THE PROJECT VOLUME - Chapter 5

Open Cite VOLUME

Publisher:  Pragma Publishing
Online publication date:  December 2023
Chapter DOI:  https://doi.org/10.62483/19430535

Voter-Centred Perspectives on Electoral Democracy

Attila Mráz and Annabelle Lever

ABSTRACT

One of the guiding assumptions of the REDEM project is that shifting the study of the ethics of voting to a voter-centred perspective improves our understanding of the ethical challenges and moral dilemmas facing European voters and opens new avenues of electoral institutional design to mitigate them. The present chapter substantiates this assumption by pursuing the following three aims:

  1. To describe ethical considerations relevant to voting choices, including reasons relevant to whether one votes as well as to how one votes;
  2. To describe and illustrate how a shift of focus to a voter-centred perspective allows us to appreciate a wider range of ethical considerations;
  3. To compare these to the ethical considerations that elitist or pluralist approaches to electoral democracy can account for, as well as describing and analysing the differences between the former approaches, on the one hand, and a voter-centred perspective, on the other.

The chapter also serves two more general purposes. First, its findings provide normative input into the ethical burden that European political and electoral systems currently impose on voters. Second, it provides academic input into education for democratic citizenship, to sensitise young voters and future voters to the ethical complexity of the choices they may face, and to the skills and attitudes needed to exercise and defend their democratic rights and responsibilities in society.

Citation
Mráz, Attila, and Annabelle Lever. 2023. ‘Voter-Centred Perspectives on Electoral Democracy’. In Reconstructing Democracy in Times of Crisis - A Voter-Centred Perspective, ed. Annabelle Lever. Paris: Pragma Publishing, 151–86. https://doi.org/10.62483/19430535.
Mráz, A., & Lever, A. (2023). Voter-Centred Perspectives on Electoral Democracy. In A. Lever (Ed.), Reconstructing Democracy in Times of Crisis—A Voter-Centred Perspective (pp. 151–186). Pragma Publishing. https://doi.org/10.62483/19430535
Mráz, Attila, and Annabelle Lever. 2023. ‘Voter-Centred Perspectives on Electoral Democracy’. In Reconstructing Democracy in Times of Crisis - A Voter-Centred Perspective, edited by Annabelle Lever, 151–86. Paris: Pragma Publishing. https://doi.org/10.62483/19430535.
Mráz, A. and Lever, A. (2023) ‘Voter-Centred Perspectives on Electoral Democracy’, in A. Lever (ed.) Reconstructing Democracy in Times of Crisis - A Voter-Centred Perspective. Paris: Pragma Publishing, pp. 151–186. Available at: https://doi.org/10.62483/19430535.
Mráz, Attila, and Annabelle Lever, ‘Voter-Centred Perspectives on Electoral Democracy’, in Reconstructing Democracy in Times of Crisis - A Voter-Centred Perspective, ed. by Annabelle Lever (Paris: Pragma Publishing, 2023), pp. 151–86 <https://doi.org/10.62483/19430535>
Mráz, Attila, and Annabelle Lever. ‘Voter-Centred Perspectives on Electoral Democracy’. Reconstructing Democracy in Times of Crisis - A Voter-Centred Perspective, edited by Annabelle Lever, Pragma Publishing, 2023, pp. 151–86, https://doi.org/10.62483/19430535.
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