Political Scientists and Electoral Reforms in Europe and Canada: What They Know,What They Do

Abstract

In 2013, the American Political Science Association (APSA) Task Force on Political Science, Electoral Rules, and Democratic Governance released a report in which the authors say that more than 50 U.S.-based political scientists have been involved in electoral reform processes in the U.S. and abroad since 2010 (Htun and Powell 2013). In this symposium, we give new insights to this topic by offering a view from the outside of the U.S. European and Canadian political scientists who had been invited to give their opinion about the electoral system of their country, and who engaged with politicians, public officials, and national media on the topic, talk about their experience as national experts. They answer two related questions: (1) What do political scientists know about electoral reform that practitioners do not? and (2) Does it make a difference? This symposium gathers their respective contributions to the roundtable. In this introduction, we give a brief overview of the literature on the role of political scientists in electoral reforms and summarize the main conclusions of the four contributions to the symposium.