Assymetric Voting
Megan has a post explaining why NYC will always get Republican mayors.
The gist is that the Democrats, having such a majority in NYC, will always nominate a candidate too liberal to win the general election. Instead a liberal Republican will get the job. This would be interesting to test. If it is true, then Democracy is an effective check on extremist groups, but not against moderate statists.
Maybe this book will have something to say about it.
