Week 11 — Political Participation: Parties, Elections & Voting Systems

Introduction to Political Science Free sample edition

Why this matters

A business major watching a shareholder vote fill a company board and a nursing student electing representatives to a hospital staff council both live under a counting rule that decides who wins before anyone votes.

In plain language

This week is about how votes turn into power. A political party (an organized group that competes under one label to win office) asks for your vote, and an electoral system (the rules that turn votes into seats) decides what your vote does. You will meet four families of rules, from "the most votes wins" to "seats should match votes", and you will see the same ballots produce different winners under different rules. Then you will read a real election, the 2024 UK general election, for what it shows and what it does not settle. No one here will tell you which rule is fairest; you will learn to argue it well.

Already covered: Week 7 built parliamentary governments; Week 10 studied the U.S. case.
This week: parties, four families of electoral rules, D'Hondt, and Duverger's law.
How they connect: the electoral rule shapes whether one party wins a majority.
Where we're going next: Week 12, Public Opinion, Political Behavior & the Media.

Focus

How do votes become seats?

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

[ ] tell a plurality from a majority
[ ] name an electoral family by how a winner is decided
[ ] allocate seats with the D'Hondt method
[ ] read the 2024 UK result without swapping vote and seat shares

To-do

Plan your week

Read Chapter 11 (50 minutes), then the lecture and slides.
Do the lecture tutorial (60–90 minutes) and practice set (20 minutes).
Do the Political Analysis Workshop (90 minutes), the discussion, and the assignment.
Take the quiz.

This week's checkpoint: share eight seats among four parties by the D'Hondt method and compare the result with plurality rules.

You've got this

Take it in order, and ask your instructor early.

Built with The Course Maker · samples.thecoursemaker.com