Cain - Democracy More or Less: Americas Political Reform Quandary

Why do American political reform efforts often fail to solve the problems they intend to fix? In this book, Bruce E. Cain argues that the reasons are an unrealistic civic ideal of a fully informed and engaged citizenry and a neglect of basic pluralist principles about political intermediaries. This book traces the tension between populist and pluralist approaches as it plays out in many seemingly distinct reform topics, such as voting administration, campaign finance, excessive partisanship, redistricting, transparency, and voter participation. It explains why political primaries have promoted partisan polarization, why voting rates are declining even as election opportunities increase, and why direct democracy is not really a grassroots tool. Cain offers a reform agenda that attempts to reconcile pluralist ideals with the realities of collective-action problems and resource disparities.

BRUCE E. CAIN is the Charles Louis Ducommun Professor of Humanities and Sciences in the political science department at Stanford University, where he also directs the Bill Lane Center for the American West. In addition to publishing numerous scholarly works, he has served as a consultant for state and local governments on constitutional and charter reform, campaign finance regulation, redistricting, and voting rights. He has received the Zale Award for Outstanding Achievement in Policy Research and Public Service and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Recent developments have pushed elections scholarship in new directions. As a result, interdisciplinary work has flourished, and political scientists and law professors have developed a more sophisticated sense of the relationship between law and politics. This series seeks to create an intellectual road map for the field, one that systematically examines the issues confronting both mature and emerging democracies. It will chart those new intellectual paths to spur interdisciplinary work, to identify productive ways in which scholars research agendas connect to policy makers reform agendas, and to disseminate this body of work to the growing audience interested in the intersection of law, politics, and democracy.

For a list of titles published in the series, please see .

Democracy More or Less

Americas Political Reform Quandary

Bruce E. Cain

Stanford University

32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 100132473, USA

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Bruce E. Cain 2015

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First published 2015

Printed in the United States of America

A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Cain, Bruce E.

Democracy more or less : Americas political reform quandary / Bruce Cain,

Stanford University.

pages cm. (Cambridge studies in election law and democracy)

ISBN 978-1-107-03963-6 (hardback)

1. Democracy United States. 2. Representative government and representation

United States. 3. Political culture United States. 4. Political participation

United States. 5. Polarization (Social sciences) United States. I. Title.

JK1726.C35 2014

320.973dc23 2014018137

ISBN 978-1-107-03963-6 Hardback

ISBN 978-1-107-61226-6 Paperback

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