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This chapter explores how the Korean electoral management bodies (EMBs) and the election administration ensure the autonomy of administrative management from political parties and the interior ministry. In particular, the analysis focuses on the role of recognition, rights independence, and professionalism in securing the election administrations in the EMBs. Recent studies have found that the contents of the independent variable, dependent variable, and other parameters influencing fair and autonomous election management system do not differ significantly. Therefore, the institutional independence of the EMBs is not intended to guarantee fairness and impartiality in Korea either. Since 1987, the authoritarian regime collapsed and democracy began to grow in Korea. Also, the role of the EMBs granted by the constitution started to be considered.

Actively recognizing the role and expanding the rights of the Korean National Election Commission (NEC) has become a decisive factor in the formation of the autonomous and neutral election management system. The scale, manpower and budget of organizations, and personnel have increased. The role of the EMBs has also expanded proportionally. The Korean NEC has enormous authority, such as investigative power and enforcement power that the EMBs of other countries do not have. After all, recognizing the role of bureaucracy and government employees will become a very important factor in ensuring the independence of the EMBs in developing countries. Furthermore, it will be a driving force to develop democracy in developing countries.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of using proportional representation system on the fragmentation of the party system in the Algerian political system within the period from 1997 to 2017, in which Algeria has experienced five legislative elections regularly every five years by testing a hypothesis about adopting the proportional representation system on the basis of the closed list during the foregoing legislative elections has obviously influenced the exacerbation of the Algerian party system’s fragmentation, compared to other factors.

The essence of the theoretical framework of this study is to address the effect of the electoral system as an independent variable on the party system as a dependent variable. The starting point for that framework is to reassess the “Duverger’s law,” which appeared since the early 1950s and has influenced the foregoing relationship, and then to review the literature on a new phase that tried to provide a more accurate mechanism for determining the number of parties and their relative weight, whether in terms of electoral votes or parliamentary seats. This means that researchers began to use a measure called the effective number of parties (ENP) for Laakso and Taagepera since 1979. The study elaborates the general concepts of the electoral system and the party system. It used Laakso, Taagepera index of the “ENP” to measure the phenomenon of fragmentation party during the five legislative elections from 1997 to 2017 in Algeria.

The results of the study reveal that the proportional representation electoral system – beside other factors – had clear impacts on the fragmentation of the Algerian party system by all standards, whether on the level of the apparent rise in the number of the parties represented in the Algerian parliament from 10 parties in 1997 election to 36 parties in 2017 election or according to the index of Laakso and Taagepera (ENP). The average number of effective number of electoral parties in the five elections was around 7.66, and the average number of effective number of parliamentary parties in the five elections was around 4.39, which puts Algeria in an advanced degree of the fragmentation of the party system.

This study about the phenomenon of the fragmentation of the party system, which is one of the new subjects in the field of comparative politics – globally and in the Arab world. Hence, the value of this study aims to shed light on this mysterious area of science, the fragmentation of the party system in the Algerian political system during the period from 1997 to 2017.

This chapter is about non-western immigrants’ representation in elected assemblies in Norway and Denmark. Non-western immigrants are a small minority in these countries. That may be a difficult position since democracy is based on different forms of majority rule. Every democracy faces the dilemma of how to treat minorities. The checks on direct power from the majority vary from one country to another. One aspect is the electoral system, which may or may not have built-in mechanisms that defend minorities.

Regional and rural Australians have long appreciated the problem of demographics in politics particularly as they relate to the electoral process and its related party system. All Australians understand the nexus between voting, the formation of governments and the construction of public policy – including, of course, policies that come under the rubric of ‘law and order’. Regional and rural voters have worried about the scope for their policy demands to be overwhelmed by the concerns of urban communities that, in most Australian states, constitutes what might be thought of as a majority. This chapter seeks to shine light on the notions of a rural-urban divide, its consequences for the party system and its impact on policy formation. It will highlight some important demographic differences between the metropolis and the regions and note the propensity for voter volatility to manifest itself in party choices especially where multi-member proportional representation occurs. The success of independents and minor parties may be an indication of regional voter disillusion with the traditional political parties of rural Australia, the Liberal and National parties.

How are we to make sense of the attitudes of Social Democratic parties towards decentralisation? What do they think about what is a legitimate territorial allocation of power? What factors shapes this view? And what makes Social Democratic parties change their minds? This article addresses these questions by way of competing ideological traditions, the external strategic incentives and internal constraints. Empirically, the article presents a comparative case-study analysis of Social Democratic parties in four countries (Belgium, Italy, Spain and United Kingdom). On the basis of this analysis, I argue that the positioning of Social Democratic parties on decentralisation is influenced by strategic incentives created by the structure of political competition, whereas the policy shifts are more often produced by factors that are internal to the party. A decentralist policy shift is always associated with the capacity of regionalist parties to set the agenda by exerting pressures on Social Democratic parties. In addition, Social Democratic parties tend to shift their policy while in opposition to distinguish themselves from their centralist mainstream rival in government. The dominant mechanism found across four countries was one in which regional branches persuade the central party leadership to adopt a pro-decentralist position. This chapter illustrates how Social Democratic parties have an instinct for ‘adaptation and control’ in the face of social-structural changes, and it demonstrates that the prevalence of different ideological traditions will vary according to external strategic incentives and, crucially, by the party's internal ability to follow those incentives.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the strategies employed by the pro-Beijing and pro-democracy camps in the proportional representation system which was used to universally elect a half of the seats in the Legislative Council (LegCo) of Hong Kong before 2019. It provides the consequences of proportional representation over the political sphere development after the handover.

This research is based on the past election results and the interviews conducted with 18 LegCo members in 2018.

This paper examines how the political parties split their lists in order to win more seats with the past electoral outcomes. Coupled with firsthand materials from interviews with the legislators, the most significant part of this article analyzes why the pro-Beijing camp performed better than the pro-democracy camp. It supplements the gap of current literature from the perspective of campaign strategies. This article also points out the Chinese authorities' miscalculation in the 1990s which resulted in the unintentional creation of fragmented politics and filibusters before 2019.

This examines the development of campaign strategies of the pro-Beijing and pro-democracy camps, and it explains how the proportional representation caused the fragmented politics in Hong Kong.

Civil society has emerged as a contested concept in development. Some observers claim that economic restructuring has eroded the political hegemony of authoritarian regimes and created a new space for autonomous associations. In Mexico, chronic economic crisis and economic adjustment policies generated widespread popular discontent in the 1980s. The authoritarian regime tried to channel popular dissatisfaction into the institutionalized political arena through a series of electoral reforms. Thus, economic liberalization in Mexico was paralleled by a slow and gradual process of liberalization of the Mexican political system. In the context of these economic and political changes, scholars have observed an awakened civil society in Mexico. They have chronicled the emergence of independent organizations of workers, peasants, and the urban poor. They have also documented new types of civic associations such as environmental groups, election‐watch groups, human rights organizations, debtors’ groups, and women’s movements. Numerous studies of social movements beginning in the 1980s appear to suggest the rise of civil society in the era of economic and political liberalization.