Politics A Unified Introduction to How Democracy Works

1. Introduction: politics and policy – what do we want to explain and how? 

PART 1 – PROCESSES: elections alternate party-based governments with different preferences and priorities, thus bringing public policies into line with centrist majority preferences in the long run

2. Why politics? Making policies to provide public goods

3. How popular preferences develop

4. Measuring electoral preferences

5. Electors’ policy thinking: from a joined-up left-right perspective to issue-by-issue reactions

6. Party policy thinking: framing policy targets and estimating majority preferences from elections

7. Matching public policy to popular preferences

8. Opening up to populists: Using alternation theory to analyse US Policy Representation 1952-2025

PART 2 – RULES: rules designate – but may misrepresent – majority preferences, thus biasing policy outcomes

9. Majority choice of policies: voting paradoxes and attempted solutions

10. General elections and election systems: finalizing the collective choice of policies

PART 3 – PROTAGONISTS: parties and governments shape popular preferences and reflect them in public policies

11. Citizens, parties and governments: interactive preference formation

12. Political parties: ideological policy carriers

13. Governments: prime participants in policymaking

14. Ministries: separating out policy areas

PART 4 – STATES: collective action without binding rules

15. Globalization and world democracy

16. Challenges to a rule-based international order

PART 5 – EXPLANATION: explaining politics by specifying its processes more exactly so as to predict outcomes

17. Generating ‘Big Data’: sources, procedures, error checks

18. Simplifying ‘Big Data’: dimensions, majorities and the (missing?) middle

19. Managing ‘Big Data’: theoretical explanation and statistical analysis

20. Developing political science by explaining democracy

Biography

Ian Budge is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Government, University of Essex, UK, and well known internationally as the author of numerous research articles and textbooks on democratic politics.

Michael D. McDonald is Emeritus Professor of Political Science at Binghamton University, USA, a former Director of the Center on Democratic Performance, and a gold medallist for his work in that area.

“Ian Budge and Michael McDonald demonstrate not only how democratic systems work under changing conditions but also how to empirically investigate the relationship between citizens’ preferences and policy performances of governments using ‘predictive theorizing’. The exceptional strength of this book is the accessible text and application of testing theories. This 2^nd edition provides up-to-date information on democracies in a changing world. I hold this introduction to ‘Politics’ as unique and is a must-read for political scientists and beyond.”
Hans Keman, Emeritus Professor of Comparative Political Science, Vrije Universteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands

“This is a really comprehensive and thorough introduction to political science. It pioneers ‘predictive theory’ that is theory based on realistic assumptions about political actors, institutions and processes and which is validated by extensive testing for its accuracy. The focus is on providing general explanations of the causes and consequences of political action across countries and in institutions making it is essential reading for introductory students of politics.”
Paul Whiteley, Emeritus Professor of Government, University of Essex, UK

“I really like this book. Driven by predictive political theory that builds on and extends the large body of research on modern representative democracies, it helps explain the politics and policy that we actually observe. Politics, second edition not only makes that real world more understandable, but it does so in an engaging and compelling way. I heartily recommend it.”
Christopher Wlezien, Hogg Professor of Government, University of Texas at Austin, USA