William Henderson and B. McGraw talk about democracy reform. How does separation of powers work in different systems? What forms of electoral systems exist? What are proportional and ranked choice voting? This is Part 3 of 3 episodes.
We discuss the separation of powers, with parliamentary systems combining the executive and legislature, while presidential systems separate the two functions. Then we talk about the difference between head of state and head of government, and whether a country should separate the two. After this, we talk about the level of democracy countries have, and what structural forces correlate with stronger democracy.
Following this, we go over electoral systems, in terms of how representatives are allocated. These include majoritarian systems, where the plurality or majority party gains full control of a given district, and proportional systems, where representatives in a district are selected in proportion to their party’s share of the vote. After this, we talk about voting systems. These include first past the post, ranked choice, approval voting, score voting, and STAR voting. Then we discuss why the electoral college exists, and the role the judiciary plays in democracies.
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1:04 Separation of powers
1:57 Outcomes of Presidential vs Parliamentary systems
3:50 separation of head of state and head of government
11:55 level of democracy
17:24 electoral systems
20:18 Proportional vs Majoritarian
23:37 voting systems (Ranked Choice) (approval voting) (Score Voting)
35:30 electoral college
40:42 judicial system