SEMINAR:
  Political Science and International Relations Seminar Series 2019
  - A Tale of Two Continents: How America is Looking to Australia on Electoral Reform
		
Tue, 10 Sep 2019 13:00 - UWA Social Sciences Building, room 2.63
		
Professor Benjamin Reilly
Electoral reform is a hot issue in the United States, particularly since
the election of President Donald Trump. This presentation will examine
how US reformers are seeking to introduce distinctively Australian
institutions such as compulsory voting, preferential ballots and
independent electoral boundaries as a means of combating polarization
and improving legitimacy in American politics. It will focus in
particular on the recent adoption of preferential voting in Maine’s 2018
mid-term Congressional elections, the first time ‘our’ system has been
used for national elections in US history.

Ben is a Professor in the School of Social Sciences at UWA, working on
research and engagement in a range of policy and international issues
across the Indo-Pacific. He was formerly Dean of the Sir Walter Murdoch
School at Murdoch University, and prior to that head of the Policy and
Governance Program and Director of the Centre for Democratic
Institutions at the Australian National University (ANU), and has also
worked with the Australian government, the United Nations and other
international organisations, and held visiting appointments at Harvard,
Oxford, and Johns Hopkins universities. As a political scientist, he has
authored or edited seven books and over 100 scholarly papers, and
received financial support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York,
the United States Institute of Peace, the East-West Centre, the National
Endowment for Democracy and the Australian Research Council.


		
For more information:
  Flavia Zimmermann
  flavia.zimmermann@research.uwa.edu.au

Starts       : Tue, 10 Sep 2019 13:00
Ends         : Tue, 10 Sep 2019 14:00
		
Last Updated : Fri, 13 Sep 2019 09:22