| Abstract: | "When and why do democratic political actors change the electoral rules that determine access to office-holding and power, particularly who is included in a country's political representation? The incidence of such changes, known as major electoral reforms, has been on the rise since 1980. This has concerned scholars who typically assume strategic choices, rather than ideological or normative preferences for democracy, drive elite decision-making regarding electoral reform. Thus, reforms would likely limit democratic consolidation by allowing elite actors to reshape the electoral system to their advantage. Electoral Reform and the Fate of New Democracies argues that elite inexperience may constrain the pursuit of self-interest and lead elites to undertake gradual or incremental approaches to the process of reform, aiding the process of democratic consolidation. Using a multi-methods approach, the book examines three consecutive periods of reform in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim majority country and third largest democracy, between 1999 and 2014. Each case study chapter provides an in-depth process tracing of the negotiations leading to the adoption of new reforms, including key actors in the legislature, domestic civil society, international experts, and government bureaucrats. A series of counterfactual analyses assess the impact the reforms had on actual election outcomes versus the possible alternative outcomes of different reform options discussed during negotiations. With a comparative analysis of nine cases of iterated reform processes in other new democracies, the book confirms the lessons from the Indonesian case and highlights key lessons for both scholars and electoral engineers." |
|---|