After the institutions, the true power rightfully returns to the people. This level examines how citizens can meaningfully shape their government through informed participation, elections, and effective voting methods.
Putting the power back into the hands of individuals, society selects its leaders and representatives through elections.
The Duverger Syndrome is democracies' most critical illness. Both the causes and the fixes are known. Solutions must be applied as a matter of priority.
The most pressing need for our democracies is to understand what the Duverger Syndrome is, its root causes and how to overcome it.
Duverger Symptom 10: The Realignment Trap — Every generation, a new movement promises to break the two-party mould. Every generation, the binary reconstitutes around new faces. Same game.
Duverger Symptom 11: The Authoritarian Advantage — A democracy that can't commit beyond the next election is a target. Authoritarian states have spent decades building strategies around that fact.
Duverger Symptom 12: Democracy Itself as Wedge Issue — The terminal symptom is not the open attack on democracy — it is the fog of competing democratic claims that hides the real erosion.
Duverger Symptom 6: Adversarial Politics — In a binary system, the optimal strategy is not to be excellent — it is to make the other side intolerable. Not a character flaw. A rational strategy.
Duverger Symptom 7: Party Over Country — Representatives face relentless pressure to put party over country. Not a failure of moral courage — it is precisely what the system is designed to produce.
Duverger Symptom 8: Primary Radicalisation — Why do both parties keep nominating extremists? Not because voters radicalised — because primary elections select for a different, more extreme electorate.
Duverger Symptom 9: The Policy Pendulum — Why does every government undo everything the last one did? Not incompetence. The system was built to produce exactly this.
Duverger Syndrome — The Duverger Syndrome is democracies' most critical illness.
Duverger case study: France and the dangers of alternance
Duverger case study: Taiwan, 2000–2004
Duverger case study: Taiwan, 2024
Duverger case study: The United States in the 19th Century — In 1836 the Whigs split their vote across four candidates and lost. Four years later they unified behind one and won. The two-party lock has held ever since.
Duverger case study: The United States in the 21st Century — Trump did not hijack the Republican Party. Fifty years of single-choice voting laid the door he walked through. The system produced him.
Duverger symptom 1: divisive dualism — Why single-choice voting splits every democracy into two hostile camps — and why voters worldwide feel trapped between sides they did not choose.
Duverger symptom 2: wedge issues — Wedge issues are not accidents. They are the deliberate weaponisation of fault lines that single-choice voting creates — never meant to be resolved.
Duverger symptom 3: the good candidate drought — By the time voters reach the booth, the damage is done. Good candidates were filtered out long before election day — not by voters, but by the system.
Duverger symptom 4: the lesser of two evils — The lesser of two evils is not a preference — it is a prisoner's choice. By election day, the field has been shaped by forces beyond the voter's control.
Duverger symptom 5: Strategic Imprisonment and the Spoiler Effect — A voter has a genuine preference — a candidate they actually want, in the race. They still cannot vote for them. The system has made sincerity irrational.
Duverger's Law — Duverger's Law explains why single-choice voting systems produce two dominant parties — and why the disease runs deeper than first-past-the-post.
Single Choice Voting — First Past the Post, Proportional Representation, two-round runoffs — political scientists treat these as different systems. From the voter's side of the ballot, they all issue the same instruction: pick one.
One of the most critical priority for any democracy is to improve its electoral system and start using a much better voting method.
The remedy to the Duverger Syndrome are well known:
Approval Voting: A Simple Path to Stronger Democracies
The end of political parties
Voting methods
Bush v. Gore (2000)
Campaign finance
Candidate Accountability — A candidate's past is a window into their future.
Casting and Tallying — The Two Phases of Every Election — Every election has two distinct phases: casting (what voters express) and tallying (how votes are converted to results). Confusing the two distorts every debate about electoral reform.
Center for Election Innovation & Research
Certifying Elections
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010)
Comparative Study of Electoral Systems — Collaborative research among election study teams from around the world.
Concession
Concession speech — A nice concession speech goes a long way towards preserving democracy...
Counting the Vote: A Firing Line Special with Margaret Hoover
Democracy Docket
Democratic backsliding in the United States
Disfranchisement
Election denialism
Election integrity
Election official (poll worker)
Electoral Ineligibility: Defining the Boundaries of Democratic Participation — Why are some candidates disqualified from seeking office?
Electoral system
Eligibility for Public Office: Defining the Foundation of Democratic Participation — What does it take to be allowed to run?
Evolution of the Republican Party
Funding for elections
Gerrymandering
How to Steal a Presidential Election
Informed Score Voting as the Vanguard for a Stronger Democracy — The best approach to building more resilient and inclusive electoral processes.
Informed Score Voting: Elevating Knowledge, Empowering Choice
Instant Runoff Voting — Instant Runoff Voting is better than plurality voting — but it is not the reform democracy needs. It reduces the spoiler effect without eliminating it, preserves two-party dominance, and leads nowhere better.
International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA)
Kamala Harris Concession Speech — Kamala Harris could have been a great leader for the USA.
Leadership
League of Women Voters: Making Democracy Work
Open-source voting system
Plurality voting
Political polarisation
Political science in Taiwan — Academic research on political science in Taiwan.
Primary Elections
Qualified Electoral Ineligibility: When "Bad Behavior" Disqualifies — Character counts… but how much?
Ranked Voting (class of voting methods)
Rated Voting (class of voting methods)
Roe v. Wade (1973)
Russian interference in US elections
Score voting: Rate, Don't Just Pick — Fully express your opinion on each candidate.
Shelby County v. Holder (2013)
Tactical voting
The "I Don't Know" Revolution: How a Simple Option Can Transform Democracy — Is voter ignorance a problem? Not with Informed Score Voting!
The Big Truth: Upholding Democracy in the Age of “The Big Lie”
The Despot's Apprentice: Donald Trump's Attack on Democracy
Trump v. United States (SCOTUS, 2024)
Tweed Symptom: Uncontested Elections
Tweedism: A Legacy of Corruption — A carefully constructed system of graft and patronage that nearly brought down a city.
Types of democracy — Different ways to categorize democracies.
Verified Voting Foundation
Vote Smart — Collecting information on issue positions, voting records, etc. of elected officials.
Voter suppression
Voting Rights Act of 1965
Bec David Becker
Dil David L. Dill
Eli Marc Elias
Hua Chi Huang (黃 紀) — Taiwanese political science professor
Tru Donald Trump — An existential threat to democracy
Gaming the Vote: Why Elections Aren't Fair
Ken Burns: H24 Keynote Address to Brandeis University's 2024 Graduates
Prosecuting Donald Trump: Election Security Matters
Approval Voting Party — Party promoting implementing approval voting in the United States.
Campaign Legal Center
Center for Election Science
Good Trouble Lives On
League of Women Voters — Empowering votes and defending democracy for over a century.
League of Women Voters of Colorado
Dan Jessie Daniel Ames — American suffragist and civil rights leader
Lew John Lewis
Not Adav Noti
Oba Barack Obama
An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office.