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VoteDemocracy

VoteDemocracy targets a course free for all on Open Access.
While no voting system is perfect, some are very much worse than others.


 

Voting by eligible citizens to choose their government in fair and free elections is a fundamental principle in modern representative democracy.

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But elections cannot guarantee democracy.

Since the onset of the new millennium, a growing disaffection with democracy has emerged as a principal concern, even within the most established democratic nations. From the rise of authoritarian political leaders to populist insurrection, the future of democracy and its capacity to endure have become subjects of intense political, academic, and media examination and debate. However, it is the pervasive lack of knowledge that poses the foremost threat to democracy.

Constructive discussion about democracy and its problems requires an understanding of its institutions and underlying principles—a vast and complex field of study. VoteDemocracy adopts a focused pedagogical approach to the central role of voting and its challenges in representative democracy. Comprising both a coursebook and a series of video presentations, the new course applies social choice and voting theory to the problems of electoral democracy. Taking an exciting new approach—By students, For students—the videos that accompany each course module are written and presented by those with the closest proximity to when and how the topics became clear to them. As well as bringing fresh enthusiasm, they often illuminate brightly and entertain in conveying their "Aha!" moments.

The course objective is to provide an impartial understanding of voting procedures and rules, a key component in addressing many of the major contemporary global problems that depend on election outcomes: the clash between fascism and rule of law, economic instability, climate change, and widening inequality. The course analyses many voting issues that are central to democracy—electing representatives, majority rule, proportional representation, electoral districts and gerrymandering, coalition governments, voting paradoxes, voting power, referendum, and sortition are all explained, as well as the new directions in computational social choice, and lab and field experiments that examine voter motivations. Designed for an audience of advanced non-specialist undergraduates, VoteDemocracy also has significant outreach potential to engage a wide range of interested non-academics, policymakers, and political stakeholders. 

The Coursebook: The VoteDemocracy volume, presented in four parts, features contributions from many distinguished experts in the field. Parts 1 and 2 include the base modules and are suitable for either a one-semester course or the first semester of a one-year course. Parts 3 and 4 include more specialised modules appropriate for the second semester of a one-year course—a single semester course would also incorporate selected topics from this group. Additionally, the editors provide guidance for self-paced individual study.

The Video Series: The video course is a new collaboration with LSE’s Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method. To accompany each course module, VoteDemocracy will produce an introductory overview video, and further in-depth course videos on specific topics. Free from formalism and unnecessary jargon, the presentations will be at a level suitable for a non-specialist newcomer to the subject. While intended for use in classroom instruction, the book and video series together form a ‘standalone’ course facilitating self-study in institutions lacking the requisite faculty to deliver the course, or for individual self-paced study online.

Pilot videos are currently under development to secure the requisite sponsorship/funding for the complete production of the course video series.

VoteDemocracy People

Advisory Board

Directors

Rudolf Fara (LSE) 

Rudolf Fara is a Research Associate at the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science and Project Leader of Voting Power and Procedures (VPP) at LSE. He co-founded VPP with Moshé Machover in 2000 and was a founding director of the international VoteDemocracy project in 2014. He is co-editor of VoteDemocracy (forthcoming 2024) with Nicholas Miller, Friedrich Pukelsheim, and Maurice Salles, and co-edited with Dennis Leech and Maurice Salles Voting Power and Procedures (2014), Springer. In 1993 Fara returned to philosophy as a Trustee and Executive Director of the charity Philosophy in Britain, and shortly afterwards founded Philosophy International, publisher of the internationally acclaimed archival video series on the work of the most influential living philosophers. Productions include: In Conversation: Sir Peter Strawson, In Conversation: W. V. Quine and In Conversation: Donald Davidson. From 1972 to 1993, Fara was co-founder and CEO of Prismatron Productions, the world’s first specialist publisher of academic media on computing, statistics and operations research. 

 

Moshé Machover (King’s College, London and LSE)

Moshé Machover was born in Tel-Aviv, studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and taught mathematics there before coming to London University in 1968. He is professor emeritus at the Department of Philosophy, Kings College, London and Research Associate at the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science at LSE. His earlier work was on mathematical logic and the foundations of mathematics. Since the early 1990s, he has worked mainly in the area of Social Choice in collaboration with Dan Felsenthal. Together they published The Measurement of Voting Power: Theory and Practice, Problems and Paradoxes (1998), as well as many papers on the subject.

 

Nicholas Miller (University of Maryland Baltimore County)

Nicholas R. Miller was born and raised in California. He attended Harvard College and then did his graduate work in political science at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1971 he joined the Political Science Department of the recently founded University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) where he now remains. His work has focused on formal theories of voting processes, including tournaments and majority voting, voting procedures and agendas, logrolling, spatial voting theory, voting power, information pooling, electoral systems, and properties of the U.S. Electoral College. In social choice theory, his name is associated with the concept of the ‘uncovered set’. Miller is a former editor of the Journal of Theoretical Politics, a past president of the U.S. Public Choice Society, and a Research Associate at the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science at LSE. He is co-editor of VoteDemocracy (forthcoming 2024) with Rudolf Fara, Friedrich Pukelsheim, and Maurice Salles

 

Friedrich Pukelsheim (University of Augsburg)

Friedrich Pukelsheim studied mathematics and economics at the universities of Cologne and Freiburg im Breisgau. In 1983 he was appointed Full Professor for Stochastics and its Applications at the University of Augsburg. His Wiley monograph Optimal Design of Experiments (1993) was included in the SIAM Classics in Applied Mathematics series (volume 50, 2006). Thereafter Pukelsheim's research interest turned to the mathematical analysis of proportional representation systems. His Springer monograph Proportional Representation: Apportionment Methods and their Application (2014, second edition 2017) grew out of interdisciplinary courses at Augsburg University and other academic institutions, and out of papers in journals of mathematics, statistics, political sciences, state law, and historical sciences. He is co-editor of VoteDemocracy (forthcoming 2024) with Rudolf Fara, Nicholas Miller, and Maurice Salles. Pukelsheim has testified as an expert witness for the European Parliament, the German Bundestag, several German State Diets and several Swiss Canton Parliaments. Since 2013 he has served as Research Associate at LSE’s Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science.

 

Maurice Salles (University of Caen)

Maurice Salles was born in a Lower Normandy village. He studied economics at the University of Caen and mathematics from books. He taught at Caen before becoming professor at the University of Nantes in 1979. In 1982, he returned to Caen as professor of economics where he now remains. He works on social choice and voting theory, including fuzzy social choice and cooperative games aspects of voting. Salles was one of the founding editors of the journal Social Choice and Welfare in 1984 and has been the coordinating editor since. He is Secretary-Treasurer of The Society for Social Choice and Welfare at Maison de la Recherche en Sciences Humaines (MRSH) in the University of Caen, and Research Associate at the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science at LSE. Salles is co-editor of VoteDemocracy (forthcoming 2024) with Rudolf Fara, Nicholas Miller, and Friedrich Pukelsheim.

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