ABSTRACT
CAMPAIGNS and elections are among the most important events in the life of a democracy. Campaigns help the citizenry come to a collective decision about who should control the levers of power in the country and elections make the use of those levers legitimate. At some level, these processes are familiar to nearly every American citizen, yet few have a thorough understanding of how they function. This book is an attempt to explain those processes both in terms of the structure and rules governing their operation and in terms of the behavior of the various actors who participate in campaigns and elections.
