The second wave of democracy after World Wa II, followed by the third wave in the 1970’s and
the 80’s – including the historic democratic transitions in Eastern Europe after the collapse
of the Soviet Empire – led to the expansion of democratic electoral systems around the world.
The design of electoral systems and of the undergoing electoral reforms has become a vital
component of the democratization process. The study of the theory and politics of electoral
reform led to the adoption of new theoretical and methodological approaches in order to cope
with the challenging phenomena.
The main goal of this paper is to interpret the concept of reform, and to unfold some of
theoretical aspects of it in order to identify some of the main components of the concept. With the theoretical approach we can get a better understandic of the reform itself, and we can
demonstrate that electoral reform is a complex process which should not be reduced to a simplistic
model in which a few actors driven by a few motives can fully explain the whole phenomenon.
The theoretical study of the reform can show that some politial events, the established party
system (first and foremost the distribution of power between the various parties), the type of the
actual electoral system (its advantages and disadvantages) as well as some contingents factors
must be taken into consideration in order to have a better understanding of the nature of the
political arena in which reform proposals are promoted and the reform itself takes place.