His first book, Democracy Without Competition in Japan: Opposition Failure in a One-Party Dominant State (2006 at Cambridge University Press) offers an explanation for opposition party failure in Japan, a democracy dominated by one party since 1955. The book offers analysis of not only Japanese opposition failure, but party competition failure in other countries as well. For more information on Democracy Without Competition in Japan and additional information (including statistics) cut from the manuscript (for space reasons), click here.
Professor Scheiner’s second book, Electoral Systems and Political Context: How the Effects of Rules Vary across New and Established Democracies (co-authored with Robert Moser, 2012 at Cambridge University Press), attempts to understand when electoral rules will – and will not – have the effects typically expected of them. The book focuses on “mixed-member” electoral systems that provide voters two ballots in elections to a single house of the legislature: one vote for a party in proportional representation (PR) and one for a candidate in a single-member district (SMD). The book illustrates how electoral rules often have very different effects in new democracies than they do in more consolidated systems. Most notably, plurality SMD rules tend to constrain the number of parties in established democracies, but in new democracies far more contestants compete for and receive electoral support. The book also demonstrates that, even in established democracies, plurality rules do not undermine the effect of social diversity on the party system – diversity shapes the number of parties in similar ways under both PR and SMD rules. Finally, the book shows that, compared to closed-list PR, plurality rules restrict the election of women to national legislative office – but not in postcommunist states, where party proliferation promotes the chances of women winning election under SMD rules.