BOOK REVIEW - MIHAELA IVĂNESCU, ALEGERI ȘI COMPORTAMENTE ELECTORALE ÎN ROMÂNIA. DE LA LOCAL LA NAȚIONAL, BUCUREȘTI: EDITURA UNIVERSITARĂ, 2015, 383 PP., ISBN: 978-606-28-0377-3.
BOOK REVIEW - MIHAELA IVĂNESCU, ALEGERI ȘI COMPORTAMENTE ELECTORALE ÎN ROMÂNIA. DE LA LOCAL LA NAȚIONAL, BUCUREȘTI: EDITURA UNIVERSITARĂ, 2015, 383 PP., ISBN: 978-606-28-0377-3.

Summary/Abstract: On the eve of a new electoral cycle, Mihaela Ivănescu’s book, Alegeri și comportamente electorale în România. De la local la național (Eng. trans.: Elections and Electoral Behaviors in Romania. From the Local to the National Level) provides a much needed overview of how and why citizens vote a certain way. Understanding the complexities of the electoral behavior is one of those issues that falls not only under the purview of academic research avenues, but also of an entire cottage industry of (political) actors and party operatives whose success is dependent more or less on figuring exactly how to persuade potential voters to their side. If we go by Anthony Downs’ observation – father of the rational choice theory – “political parties propose policies in the hope of winning elections”, they do not seek “to win elections in order to propose certain policies” . Yet the very essence of the electoral process hinges on the candidates’ ability to (re)ingratiate themselves with their constituents from one electoral cycle to another. After all, even though each party has its own partisans, the history of elections shows us that they rarely are enough to win elections. Alegeri și comportamente electorale în România is not a book about the parties’ role in shaping electoral behaviors, about political ideologies or campaigns, not even about political leaders – though the role played by these figures is not entirely omitted either. Instead, it is a book that draws upon the patterns of exception and irregularities in the voters’ decision-making process in order to highlight the fact that electoral behavior cannot be reduced to a handful of variables or theoretical prescriptions. In light of this, the author makes apparent that the most accessible entry point into the chosen subject of study is to examine the mechanics behind the split vote.

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