Week 11 — Readings & Resources

Your primary reading is Chapter 11 (in this module). Everything below is the optional, go-deeper layer — pick what helps, skip the rest.

How to use this page

This page has 11 items (5 readings and 6 videos). Allow 52–69 minutes for everything. Each group points back to the matching chapter section and class-session segment, so use the full menu when you want more depth, or take the quick path below.

Every video here has captions: turn them on with the CC button in the player. The chapter covers the same ideas in text.

Pick-one quick path (16–20 min total)

• What's first past the post? Nerds on Politics — TVO Today
• Advantages and disadvantages of FPTP system — ACE Electoral Knowledge Network
• Duverger's Law: Why First-Past-the-Post Creates Two-Party Systems — ludwig explains

① What do parties do?

Chapter 11, Section “Meet the parties: three jobs and the party system” · Session 1, Segment 2, “Parties and party systems” · Remember: parties gather interests into a program, get people to take part, and give voters a label to reward or punish.

• Political Parties: Crash Course Government and Politics #40 — CrashCourse — a fast, captioned tour of why parties exist and the jobs they do in one country's politics; as you watch, sort each job it names under aggregation, mobilization, or accountability. Use it while working through the Week-11 module overview. (video, 9 min) (captions: creator)
• Political parties — Parliamentary Education Office — a parliament's own education office explains what a party is, what members do inside one, and how parties work together in a chamber; read the sections on what a party is and on coalitions, and skip the seat tallies. This builds on Week 10's work with American government and the U.S. case. (reading, 4–6 min)

② How is a winner decided?

Chapter 11, Section “Sort the four electoral-system families” · Session 1, Segment 3, “Four families of rules” · Remember: name the family by asking how a winner is decided: most votes, more than half, seats matching votes, or a mix of the two.

• What's first past the post? Nerds on Politics — TVO Today — a short explainer of the plurality rule and where its name comes from; it leans on the critics' complaints, so pair it with the defenders' case in the chapter before you decide anything. (video, 4 min) (captions: creator)
• Advantages and disadvantages of FPTP system — ACE Electoral Knowledge Network — an electoral-design reference that lists the strongest case for first-past-the-post and then its costs, side by side; read both lists and pick the one point from each side you find hardest to answer. (reading, 8–12 min)
• Advantages and disadvantages of Two-Round System (TRS) — ACE Electoral Knowledge Network — the same reference on the second-round family, with its case (a fresh choice in the runoff) and its costs (a second election to run and to turn out for); read it as the majority-runoff section of the chapter in more depth. (reading, 5–8 min)
• Closed Party List System Explained — Dominic Fosbraey — a brief walk through how a party's ranked list fills the seats it wins under proportional representation; notice who decides the order on the list. (video, 4 min) (captions: automatic)
• MMP (Mixed Member Proportional) — Electoral Commission NZ — an election authority's two-minute explainer of the two votes in a mixed-member proportional ballot; afterward, say in one sentence what the list vote decides. (video, 2 min) (captions: creator)

③ How are seats shared out?

Chapter 11, Section “Work the D'Hondt table” · Session 2, Segment 5, “The D'Hondt table” · Remember: generate every party's quotients first, then rank the whole pool and fill the seats from the top.

• How does the D’Hondt formula work? — Senedd — a legislature's own two-minute animation of the divide-and-rank rule; pause after each round and predict which party wins the next seat. (video, 2 min) (captions: automatic)
• Closed Lists & D’Hondt: How are seats allocated? — Senedd Research — a legislature's research service works a six-seat example round by round, dividing each party's votes by the seats it has already won plus one; check its table the way you checked the chapter's. (reading, 5–8 min)

④ Why do plurality rules tend toward two parties?

Chapter 11, Section “Explain Duverger's law: a tendency, not a guarantee” · Session 2, Segment 6, “Duverger's law” · Remember: the count squeezes scattered parties and voters see it coming, which is a tendency with named exceptions, not a guarantee.

• Duverger's Law: Why First-Past-the-Post Creates Two-Party Systems — ludwig explains — a short explainer of the mechanical and psychological effects; note the regional exceptions it mentions and match them to the chapter's named exceptions. This course dates the book to 1951, with the English translation in 1954. (video, 4 min) (captions: automatic)

Optional one-stop reference (free online reference)

• Electoral System Design Database — International IDEA — a comparative database of the electoral systems countries use; choose one country, read which family its national legislature belongs to, and stop there. (reading, 5–10 min)

Heads-up (links rot): these point to outside sites that occasionally move or rename pages. If a link ever fails, tell your instructor and use the reference above in the meantime.

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