The United States trails behind ninety-one countries for women's representation in its national legislature . Ranking behind most industrialized democracies, women fill a mere eighteen percent of U.S. Congressional seats. Many factors contribute to the level of descriptive representation (representation that reflects the electorate) present in a state's government. Two striking influences on representation are structural and institutional: the electoral system in place and the party rules employed. 

On January 26, Czech citizens had the chance to directly elect their president for the first time since the breakup of Czechoslovakia in 1993. They used a national popular vote with a majority runoff to do it.

As Tuesday's Israeli elections show, proportional representation systems guarantee that voters can change their government when they are unsatisfied with its performance. 

Do not be fooled by Vladimir Putin's claims that the reintroduction of single-member, winner-take-all seats to the Russian Duma will be a step towards a fairer and freer democracy in Russia. It is instead a step towards the continuation of one-party rule.

Understanding the Israeli electoral process is not easy when coming from an American perspective, because Israeli elections are nothing like American elections. The election that will be held in Israel on January 22 will be different from the 2012 elections in the U.S. in almost every conceivable sense.

Women world leaders enhanced their numbers this month, as Park Geun-Hye of South Korea joined the current 13 female presidents and premiers on Wednesday, Dec. 19. Park was elected directly with 51.66 percent of the vote, while her party, the New Frontier Party (NFP), took 152 of the 299 seats in the National Assembly.

Think the U.S. House elections had a structural bias in favor of one party? The partisan bias in Ukraine's parliamentary elections, held just a week before the American elections, was even worse. 

Proportional representation may be coming to the French legislature--or at least 10% of it.

As the results of Russia's October 14 local elections show, the rumors of United Russia's death have been greatly exaggerated. But did Vladimir Putin's party manipulate Russia's electoral laws to keep power?

Lithuania's conservative government is likely to be toppled following a defeat in the October 14 national elections. Lithuania uses a combination of open list proportional representation and a winner-take-all runoff system based on geographic constituencies to elect its legislature.