Question

How representatives are elected in communist state?

Answer 1

Elections in communist party states have traditionally been seen in the West as grotesque parodies of liberal democratic originals. As such, they have been described so as to reveal the bogus nature of their democratic pretensions (see, for instance, Carson, 1956, esp. pp. 85–100; MacClosky and Turner, 1960, pp. 324–32; Fainsod, 1963, pp. 381–2). With the decline of the ‘totalitarian school’ and the advent of a less doctrinaire approach to the study of communist party systems, elections have been given more attention and more complex analysis. For the Soviet Union we now have detailed, largely descriptive accounts of the mechanics of Soviet elections and some analysis of their functions. A considerable body of material deals with the composition of elected representative bodies, and some attempts have been made to use voting as an indicator of political dissent (see for instance Swearer, 1961; Mote, 1965; Churchward, 1966; Clarke, 1967; Gilison, 1968; Jacobs, 1970; Hill, 1972, 1973, 1976a; Friedgut, 1979; Zaslavsky and Brym, 1978, 1983; White, forthcoming). In Eastern Europe, where elections offer a potentially more fruitful field for research, treatment has been piecemeal: only Poland has received anything like detailed coverage (Pelczynski, 1959; Wiatr, 1962; Ptakowski, 1965; Dinka and Skidmore, 1973; Rusinow, 1977; Sakwa and Crouch, 1978. Useful reports and