The One-Party South
This chapter develops a theory of electoral politics and representation in the one-party South, conceptualized as an exclusionary one-party enclave. It begins with a stylized description of the logic of electoral democracy and how it induces government to represent its citizens. Here, democracy is defined as a system for collective decision making that treats all participants as political equals. Next, the chapter considers the role of political parties, especially partisan competition, in democratic theory and practice. Having developed this framework with respect to democratic regimes, this chapter then proposes a modified version of it to describe electoral politics in the one-party South. It focuses on three important factors distinguishing the South from democratic regimes: its political exclusion of many citizens, its lack of partisan competition, and its status as a subnational enclave embedded in a national democratic regime. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the empirical implications of this theoretical framework and what we can learn through examination of the one-party South.