`s choices to the types of politics promoted by the governments. They are chosen and sometimes modified by political actors and, once functional, exercise political consequences over these actors. A state`s politics is profoundly influenced by its electoral system. In the last decades, more and more states have opted to modify, either partially or entirely their electoral systems, the main reason being the great changes those states confronted with and that generated social contexts in which the old electoral formulas were no longer efficient. Romania being part of this category has made us stress upon proposing these analysis of political theory on the visions of the famous Italian political scientist Giovanni Sartori regarding constitutional and electoral mechanisms, but also implementing different types of democracy in societies in which democracy is not entirely developed or consolidated. We base our analysis on a working hypothesis that the electoral laws create as well as modify the people`s perception on democracy and modifying these laws results in a series of changes regarding not only technical aspects of transforming people`s votes in mandates for those elected, but also other aspects connected to the mechanism or the state`s institutions or to the local administration. Thus, the purpose of such a research consists in identifying not only the connection of causality existing between the type of political regime and the type of electoral system in a state, but also the way in which political changing the type of elections affects the people`s perceptions on the political life as well as the drawing on the political concepts. The argumentation we build up in this paper regarding the importance of Sartori's theories for this area of political science will lead to more of his writings on the theory of democracy as well as on the constitutional engineering and electoral mechanisms.
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References15
Gianfranco Pasquino, „The Political Science of Giovanni Sartori”, in European Political Science, vol. 4, issue 1, pp. 33-41, 2005.
Giovanni Sartori, Teoria democraţiei reinterpretată, Polirom, Iaşi, pp. 155-166, 1999.
Ibidem, p. 24.
Ibidem, pp. 116-118.
Giovanni Sartori, „How Far Can the Free Government Travel?”, in Journal of Democracy, 6, no. 3, 1995, p. 109, apud Daniel Barbu, „De la partidul unic la partitocraţie”, in Jean-Michel de Waele, Partide politice şi democraţie în Europa Centrală şi de Est, Humanitas, Bucureşti, p. 253, 2003.
Robert Dahl, Poliarhiile. Participare și opoziție, Institutul European, Iași, p. 29, 2000.
Giovanni Sartori, „Where is Political Science Going?”, in Political Science and Politics, vol. 37, no. 4, p. 786, Oct. 2004.
Raymond Aron, Democraţie şi totalitarism, All, Bucureşti, p. 70, 2001.
Giovanni Sartori, „Rethinking Democracy: Bad Polity and Bad Politics”, in International Social Science Journal, no. 121, Basil Blackwell, UNESCO, Paris, 1991, apud George Poede, „O perspectivă weberiană asupra proceselor de transformare din estul Europei”, in Hermeneiea, nr. 6, p. 21, 2006.
Giovanni Sartori, Ingineria constituţională comparată. Structuri, stimulente şi rezultate, Institutul European, Iaşi, pp. 98-103, 2008.
Ibidem, pp. 111-121.
Robin Farquharson, Theory of Voting, New Heaven, Yale University Press, 1969.
Giovanni Sartori, Parties and Party Systems. A Framework for Analysis, vol. 1, Cambridge University Press, p. 319, 1976.
For more details, see Giovanni Sartori, „Concept Misformation in Comparative Politics”, in American Political Science Review, vol. 64, issue 4, pp. 1033-1053, 1970 and „La politica comparata: premesse e problemi”, in Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica, nr. 1, pp. 7-66, 1971.
Giovanni Sartori, „From the Sociology of Politics to the Political Sociology”, in Seymour Martin Lipset (editor), Politics and the Social Sciences, Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 65-100, 1969.
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