What exactly is Populism?

What exactly is Populism?

by RachelNo Comments

It seems everyone is talking about populism these days. On one hand, there’s now a plethora of experts who want to opine on the populist moment and it’s connection with the far-right. On the other, a whole bunch of other people wondering why political science hasn’t been studying the issue.

But here’s the thing. There’s been plenty of work done on the rise of populist movements in comparative politics (see the links below) and populist movements can rise from the left as well as the right. In fact, in the US, populist movements often have had a leftist tinge (hello Governor Huey P.) and thinking of it as only a far-right phenomena completely ignores Latin America.  Continue reading →

America the Purple

America the Purple

by RachelNo Comments

As you may have noticed, I often use this blog as a placeholder to keep track of information that may come in useful in teaching. Along with the questions I highlighted in my last post, one of the other big confusions I find is understanding the voting system we have.

TV to the rescue! Adam Ruins Everything covers the Electoral College and Gerrymandering. And to top it off- SOURCES.

Picture for the post is a modified version from Howard, Chris. What America Looks Like. 2012. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License
Getting Out the Vote

Getting Out the Vote

by RachelNo Comments

During this election season, I’ve realized how little practical knowledge of voting first time and young voters have. So I decided to look around the web and see what resources I could find and came across Campus Vote, which provides information on dates, registering, and requirements to vote for each state. Headcount has a great list of sites that provide information on who’s running, their platforms and other info for voters here, and here’s a general overview of voting in federal elections from the government itself.

Other things that have popped up are questions about voter fraud and intimidation. The Washington Post has an good overview of what is and isn’t vote rigging in the article: “Is this vote rigging?”.

Finally, since I wasn’t able to find a good overview, here are questions I’ve been asked by first time voters that aren’t covered above:  Continue reading →

Explaining voting systems

Explaining voting systems

by Rachel Comment Closed
(Originally posted on my old blog on Nov. 27, 2013; image by Rama, via Wikimedia Commons)
Voting systems are hard to introduce to students, especially some of the more creative ones. Fortunately, the internet has some really helpful resources to help explain different voting systems and the effect they have on parliaments. One of the best resources I’ve found comes from New Zealand. As part of their 2011 referendum on the electoral system, they put out several short and sweet videos that explained five different types of voting systems. You can find them all here.
Also, as a bonus, here’s a clip from the BBC that explains the D’Hondt system of allocating seats after the election. Because I know understanding this was keeping you up at night.
What is proportional representation?

What is proportional representation?

by Rachel Comment Closed

(Originally posted on my old blog on Nov 27, 2013)

Here’s a quick video starting John Cleese where he tries to sell UK voters on switching to a proportional representation system (spoiler alert: he fails). It covers the basics of how a system would work. While it’s rather old school, it still provides a very basic introduction to what this whole PR thing is about.

http://youtu.be/NSUKMa1cYHk