Losers' Consent: Elections and Democratic Legitimacy

by Shaun Bowler, Todd Donovan, Ola Listhaug

Democratic elections are designed to create unequal for some to win, others have to lose. This book examines the consequences of this inequality for the legitimacy of democratic political institutions and systems. Using survey data collected in democracies around the globe, the authors argue that losing generates ambivalent attitudes towards political authorities. Because the efficacy and ultimately the survival of democratic regimes can be seriously threatened if the losers do not consent to their loss, the central themes of this book focus on how losers respond to their loss and how institutions shape losing. While there tends to be a gap in support for the political system between winners and losers, it is not ubiquitous. The book paints a picture of losers' consent that portrays losers as political actors whose experience and whose incentives to accept defeat are shaped both by who they are as individuals as well as the political environment in which loss is given meaning. Given that the winner-loser gap in legitimacy is a persistent feature of democratic politics, the findings presented in this book contain crucial implications for our understanding of the functioning and stability of democracies.

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Shaun Bowler is Assistant Professor of Political Science at UC-Riverside, USA.

Reviews

[Andrés · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fascinating book that provides well researched, empirical answers to one of the most important questions of electoral democracies. Poli-sci research has been winner-centric from the outset and has subsequently underestimated the importance of, and provided only fragmentary answers to, the question of how losers affect the legitimacy of electoral processes and what variables affect losers' consent towards electoral results.

Elections work only if they are legitimate, and losers play one of the most importante roles in asserting that legitimacy. In new as well as old democracies, when losers acquiesce, elections are deemed fair, while if they contest the results, elections can lose one of their primary functions: creating legitimate rule and the peaceful transfer of power.

The authors' collaborative effort reveals consistent patterns in the variables that make losers' consent and discontent most probable, drawing from studies from across the world and from democracies --both established and new.