Local Elections and the Politics of Small-Scale Democracy. By J. Eric Oliver with Shang E. Ha and Zachary Callen. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012. 234p. $75.00 cloth, $29.95 paper.

Extract

In this creative and important book, Eric Oliver and his coauthors offer a comprehensive analysis of a largely overlooked phenomenon, electoral behavior in smaller communities, here defined as jurisdictions with populations under 100,000. In the broadest sense, the central theme of the book is that elections are different in these small jurisdictions from what theories and empirical analyses of national, state, and big-city elections have made familiar. More specifically, they argue that a triumvirate of jurisdictional characteristics—1) population size, 2) scope (i.e., the extent to which institutional arrangements provide government officials with powers on a broad array of matters), and 3) bias (i.e., the extent to which government distributes resources in something other than an evenhanded fashion)—are crucial factors shaping the behavior of voters and candidates and, hence, are the essential character of elections. In separate chapters analyzing who votes, who runs for office, what shapes incumbent advantage, and what shapes voter choice, the authors explore hypotheses developed in their overview chapter about how size, scope, and bias impact each of these aspects of local elections.