Category: Politics

Electoral systems are not neutral plumbing. Each one systematically advantages certain kinds of party and certain kinds of politics, and the trade-offs are well understood.

Polls are far better at some jobs than others. Knowing which is which turns them from a source of confusion into a genuinely useful instrument.

From a line in a manifesto to an Act on the statute book, the legislative process has more stages, and more places to die, than most summaries suggest.

Coalitions are the normal form of government across much of the democratic world. The research on how they are built and why they collapse is unusually consistent.