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by Philip Manow (Author)
Sixty years of democratic representation in Germany allow us to study the working of a specific type of electoral system, namely a mixed system combining proportional and majoritarian rules, in great detail. Mixed systems have figured as a reference point in many reform debates of the recent past. This is because they appear to combine advantageous traits of proportional and majoritarian rules, such as fairness, proximity between constituencies and representatives, and stable government majorities. Mixed systems have also attracted much scholarly attention of late, because they allow us to study the effects of electoral rules while holding many intervening variables constant. But they also attract interest because the proportional and majoritarian electoral tiers affect each other in ways that differ from what would have resulted under pure PR or plurality. All this makes mixed systems a fascinating object of study, and the German system is its oldest and prototypical exemplar.
Author Biography
Philip Manow is professor of comparative political economy at Bremen University. Previously he held positions at the Max-Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne, and at Konstanz and Heidelberg Universities. He was a visiting scholar at Harvard's Center for European Studies, at the Centre Études Européenne, Sciences Po Paris, and was fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. His research interests cover democratic theory, the German political system, comparative political economy and European integration. He has published in Legislative Studies Quarterly, European Journal of Political Research, Politics & Society, Comparative Political Studies, West European Politics and the British Journal of Political Science, among others.
