Elections Before Democracy: The History of Elections in Europe and Latin America.

The last ten years have witnessed an increasing concern among historians with a topic that had attracted only marginal attention in the previous decades, elections and electoral practices 'before democracy'. A renewed interest in political history, together with a profound revision of its more traditional tenets, have led to the reformulation of some of the basic questions posed by the study of past polities and politics. Thus, faced with the classic problem of the legitimacy of political power in societies that entered the era of secular government and liberal representation, scholars are looking at elections and electoral practices in a new light, confronting the conventional views that regarded them strictly in instrumental or manipulative …