Response to Elaine B. Sharp's review ofLocal Elections and the Politics of Small-Scale Democracy

Extract

Rather than a rebuttal, I offer a confession. Mostly this is because Elaine B. Sharp's assessment is both fair and precise. As she notes, there is a big gulf between our book's rather grandiose theory of electoral politics and its subsequent empirical tests. After making some sweeping hypotheses about the role of size, scope, and bias as the primary determinants of electoral politics across all types of democracies, our empirical analysis tested only a limited range of values and cases. While my colleagues and I hope that our theoretical framework will prove useful for future comparative electoral studies, our book does not provide a definitive test.