Ballot-Box Blues

“Elections are a key element of any political system that claims to be democratic,” writes University of Saskatchewan professor John Courtney early on in Elections. To the politically uninitiated, that might not look like an exclusive endorsement of systems that include elected officials, but to anyone involved in political debates, no such statement can be accepted unquestioningly as a key democratic standard. Is Courtney saying that systems in which citizens make direct decisions through referendums or town hall meetings—without electing representatives—are undemocratic? Probably not. But as is often the case in political debate, Elections contains statements that seem reasonable and even obvious, until you consider the alternatives.

A consideration of the alternatives is essential to Courtney’s task, since Elections is one of nine books on specific aspects of Canada’s political system produced in association with the Centre for Canadian...