Elections as instruments of democracy : majoritarian and proportional visions / G. Bingham Powell.

Elections as instruments of democracy -- Constitutional designs as visions of majoritarian or proportional democracy -- Accountability: conditions for citizen control -- Conditions for mandates: identifiability and majority -- A vision of dispersed political power: authorized representation in policy making -- Testing the vision: responsiveness in selecting governments and policymakers -- Citizen preferences and party positions -- The majoritarian policy vision: decisive elections, governments, and the median citizen -- The proportional influencevision: representing the median citizen through a multistage process -- Overview of the elections as instruments of democracy.