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Electoral SystemsThe Electoral Systems topic area deals with issues relating to the type of representation and the nature of the democracy that electoral systems provide. The choice of electoral system is fundamental to how politics is structured. Once chosen, the electoral system tends to remain fairly constant; thus, the choice is very important. For more general information on this topic area, please select Overview. Those interested in electoral system design, however, may want to jump to Design Principles. For examples of how electoral systems were chosen (and changed), in fact, one should examine The Process of Choice. Finally, for a discussion on the component parts of electoral systems, including frequency of elections, parliamentary size, methods of voting and translation of votes into seats, one should review the materials found in Design Components. For the purposes of this project, electoral systems are categorised into three broad families: majority-plurality systems, semi-proportional systems and proportional representation systems. Within these families are 10 sub-families. To read about a particular type of electoral system, select one of the three links below. Please use the feedback buttons to forward suggestions, commentary and additional information that will enrich the topic area. Enjoy! Electoral SystemsThe Electoral Systems topic area deals with issues relating to the type of representation and the nature of the democracy that electoral systems provide. The choice of electoral system is fundamental to how politics is structured. Once chosen, the electoral system tends to remain fairly constant; thus, the choice is very important. For more general information on this topic area, please select Overview. Those interested in electoral system design, however, may want to jump to Design Principles. For examples of how electoral systems were chosen (and changed), in fact, one should examine The Process of Choice. Finally, for a discussion on the component parts of electoral systems, including frequency of elections, parliamentary size, methods of voting and translation of votes into seats, one should review the materials found in Design Components. For the purposes of this project, electoral systems are categorised into three broad families: majority-plurality systems, semi-proportional systems and proportional representation systems. Within these families are 10 sub-families. To read about a particular type of electoral system, select one of the three links below. Please use the feedback buttons to forward suggestions, commentary and additional information that will enrich the topic area. Enjoy! OverviewThe choice of electoral systems is one of the most important institutional decisions for any democracy, yet rarely is an electoral system consciously and deliberately selected. Often the choice is accidental, the result of an unusual combination of circumstances, of a passing trend, or of a quirk of history. The impact of colonialism and the effects of influential neighbours are often persuasive in choice of electoral systems. Yet in almost all cases the choice of a particular electoral system has a profound effect on the future political life of the country concerned. In most cases, electoral systems, once chosen, remain fairly constant as political interests congeal around and respond to the incentives presented by them. If it is rare that electoral systems are deliberately chosen, it is rarer still that they are carefully designed for the particular historical and social conditions of a country. Any new democracy must choose (or inherit) an electoral system to elect its parliament, but such decisions are often affected by one of the two following circumstances:
In either scenario, the choices that are made may not be the best ones for the long-term political health of the country concerned, and at times they can have disastrous consequences for a country's democratic prospects. The background to a choice of electoral system can thus be as important as the choice itself. One should not have the illusion that such decisions are made in a political vacuum. In fact, the consideration of political advantage is almost always a factor in the choice of electoral systems - sometimes it is the only consideration. At the same time, the choices of available electoral systems are often, in reality, relatively few. It is equally the case, however, that calculations of short-term political interest can often obscure the longer-term consequences of a particular electoral system and the interests of the wider political system. Consequently, while recognising the practical constraints, we attempt to approach the issue of electoral system choices in as broad and comprehensive manner as possible. The electoral system element of this publication is aimed in particular at political negotiators and constitutional designers in new, fledgling, and transitional democracies. However, as the crafting of political institutions is a critical task not only for new democracies but also for those established democracies seeking to adapt their systems to better reflect new political realities, the text also seeks to address the likely concerns of those persons in both emerging and established democracies who may be designing electoral systems. Given this target audience, we have necessarily had to simplify much of the academic literature on the subject, while at the same time address some of the more complex issues inherent in the area. If we appear to be sometimes overly simplistic and at other times unduly complex, the explanation will usually lie in our attempt to balance these two objectives of clarity and comprehensiveness. While the context in which emerging and established democracies make constitutional choices varies enormously, the long-term purposes of most democracies are usually the same: to adopt institutions which are strong enough to promote stable democracy but flexible enough to react to changing circumstances. Both emerging and established democracies have much to learn from the experiences of the other. Institutional design is an evolving process, and we seek to distil the lessons learnt from the many actual examples of institutional design around the world. Electoral Systems and Constitutions Much constitutional design has occurred relatively recently: the world-wide movement towards democratic governance in the 1980s and 1990s stimulated a new urgency in the search for enduring models of appropriate representative government, along with a fresh evaluation of electoral systems. This process has been encouraged by the widespread realisation that the choice of political institutions can have a significant impact upon the wider political system - for example, it is increasingly being recognized that an electoral system can help to 'engineer' cooperation and accommodation in a divided society. Electoral system design is now accepted as being of crucial importance to wider issues of governance, and as probably the most influential of all political institutions. Through providing this detailed analysis of choices and consequences, and showing how electoral systems have worked throughout the democratic world, we hope to achieve two things:
At the most basic level, electoral systems translate the votes cast in a general election into seats won by parties and candidates. The key variables are 1. the electoral formula used (i.e., whether the system is majoritarian or proportional, and what mathematical formula is used to calculate the seat allocation) and 2. the district magnitude, not how many voters live in a district, but rather how many members of parliament that district elects. Electoral system design relates strongly to the other more administrative aspects of elections dealt with on this web site such as the distribution of voting places (see Voting Operations), the nomination of candidates (see Parties and Candidates), the registration of voters (see Voter Registration), who runs the elections and so on - see Electoral Management. These issues are of critical importance, and the possible advantages of any given electoral system choice will be undermined unless due attention is paid to them. Electoral system design also affects other areas of electoral laws: the choice of electoral system has an influence on the way in which district boundaries are drawn (see Boundary Delimitation), the design of ballot papers (see Voting Operations), how votes are counted (see Vote Counting), along with numerous other aspects of the electoral process. Summary of Electoral System Types There are hundreds of electoral systems currently in use and many more permutations on each form, but for the sake of simplicity we have categorised electoral systems into three broad families:
Within these three we have ten 'sub-families':
Every one of the 212 parliamentary electoral systems listed in The Global Distribution of Electoral Systems can be categorised under one of these ten headings, and this family tree, though rooted in long-established conventions, is the first to take account of all the electoral systems used for parliamentary elections in the world today, regardless of wider questions of democracy and legitimacy. We hope it offers a clear and concise guide to the choice among them. The most common way to look at electoral systems is to group them by how closely they translate national votes won into parliamentary seats won; that is, how proportional they are. To do this, one needs to look at both the vote-seat relationship and the level of wasted votes. For example, South Africa used a classically proportional electoral system for its first democratic elections of 1994, and with 62.65% of the popular vote the African National Congress (ANC) won 63% of the national seats (see South Africa: Election Systems and Conflict Management). The electoral system was highly proportional, and the number of wasted votes (i.e., those which were cast for parties which did not win seats in the Assembly) was only 0.8% of the total. In direct contrast the year before, in the neighbouring nation of Lesotho, a classically majoritarian First Past the Post (FPTP) electoral system had resulted in the Basotho Congress Party winning every seat in the 65-member parliament with 75% of the popular vote; there was no parliamentary opposition at all, and the 25% of electors who voted for other parties were completely unrepresented. This result was mirrored in Djibouti's Block Vote election of 1992 when all 65 parliamentary seats were won by the Rassemblement Populaire pour le Progres with 75% of the vote. However, under some circumstances, non-proportional electoral systems (such as FPTP) can accidentally give rise to relatively proportional overall results. This was the case in a third Southern African country, Malawi, in 1994. In that election the leading party, the United Democratic Front won 48% of the seats with 46% of the votes, the Malawian Congress Party won 32% of the seats with 34% of the votes, and the Alliance for Democracy won 20% of the seats with 19% of the votes. The overall level of proportionality was high, but the clue to the fact that this was not inherently a proportional system, and so cannot be categorized as such, was that the wasted votes still amounted to almost one-quarter of all votes cast. For more information see Electoral Systems and Constitution. OverviewThe choice of electoral systems is one of the most important institutional decisions for any democracy, yet rarely is an electoral system consciously and deliberately selected. Often the choice is accidental, the result of an unusual combination of circumstances, of a passing trend, or of a quirk of history. The impact of colonialism and the effects of influential neighbours are often persuasive in choice of electoral systems. Yet in almost all cases the choice of a particular electoral system has a profound effect on the future political life of the country concerned. In most cases, electoral systems, once chosen, remain fairly constant as political interests congeal around and respond to the incentives presented by them. If it is rare that electoral systems are deliberately chosen, it is rarer still that they are carefully designed for the particular historical and social conditions of a country. Any new democracy must choose (or inherit) an electoral system to elect its parliament, but such decisions are often affected by one of the two following circumstances:
In either scenario, the choices that are made may not be the best ones for the long-term political health of the country concerned, and at times they can have disastrous consequences for a country's democratic prospects. The background to a choice of electoral system can thus be as important as the choice itself. One should not have the illusion that such decisions are made in a political vacuum. In fact, the consideration of political advantage is almost always a factor in the choice of electoral systems - sometimes it is the only consideration. At the same time, the choices of available electoral systems are often, in reality, relatively few. It is equally the case, however, that calculations of short-term political interest can often obscure the longer-term consequences of a particular electoral system and the interests of the wider political system. Consequently, while recognising the practical constraints, we attempt to approach the issue of electoral system choices in as broad and comprehensive manner as possible. The electoral system element of this publication is aimed in particular at political negotiators and constitutional designers in new, fledgling, and transitional democracies. However, as the crafting of political institutions is a critical task not only for new democracies but also for those established democracies seeking to adapt their systems to better reflect new political realities, the text also seeks to address the likely concerns of those persons in both emerging and established democracies who may be designing electoral systems. Given this target audience, we have necessarily had to simplify much of the academic literature on the subject, while at the same time address some of the more complex issues inherent in the area. If we appear to be sometimes overly simplistic and at other times unduly complex, the explanation will usually lie in our attempt to balance these two objectives of clarity and comprehensiveness. While the context in which emerging and established democracies make constitutional choices varies enormously, the long-term purposes of most democracies are usually the same: to adopt institutions which are strong enough to promote stable democracy but flexible enough to react to changing circumstances. Both emerging and established democracies have much to learn from the experiences of the other. Institutional design is an evolving process, and we seek to distil the lessons learnt from the many actual examples of institutional design around the world. Electoral Systems and Constitutions Much constitutional design has occurred relatively recently: the world-wide movement towards democratic governance in the 1980s and 1990s stimulated a new urgency in the search for enduring models of appropriate representative government, along with a fresh evaluation of electoral systems. This process has been encouraged by the widespread realisation that the choice of political institutions can have a significant impact upon the wider political system - for example, it is increasingly being recognized that an electoral system can help to 'engineer' cooperation and accommodation in a divided society. Electoral system design is now accepted as being of crucial importance to wider issues of governance, and as probably the most influential of all political institutions. Through providing this detailed analysis of choices and consequences, and showing how electoral systems have worked throughout the democratic world, we hope to achieve two things:
At the most basic level, electoral systems translate the votes cast in a general election into seats won by parties and candidates. The key variables are 1. the electoral formula used (i.e., whether the system is majoritarian or proportional, and what mathematical formula is used to calculate the seat allocation) and 2. the district magnitude, not how many voters live in a district, but rather how many members of parliament that district elects. Electoral system design relates strongly to the other more administrative aspects of elections dealt with on this web site such as the distribution of voting places (see Voting Operations), the nomination of candidates (see Parties and Candidates), the registration of voters (see Voter Registration), who runs the elections and so on - see Electoral Management. These issues are of critical importance, and the possible advantages of any given electoral system choice will be undermined unless due attention is paid to them. Electoral system design also affects other areas of electoral laws: the choice of electoral system has an influence on the way in which district boundaries are drawn (see Boundary Delimitation), the design of ballot papers (see Voting Operations), how votes are counted (see Vote Counting), along with numerous other aspects of the electoral process. Summary of Electoral System Types There are hundreds of electoral systems currently in use and many more permutations on each form, but for the sake of simplicity we have categorised electoral systems into three broad families:
Within these three we have ten 'sub-families':
Every one of the 212 parliamentary electoral systems listed in The Global Distribution of Electoral Systems can be categorised under one of these ten headings, and this family tree, though rooted in long-established conventions, is the first to take account of all the electoral systems used for parliamentary elections in the world today, regardless of wider questions of democracy and legitimacy. We hope it offers a clear and concise guide to the choice among them. The most common way to look at electoral systems is to group them by how closely they translate national votes won into parliamentary seats won; that is, how proportional they are. To do this, one needs to look at both the vote-seat relationship and the level of wasted votes. For example, South Africa used a classically proportional electoral system for its first democratic elections of 1994, and with 62.65% of the popular vote the African National Congress (ANC) won 63% of the national seats (see South Africa: Election Systems and Conflict Management). The electoral system was highly proportional, and the number of wasted votes (i.e., those which were cast for parties which did not win seats in the Assembly) was only 0.8% of the total. In direct contrast the year before, in the neighbouring nation of Lesotho, a classically majoritarian First Past the Post (FPTP) electoral system had resulted in the Basotho Congress Party winning every seat in the 65-member parliament with 75% of the popular vote; there was no parliamentary opposition at all, and the 25% of electors who voted for other parties were completely unrepresented. This result was mirrored in Djibouti's Block Vote election of 1992 when all 65 parliamentary seats were won by the Rassemblement Populaire pour le Progres with 75% of the vote. However, under some circumstances, non-proportional electoral systems (such as FPTP) can accidentally give rise to relatively proportional overall results. This was the case in a third Southern African country, Malawi, in 1994. In that election the leading party, the United Democratic Front won 48% of the seats with 46% of the votes, the Malawian Congress Party won 32% of the seats with 34% of the votes, and the Alliance for Democracy won 20% of the seats with 19% of the votes. The overall level of proportionality was high, but the clue to the fact that this was not inherently a proportional system, and so cannot be categorized as such, was that the wasted votes still amounted to almost one-quarter of all votes cast. For more information see Electoral Systems and Constitution. Guiding Principles
Electoral system design should engineer a system that encompasses the following characteristics (these principles are elaborated in Design Principles): 1. Ensuring a representative parliament, see Ensuring a Representative Parliament 2. Making elections accessible and meaningful to the average voter, see Making Elections Accessible and Meaningful 3. Providing incentives for conciliation between previously hostile parties, see Providing Incentives for Conciliation 4. Foster the perceived legitimacy of the legislature and government 5. Help facilitate stable and efficient government, see Facilitating Stable and Efficient Government 6. Give rise to a system that holds the government and its representatives accountable to the highest degree possible, see Holding the Government and Representatives Accountable 7. Encourages 'cross-cutting' political parties, see Encouraging Cross-Cutting Political Parties 8. Helps promote a parliamentary opposition, see Promoting a Parliamentary Opposition 9. Is realistic concerning a country's financial and administrative capacity, see Cost Considerations In Practical Advice for Electoral System Designers we elaborate on the following points that apply to electoral system design: 1. Keep it simple, but 2. Don't be afraid to innovate 3. Pay attention to contextual and temporal factors 4. Do not underestimate the intelligence of the electorate 5. Err on the side of inclusion 6. Acknowledge that the process by which an electoral system is chosen can be as important as the final result 7. Try to build legitimacy and acceptance for the system among all key actors 8. Try to maximize voter influence, but 9. Balance that against the need to encourage coherent political parties 10. Note that long-term stability and short-term advantage are not always mutually compatible 11. Don't think of the electoral system as a panacea for all ills, but 12. Conversely, don't underestimate its influence 13. Be mindful of the electorate's willingness to embrace change 14. Avoid being a slave to past systems 15. Assess the likely impact of any new system on societal conflict, and finally 16. Try to imagine unusual or unlikely contingencies. Administrative Considerations
Political institutions shape the rules of the game under which democracy is practised, and it is often argued that the easiest political institution to be manipulated, for good or for bad, is the electoral system. This is true because in translating the votes cast in a general election into seats in the legislature, the choice of electoral system can effectively determine who is elected and which party gains power. Even with exactly the same number of votes for parties, one electoral system might lead to a coalition government while another might allow a single party to assume majority control. The two examples below illustrate how different electoral systems can translate the votes cast into dramatically different results. But a number of other consequences of electoral systems go beyond this primary effect. The type of party system which develops, in particular the number and the relative sizes of political parties in parliament, is heavily influenced by it. So is the internal cohesion and discipline of parties: some systems may encourage factionalism, where different wings of one party are constantly at odds with each other, while another system might encourage parties to speak with one voice and suppress dissent. Electoral systems can also influence the way parties campaign and the way political elites behave, thus helping to determine the broader political climate; they may encourage, or retard, the forging of alliances between parties; and they can provide incentives for parties and groups to be broad-based and accommodating, or to base themselves on narrow appeals to ethnicity or kinship ties. In addition, if an electoral system is not considered 'fair' and does not allow the opposition to feel that they have the chance to win next time around, an electoral system may encourage losers to work outside the system, using non-democratic, confrontationalist and even violent tactics. And finally the choice of electoral system will determine the ease or complexity of the act of voting. This is always important, but becomes particularly so in societies where there are a substantial number of inexperienced or illiterate voters. However, it is important to note that a given electoral system will not necessarily work the same way in different countries. Although there are some common experiences in different regions of the world, the effects of a certain electoral system type depends to a large extent upon the socio-political context in which it is used. Electoral system consequences depend upon factors such as how a society is structured in terms of ideological, religious, ethnic, racial, regional, linguistic, or class divisions; whether the country is an established democracy, a transitional democracy, or a new democracy; whether there is an established party system, whether parties are embryonic and unformed, and how many 'serious' parties there are; and whether a particular party's supporters are geographically concentrated together, or dispersed over a wide area. Electoral System Impact On the Translation of Votes Into Seats Let us take a hypothetical election (of 25,000 votes contested by two political parties) run under two different sets of electoral rules: a plurality-majority First Past The Post system with five single member districts, and a List PR election with one large district.
Key: P-M= Plurality-Majority system (FPTP), PR = Proportional Representation system. In our example, Party A with 43% of the votes wins far fewer votes than Party B (with 57%) but under a Plurality-Majority system they win four out of the five seats available. Conversely, under a proportional system Party B wins more seats (three) against two seats for Party A. This example may appear extreme but similar constituency results occur quite regularly in plurality-majority elections. In our second example the distribution of the votes is changed and there are now five parties contesting the election, but the two hypothetical electoral systems remain the same.
Key: P-M= Plurality-Majority system (FPTP), PR = Proportional Representation system (using the Largest remainder method of seat allocation with a Hare quota). In the second example five parties are competing. Under the PR system, every party wins a single seat despite the fact that Party A wins nearly three times as many votes as Party E. Under a FPTP system the largest Party (A) would have picked up a majority of the five seats with the next two highest polling parties (B and C) winning a single seat each. The choice of electoral system thus has a dramatic effect on the composition of the parliament and, by extension, the government.
Cost Considerations
The choice of electoral system has a wide range of administrative consequences, and is ultimately dependent not only on a nation's logistical capacity to hold elections, but also on the amount of money that the country can spend. Simply choosing the most straightforward and least expensive system may well be a false economy in the long run, since a dysfunctional electoral system can have a negative impact on a nation's entire political system and its democratic stability. The choice of electoral system will affect a wide range of administrative issues set out in the following paragraphs. The Drawing of Electoral Boundaries (see Boundary Delimitation) Any single-member district system requires the time-consuming and expensive process of drawing boundaries for small constituencies defined by population size, cohesiveness, 'community of interest,' and contiguity. Furthermore, this is rarely a one-time task since boundaries are regularly adjusted to reflect population changes. First Past The Post (FPTP), Alternative Vote (AV), and Two-Round System (TRS) systems provide the most administrative headaches on this score. The Block Vote, Single Non-Transferrable vote (SNTV), Parallel, Mixed-Member Proportional (MMP), and Single-Transferrable Vote (STV) systems also require electorates to be demarcated, but are easier to manage because they use fewer and larger multi-member districts. At the other end of the scale, List PR systems are often the cheapest and easiest to administer. This is because they either use one single national constituency requiring no boundaries to be drawn, or they use very large multi-member districts that dovetail with pre-existing state or provincial boundaries. Transitional elections in Sierra Leone in 1996 had to be conducted under a national List PR system. The country's civil war and the consequent displacement of citizens meant that, even had they wanted to, electoral authorities did not have the population data necessary to draw smaller single-member districts. The Registration of Voters (see Overview ) Voter registration is the most complex, controversial, and often least successful part of electoral administration. This was demonstrated by the 1996 Zambian elections, where less than half the voting-age population was registered, despite the efforts of a high-profile registration campaign conducted by a private company. Any system that utilises single-member districts usually requires that all voters must be registered within the boundaries of the district. The natural movement of voters thus requires a continual updating of the electoral roll. This means that Parallel and MMP systems join FPTP, AV, and TRS as the most expensive and administratively time-consuming systems in terms of voter registration. The fewer, multi-member districts of the Block Vote, SNTV and STV make the process a little easier, while large-district List PR systems are the least complicated. The simplicity of regional List PR in this context was a contributing factor in its adoption in Cambodia's UN-sponsored transitional elections in 1993 and in South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994, see South Africa: Election Systems and Conflict Management. It should be emphasised, however, that variations in electoral systems have only a minor impact on the often extremely high cost of voter registration, see Definitions. The Design of Ballot Papers Ballot papers (see Voting Operations) should be as friendly as possible to all voters, to maximize participation and reduce spoilt or 'invalid' votes. This often entails the use of symbols for parties and candidates, photographs, and colours; a number of interesting ballot paper examples are illustrated in this handbook. FPTP and AV ballot papers are often easiest to print and, in most cases, have a relatively small number of names. TRS ballots are similarly easy, but in many cases new ballots have to be printed for a second round of voting, thus effectively doubling the production cost. Similarly, Parallel and MMP systems usually require the printing of at least two ballots, even though they are both for a single election. SNTV, Block Vote, and STV ballots are slightly more complex than FPTP ballots because they will have more candidates, and therefore more symbols and photographs (if these are used). List PR ballot papers can span the continuum of complexity. They can be very simple, as in a closed list system, or quite complex as in a free list system such as Switzerland's, see Switzerland. Voter Education (see Assessing Voter Needs) Clearly, the nature of and need for voter education, (see Voter Education) will vary dramatically from society to society, but when it comes to educating voters on how to fill out their ballots, there are identifiable differences between each system. The principles behind voting under preferential systems such as AV or STV are quite complex if they are being used for the first time, and voter education must address this issue, particularly if there are compulsory numbering requirements, as is the case in Australia, see The Alternative Vote in Australia. The same is true of MMP systems: after over 50 years of using MMP, many Germans are still under the misapprehension that both their votes are equal, when the reality is that the second 'national PR' vote is the overriding determinant of party strength in parliament, see Germany: The Original Mixed Member Proportional System. By contrast, the principles behind categorical, single-vote systems such as FPTP or SNTV are very easy to understand. The remaining six systems in Table Five fall somewhere between these two extremes. The Number and Timing of Elections FPTP, AV, Block Vote, SNTV, List PR, and STV electoral systems all generally require just one election on one day, see Parliamentary Size. However, Parallel and MMP systems essentially mix two (or more) very different electoral systems together, and therefore have logistical implications for the training of election officials and the way in which people vote. Two-Round Systems are perhaps the most costly and difficult to administer, because they often require the whole electoral process to be repeated a week or a fortnight after the first try. The Count FPTP, SNTV, and simple closed-list PR systems are easiest to count, see Vote Counting, as only one vote total figure for each party or candidate is required to work out the results. The Block Vote requires the polling officials to count a number of votes on a single ballot paper. The Parallel and MMP systems nearly always require the counting of two ballot papers. AV and STV, as preferential systems requiring numbers to be marked on the ballot, are more complex to count, particularly in the case of STV, which requires continual re-calculations of surplus transfer values and the like. Primarily history, context, experience, and resources will determine the stresses, which any electoral system places on a country's administrative capacity. In the abstract, the table below offers some clues to the potential costs of various systems. If equal weight is given to each of the six factors examined in the table (which, it must be said, is unlikely to be the case), a cursory glance at the totals for each system shows that List PR systems, especially national closed-list systems, are the cheapest to run and require fewest administrative resources. Next come FPTP and SNTV systems followed by the Block Vote, AV, STV, Parallel systems and MMP. According to our calculations, the system, which is most likely to put pressure on any county's administrative capacity, is the Two-Round System.
Social and Political ContextElectoral system design consultants rightly shy away from the 'one-size-fits-all' approach of recommending one system for all contexts. Indeed, when asked to identify their 'favourite' or 'best' system, constitutional experts will say 'it depends' and the dependants are more often than not variables such as:
When assessing the appropriateness of any given electoral system for a divided society, three variables become particularly salient:
The Nature of Group Identity Appropriate constitutional design is ultimately contextual and rests on a nation's unique social nuances. Division within a society is revealed in part by the extent to which ethnicity correlates with party support and voting behavior. That factor will often determine whether institutional engineering can dissipate ethnic conflicts or merely contain them. There are two dimensions to the nature of group identity:
Scholarship on the later subject has developed a continuum with the rigidity of received identity (primordialism) on one side and the malleability of constructed social identities (constructivist or instrumentalist) on the other. Intensity of Conflict A second variable, in terms of the nature of any given conflict and its susceptibility to electoral engineering, is simply the intensity and depth of hostility between the competing groups. It is worth remembering that, although academic and international attention is naturally drawn to extreme cases, most ethnic conflicts do not degenerate into all-out civil war. While few societies are entirely free from multiethnic antagonism, most are able to manage to maintain a sufficient degree of mutual accommodation to avoid state collapse. There are numerous examples of quite deeply divided states in which the various groups maintain frosty but essentially civil relations between each other despite a considerable degree of mutual antipathy - such as the relations between Malays, Chinese and Indians in Malaysia. There are other cases (e.g., Sri Lanka) - where what appeared to be a benign inter-ethnic environment and less pronounced racial disputes nonetheless broke down into violent armed conflict - but where democratic government has nonetheless been the rule more than the exception. There are also cases of utter breakdown in relations and the 'ethnic cleansing' of one group by another typified, most recently and horribly, by Bosnia. The Nature of the Dispute Electoral system design is not merely contingent on social issues but also, to some extent, on cultural differences as well. The classic dispute is that of group rights and status in a multiethnic democracy - a system characterised both by democratic decision-making institutions and by the presence of two or more ethnic groups. This is defined as a group of people who see themselves as a distinct cultural community; who often share a common language, religion, kinship, and/or physical characteristics (such as skin colour); and who tend to harbour negative and hostile feelings towards members of other groups, see 1. The majority of this paper deals with this fundamental division of ethnicity. Other types of disputes often dovetail with ethnic ones, however. If the issue that divides groups is resource-based, for example, then the way in which the national parliament is elected has particular importance since disputes are managed through the central government allocation of resources to various regions and peoples. In this case, an electoral system, which facilitated a broadly inclusive parliament, might be more successful than one, which exaggerated majoritarian tendencies, or ethnic, regional, or other divisions. This requirement would still hold true if the dispute was primarily cultural, such as protecting minority languages and culturally specific schools. Other institutional mechanisms, such as cultural autonomy and minority vetoes, would be at least as influential in alleviating conflict.
Disputes over territory often require innovative institutional arrangements that go well beyond the positive spins that electoral systems can create. In Spain and Canada, asymmetrical arrangements for respectively, the Basque and Quebec regions, have been used to ease calls for secession, while federalism has been promoted as an institution of conflict management in countries as diverse as Germany, Nigeria, South Africa, and Switzerland. Spatial Distribution of Conflictual Groups When looking at different electoral options, a final consideration concerns the spatial distribution of ethnic groups, particularly their relative size, number, and degree of geographic concentration or dispersion. The geographic location of conflicting groups is often related to the intensity of conflict between them. Frequent inter-group contact from geographical intermixture may increase mutual hostility, but it can also act as a moderating force against the most extreme manifestations of ethnic conflict. Familiarity may breed contempt, but it also breeds a certain degree of acceptance as well. Intermixed groups are therefore less likely to be in a state of civil war than those that are territorially separated from each other. Conversely, territorial separation is sometimes the only way to manage the most extreme types of ethnic conflict - that which requires some type of formal territorial devolution of power or autonomy. In the extreme case of 'ethnic cleansing' in Bosnia, areas which previously featured highly intermixed populations of Serbs, Croats, and Muslims are now predominantly monoethnic. Understanding of the demographics of any ethnic conflict is particularly important for attempts at institutional remedies. The number and distribution of ethnic groups is a key variable for both the consociational and centripetal models of electoral engineering for divided societies. According to Lijphart, the optimal number of 'segments' for a consociationalist approach to work is three or four, and conditions become progressively less favourable as more segments (or groups) are added. The centripetal approach, by contrast, requires a degree of proliferation of ethnic groups (or, at least, ethnic parties) to present the essential preconditions for vote-pooling to take place. Chances for success will typically improve as the number of segments increase. Another factor is the relative size of ethnic groups: consociationalism favours groups of roughly equal size, although 'bicommunal systems', in which two groups of approximately equal sizes coexist, can present one of most confrontationalist formulas of all. For centripetalism the crucial variable is not size so much as the geographic concentration or dispersion of ethnic groups. When ethnic groups are geographically concentrated in one or two areas, any electoral strategy for conflict management should be tailored to the realities of political geography. Territorial prescriptions for federalism or other types of devolution of power will usually be a prominent concern, as will issues of group autonomy. Indigenous and/or tribal groups tend to display a particularly strong tendency towards geographical concentration. African minorities, for example, have been found to be more highly concentrated in single contiguous geographical areas than minorities in other regions. This means that a single ethnopolitical group will control many electoral constituencies and informal local power bases. This has considerable implications for electoral engineers: any system of election that relies on single-member electoral districts (such as the alternative vote favoured by centripetalists) will likely produce 'ethnic fiefdoms' at the local level. Minority representation and/or power sharing under these conditions would probably require some form of multi-member district system - particularly Proportional Representation (PR). Contrast this with colonial settlements or labour importation such as the vast Chinese and Indian diasporas found in some Asian and Pacific countries, like Singapore, Fiji and Malaysia; and Caribbean - Guyana, Trinidad, and Tobago - countries, in which ethnic groups are more widely inter-mixed and, consequently, have more day-to-day contact. Here, ethnic identities are often mitigated by other disputes, and electoral districts are likely to be ethnically heterogeneous. Therefore, centripetal electoral systems, which encourage parties to seek the support of various ethnic groups, (the alternative vote), may well break down inter-ethnic antagonisms and promote the development of broad, multi-ethnic parties. After a year-long review of their Constitution, Fiji has just adopted the Alternative Vote (AV) as part of a new, non-racial constitution for this very reason. Another scenario is where there are so many ethnic groups that some types of electoral systems are naturally precluded. Such a social structure typically revolves around small, geographically-defined tribal groups - a relatively unusual composition in Western states, but common in some areas of central Africa and the South Pacific. This typically requires Single-Member Representation to function effectively. In the extreme case of Papua New Guinea, there are several thousand competing clan groups speaking over 800 distinct languages. Any attempt at proportional representation in such a case would be almost impossible, as it would require a parliament of several thousand members (and, because parties are either weak or non-existent in almost all such cases, the list-PR system favoured by consociationalists would be particularly inappropriate). This dramatically curtails the range of options available to electoral engineers. Nature of the State Institutional prescriptions for electoral engineering need to be alert to the different political dynamics that distinguish transitional democracies from established ones. Transitional democracies, particularly those moving from a deep-rooted conflict situation, typically have a greater need for inclusiveness and a lower threshold for the robust rhetoric of adversarial politics, than their established counterparts. Similarly, the stable political environments of most Western countries - where two or three main parties can often reasonably expect regular periods in office via alternation of power or shifting governing coalitions - are very different from the type of zero-sum politics which often characterise divided societies. This is one of the reasons that 'winner take all' electoral systems such as First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) have so often been identified as a contributor to the breakdown of democracy in the developing world: such systems tend to lock out minorities from parliamentary representation and, in situations of ethnically-based parties, can easily lead to the total dominance of one ethnic group over all others. Democracy, under these circumstances, can quickly become a situation of permanent inclusion and exclusion, a zero-sum game, with frightening results. For this reason, many scholars see a need for some type of power-sharing government featuring all significant groups as an essential part of the transition from authoritarian rule to democracy. The power-sharing model is usually associated with PR, as this is the surest way of guaranteeing proportional results and minority representation. It is instructive to note that almost all of the major transitional elections in recent years have been conducted under some form of PR. In fact, recent transitional elections in Chile (1989), Namibia (1989), Nicaragua (1990), Cambodia (1993), South Africa (1994), and Mozambique (1994) all used a form of regional or national list PR for their founding elections. Some scholars have identified the choice of a proportional rather than a majoritarian system as being a key component of their successful transitions to democracy. By bringing minorities into the process and fairly representing all significant political parties in the new legislature, regardless of the extent or distribution of their support base, PR has been seen as being an integral element of creating an inclusive and legitimate post-authoritarian regime. There is also mounting evidence that while large-scale list PR is an effective instrument for smoothing the path of democratic transition, it is less effective at promoting democratic consolidation. Developing countries, in particular those which have made the transition to democracy under list PR rules, have increasingly found that the large, multi-member districts required to achieve proportional results also create difficulties with political accountability and responsiveness between elected politicians and voters. Democratic consolidation requires the establishment of a meaningful relationship between the citizen and the state, and many new democracies - particularly those in agrarian societies - have much higher demands for constituency service at the local level than they do for representation of all ideological opinions in the legislature. It is therefore increasingly being argued in South Africa, Cambodia, and elsewhere that the choice of a permanent electoral system should encourage a high degree of geographic accountability, by having members of parliament who represent small, territorially-defined districts who service the needs of their constituency, to establish a meaningful relationship between the rulers and the ruled. While this does not preclude all PR systems - there are many ways to combine single-member districts with proportional outcomes - it does rule out the national list PR systems often favoured by consociationalists. Nature of Party System The conventional wisdom amongst electoral scholars is that majoritarian electoral rules encourage the formation of a two-party system (and, by extension, one-party government), while Proportional Representation leads to a multi-party system (and coalition government). While there remains agreement that majority systems restrict the range of legislative representation and PR systems encourage it, the conventional wisdom of a causal relationship between an electoral system and a party system is becoming dated. In recent years, FPTP has facilitated the fragmentation of the party system in established democracies such as Canada and India, while PR has seen the election of what look likely to be dominant single-party regimes in Namibia, South Africa, and elsewhere. One of the basic precepts of political science is that politicians and parties will make choices about institutions such as electoral systems that they believe will benefit themselves. Different types of party systems will thus tend to produce different electoral system choices. The best-known example of this is the adoption of PR in continental Europe in the early years of this century. The expansion of the franchise and the rise of powerful new social forces, such as the labour movement, prompted the adoption of systems of PR that would both reflect and restrain these changes in society. More recent transitions have underlined this 'rational actor' model of electoral system choice. Thus, threatened incumbent regimes in Ukraine and Chile adopted systems which they thought would maximise their electoral prospects: a two-round runoff system which over-represents the former Communists in the Ukraine, and a unusual form of PR in two-member districts which was calculated to overrepresent the second-placed party in Chile. An interesting exception that proves the validity of this rule was the ANC's support for a PR system for South Africa's first post-apartheid elections. Retention of the existing FPTP system would almost undoubtedly have seen the over-representation of the ANC as the most popular party, but it would also have led to problems of minority exclusion and uncertainty. The ANC made a rational decision that their long-term interest would be better served by a system which enabled them to control their nominated candidates and bring possibly destabilising electoral elements 'into the tent' rather than giving them a reason to attack the system itself. Overall Constitutional Framework The efficacy of electoral system design should be judged in the broader constitutional framework of the state. This paper concentrates on elections that constitute legislatures. The impact of the electoral system on the membership and dynamics of legislatures will always be significant, but the electoral system's impact upon political accommodation and democratization more generally is tied to the amount of power beholden in the legislature and that body's relationship to other political institutions. The importance of electoral system engineering is heightened in centralised, unicameral parliamentary systems, and is maximised when the legislature is constitutionally obliged to produce an executive cabinet of national unity drawn from all significant parties that gain parliamentary representation. Similarly, the efficacy of electoral system design is incrementally diminished as power is eroded away from the parliament. Thus, a number of constitutional structures will proportionately distract attention away from elections to the legislature and will require the constitutional designer to focus on the inter-relationships between executives and legislatures; between upper and lower houses of parliament; and between national and regional and local government. This is not to diminish the importance of electoral systems for these other institutions (how to elect presidents and federal legislatures); rather, it highlights how constitutional engineering becomes increasingly complex as power is devolved away from the centre. Each of the following institutional components of the state may fragment the focal points of political power and thus diminish the significance of electoral system design on the overall political climate:
Historical ReviewLiberal democratic elections can trace their lineage to ancient Athens and the Demos gathering in the town square but modern electoral system design is traced back to the mid to late 19th century in Western Europe. Until the First World War democratic parliaments were either elected using embryonic forms of list PR (much of Scandinavia and the Low Countries), the Two Round System (TRS)(France and Germany), or First Past The Post (FPTP) (Britain, the United States, Canada, and New Zealand). Australia was unique in her replacement of colonially inherited FPTP with the Alternative Vote (AV) in 1918, see The Alternative Vote in Australia. The table below illustrates the spread and dispersion of electoral systems in nation states between 1945 and 1995 and is based on data from International IDEAs Handbook of Voter Turnout 1945-1997: A Global Report on Political Participation. This covers not merely 'democracies,' but all nation states that have experienced 'multi-party' competitive elections. In 1945 80% of the 'democratic world' predominantly elected its parliaments by Proportional Representation (PR) methods. Most used forms of list PR but the Republic of Ireland and Malta used the Single Transferrable Vote (STV) form of PR. Only Britain, the U.S.A., Canada, and New Zealand elected their parliaments by FPTP. By 1950 Indian independence and the independence of two smaller Caribbean countries increased the number of FPTP systems to 6, but PR systems remained hegemonic with nearly three-quarters of the total. In 1950 Japan used Single Non-Transferrable Vote (SNTV) and Germany had adopted Mixed-Member Proportional (MMP) representation after the Second World War. In 1960, with increasing numbers of Caribbean and African states gaining independence from Britain, the number of FPTP cases rose, but PR still accounted for nearly two-thirds of all cases, while FPTP was merely a quarter. The tide of colonial independence through the 1960's led many African states to experiment with multi-party elections, and the Anglophone African countries almost all used FPTP electoral systems. By 1970 a third of all countries were using single member district FPTP systems while the number using list PR had fallen to less than half. Between 1980 and 1995 the real growth systems were parallel systems and the French Two-Round system. By 1995 these two relatively rare systems made up nearly one-quarter of the electoral systems of over 150 nation states. The Historical Evolution of Electoral System Use
Practical Advice for Electoral System DesignersOne of the clearest conclusions to be gleaned from the comparative study of electoral systems is simply the range and utility of the options available. Too often, constitutional drafters simply choose the electoral system they know best in new democracies. This is the system of the former colonial power if there was one - rather than investigating the most appropriate alternatives. The major purpose of this Web site is to provide enough knowledge for electoral system designers to make informed decisions. This does not mean we would necessarily advocate wholesale changes to existing electoral systems; in fact, the comparative experience of electoral reform to date suggests that moderate reforms, building on those parts of an existing system which work well, are often a better option than jumping to a completely new and unfamiliar system. There is much to be learned from the experience of others. For example, a country with a First Past The Post (FPTP) system that wished to move to something more proportional while retaining the geographic link to constituents should consider the experience of New Zealand, which adopted a Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) representation system in 1993, see The Alternative Vote in Australia. A similar country that wanted to keep single-member districts but encourage inter-group accommodation and compromise should look at the experience of Alternative Vote (AV) in the Oceania region, see Papua New Guinea. Any deeply-divided country wishing to make the transition to democracy would be well advised to consider the case of South Africa's 1994 List-PR elections, see South Africa: Election Systems and Conflict Management, and the multi-ethnic power-sharing government elected as a result. A country that simply wants to reduce the cost and instability created by a Two-Round System (TRS) should examine the Sri Lankan, see Sri Lanka: Changes to Accommodate Diversity, or Irish preferential vote option, Ireland: The Archetypal Single Transferable Vote System. In all of these cases, the change from one electoral system to another has had a clear impact upon the politics of that country. Some practical guidelines for electoral system designers follow. Keep It Simple Effective and sustainable electoral system designs are more likely to be those that can be easily understood by the voter and the politician. Too much complexity can lead to misunderstandings, unintended consequences, and voter mistrust of the results. Don't be Afraid to Innovate Many of the successful electoral systems used in the world today themselves represent innovative approaches to specific problems, and have been proven to work well. There is much to learn from the experience of others.
Pay Attention to Contextual and Temporal Factors Electoral systems do not work in a vacuum. Their success depends on a happy marriage of political institutions and cultural traditions. The first point of departure for any would-be electoral system designer should be to ask:
The second question might be:
Do Not Underestimate the Electorate While simplicity is important, it is equally dangerous to underestimate the ability of voters to comprehend and successfully use a wide variety of different electoral systems. Complex preferential systems, for example, have been used successfully in developing countries in the Asia-Pacific region (such as Papua New Guinea and Sri Lanka, see Papua New Guinea, while the experience of many recent elections in new democracies has emphasised the important distinction between 'functional' literacy and 'political' literacy. Even in very poor countries, voters often have, and wish to express, sophisticated political preferences and choices. Err on the Side of Inclusion Wherever possible, whether in divided or relatively homogenous societies, the electoral system should produce a parliament that errs on the side of including all significant interests. Regardless of whether minorities are based on ideological, ethnic, racial, linguistic, regional or religious identities, the exclusion of significant shades of opinion from parliaments, particularly in the developing world, has often been catastrophically counter-productive. Process is a Key Factor in Choice The way in which a particular electoral system is chosen is also extremely important in ensuring its overall legitimacy. A process in which most or all groups are included, including the electorate at large, is likely to result in significantly broader acceptance of the end result than a decision perceived as being motivated by partisan self-interest alone. Although partisan considerations are unavoidable when discussing the choice of electoral systems, broad cross-party and public support for any institution is crucial to it being accepted and respected. The reform of the New Zealand electoral system from FPTP to MMP, for example, was preceded by a series of public plebiscites that served to legitimize the final outcome, see New Zealand: A Westminster Democracy Switches to PR. By contrast, the French Socialist Government's decision in 1986 to switch from their existing Two-Round System (TRS) to PR was widely perceived as being motivated by partisan reasons, and was quickly reversed as soon the government lost power in 1988. Build Legitimacy and Acceptance among All Key Actors All groupings that wish to play a part in the democratic process should feel that the electoral system to be used is 'fair' and gives them the same chance as anyone else to be electorally successful. The paramount aim should be that those who 'lose' the election cannot translate their disappointment into a rejection of the system itself, nor use the electoral system as an excuse to destabilize the path of democratic consolidation. In 1990 in Nicaragua, the Sandinistas lost control of the government but they accepted the defeat, in part because they accepted the fairness of the electoral system. Like South Africa, Sierra Leone and Mozambique were able to end their bloody civil wars through institutional arrangements that were broadly acceptable to all sides, see South Africa: Election Systems and Conflict Management. Try to Maximize Voter Influence Voters should feel that elections provide them with a measure of influence over governments and government policy. Choice can be maximized in a number of different ways. Voters may be able to choose between parties, between candidates of different parties, and between candidates of the same party. They might also be able to vote differently when it comes to presidential, upper house, lower house, regional, and local government elections. They should also feel confident that their vote has a genuine impact on government formation, and not just on the composition of the parliament alone. Balance Against Encouraging Coherent Political Parties The desire to maximize voter influence should be balanced against the need to encourage coherent and viable political parties. Maximum voter choice on the ballot paper may produce such a fragmented parliament that nobody ends up with the desired result. There is widespread agreement among political scientists that broadly-based, coherent political parties are among the most important factors in the promotion of effective and sustainable democracy. Long-Term Stability and Short-Term Advantage When political actors negotiate over a new electoral system they often push proposals which they believe will advantage their party in the coming elections. However, this can often be an unwise strategy, particularly in developing nations, as one party's short-term success or dominance may lead to long-term political breakdown and social unrest. For example, in negotiations prior to the transitional 1994 election, South Africa's African National Congress (ANC) could have reasonably argued for the retention of the existing FPTP electoral system, which would probably have given them, as by far the largest party, a seat bonus over and above their share of the national vote. That they argued for a form of proportional representation, and thus won fewer seats than they could have under FPTP, was a testament to the fact that they saw long-term stability as more desirable than short-term electoral gratification. Similarly, electoral systems need to be responsive enough to react effectively to changing political circumstances and the growth of new political movements. Even in established democracies, support for the major parties is rarely stable, while politics in new democracies is almost always highly dynamic. This means that a party that benefits from the electoral arrangements at one election may not necessarily benefit at the next. Don't Think of the Electoral System as a Panacea for All Ills While it is true that if one wants to change the nature of political competition the electoral system may be the most effective instrument to do so, electoral systems can never be the panacea for the political ills of a country. The overall effects of other variables, particularly a nation's political culture, usually have a much greater impact on democratic prospects than institutional factors such as electoral systems. Moreover, the positive effects of a well-crafted electoral system can be all too easily submerged by an inappropriate constitutional dispensation, the domestic dominance of forces of discord, or the weight of external threats to the sovereignty of the state. But Conversely Don't Underestimate its Influence While accepting that throughout the world the social constraints on democracy are considerable, such constraints still leave room for conscious political strategies which may further or hamper successful democratization. Electoral systems are not a panacea, but they are central to the structuring of stability in any polity. Deft electoral system engineering may not prevent or eradicate deep enmities, but appropriate institutions can nudge the political system in the direction of reduced conflict and greater governmental accountability. In other words, while most of the changes that can be achieved by tailoring electoral systems are necessarily at the margins, it is often these marginal impacts that make the difference between democracy being consolidated or democracy being undermined. The Electorate's Willingness to Embrace Change Electoral system change might seem like a good idea to political insiders who understand the flaws of the existing system, but unless proposals for reform are presented in an appropriate way, the public may well reject tinkering with the system, perceiving reform to be nothing more than a case of politicians altering the rules for their own benefit. Most damaging are situations when the change is seen to be a blatant manoeuvre for political gain (as was the case in France in 1986, in Chile in 1989, and in Jordan in 1993, see Jordan - Electoral System Design in the Arab World and Chile: Proportionality or Majoritarianism?). When the system alters so frequently the voters do not quite know where they are, as some have argued is the case in Bolivia, see Bolivia: Electoral Reform in Latin America.
Avoid Being a Slave to Past Systems All too often electoral systems inappropriate to a new democracy's needs have been inherited or carried over from colonial times without any thought as to how they will work within the new political realities. Almost all the former British colonies in Asia, Africa, and the Pacific, for example, adopted FPTP systems. In many of these new democracies, particularly those facing ethnic divisions, this system proved utterly inappropriate to their needs. It has been similarly argued that many of the former French colonies in West Africa that retained the use of the francophone TRS system, such as Mali in 1992, see Mali: A Two-Round System in Africa suffered damaging polarization as a result. Similarly, many post-communist regimes continue to utilize mandatory turnout or majority requirements inherited from the Soviet era, see Ukraine - The Perils of Majoritarianism in a New Democracy. Assess Impact of Any New System on Societal Conflict Electoral systems can be seen not only as mechanisms for choosing parliaments and presidents, but also as a tool of conflict management within a society. Some systems, in some circumstances, will encourage parties to make inclusive appeals for support outside their own core support base. Unfortunately, it is more often the case in the world today that the presence of inappropriate electoral systems serve actually to exacerbate negative tendencies which already exist; for example, by encouraging parties to see elections as 'zero-sum' contests and thus to act in a hostile and exclusionary manner to anyone outside their home group. When designing any political institution, the bottom line is that even if it does not help to reduce tensions within society, it should, at the very least, not make matters worse. Try to Imagine Unusual or Unlikely Contingencies Too often, electoral systems are designed to avoid the mistakes of the past, especially the immediate past. Care should be taken not to overreact and create a system that goes too far in terms of correcting previous problems. Furthermore, electoral system designers would do well to pose themselves some unusual questions to avoid embarrassment in the long run:
For further information see Creation and Amendment Process and Process of Electoral Reform. Additional Resources
Design Principles
When designing an electoral system, it is best to start with a list of criteria that sum up what you want to achieve, what you want to avoid and, in a broad sense, what you want your parliament and government to look like. The criteria given in Ensuring a Representative Parliament to Promoting a Parliamentary Opposition cover most areas, but the list is not exhaustive and the reader may add a host of equally valid items. It is also true that some of the criteria outlined overlap and may appear contradictory. This is because they often are, and it is the nature of institutional design that trade-offs have to be made between a number of competing desires and objectives. For example, one may want to provide the opportunity for independent candidates to be elected, and at the same time to encourage the growth of strong political parties. Or the electoral system designer may think it wise to craft a system that gives voters a wide degree of choice between candidates and parties, but this may make for a complicated ballot paper that causes difficulties for less-educated voters. The trick in choosing - or reforming - an electoral system is to prioritize which criteria are most important and then assess which electoral system, or combination of systems, best maximizes these objectives. Ensuring a Representative ParliamentRepresentation may take at least three forms:
Making Elections Accessible and MeaningfulElections are all well and good, but they may mean little to people if it is difficult to vote or if, at the end of the day, their vote makes no difference to the way the nation is governed. The 'ease of voting' is determined by such factors as how complex the ballot paper is, see Vote Counting, how easy it is for the voter to get to a polling place, see Voting Sites, how up to date the electoral roll is, see Voter Registration, and how confident the voter will be that his or her ballot is secret. Coupled with those concerns is the broader issue of whether an individual's vote makes a difference to the final results. If you know that your preferred candidate has no chance of winning a seat in your particular district, what is the incentive to vote? In some electoral systems the number of 'wasted votes' i.e., those which do not go towards the election of any candidate, as distinct from spoiled or invalid votes, which are ballots excluded from the count, can amount to a substantial proportion of the total national vote. The meaningfulness of elections is determined by how powerful the elected parliament actually is. Hollow or choiceless elections in authoritarian systems, where parliaments have little real influence on the formation of governments or on government policy, are far less important than elections that constitute parliaments, which actually have the power to determine central elements in people's everyday lives. But even within democratic parliamentary systems, the choice of electoral system can influence the legitimacy of institutions. For example, the Australian Senate between 1919 and 1946 was elected by a highly disproportional electoral system, the Alternative Vote in multi-member districts, which produced lop-sided and unrepresentative results. This tended to undermine the actual legitimacy of the Senate itself in the eyes of both electors and politicians and, some observers argued, also undermined public support for the institutions of federal government in general. After the system was altered to a fairer proportional system, the Single Transferable Vote, in 1948, the Senate began to be perceived as more credible and representative, and thus respect for it and its relative importance in decision-making increased, see The Alternative Vote in Australia. Providing Incentives for ConciliationElectoral systems can be seen not only as ways to constitute governing bodies, but also as a tool of conflict management within a society. Some systems, in some circumstances, will encourage parties to make inclusive appeals for electoral support outside their own core vote base; for instance, even though a party draws its support primarily from black voters, a particular electoral system may give it the incentive to appeal to white, or other, voters. Thus, the party's policy platform would become less divisive and exclusionary, and more unifying and inclusive. Similar electoral system incentives might make parties less ethnically, regionally, linguistically, or ideologically exclusive. Examples of how differing electoral systems have worked as tools of conflict management are given throughout the electoral systems section of the ACE project, see South Africa: Election Systems and Conflict Management. Conversely, electoral systems can encourage voters to look outside their own group and think of voting for parties that traditionally have represented a different group. Such voting behaviour breeds accommodation and community building. Systems that give the voter more than one vote or allow the voter to order candidates preferentially provide the space for electors to cut across pre-conceived social boundaries. Under the 1989 Jordanian electoral system, see Jordan - Electoral System Design in the Arab World, for example, a Muslim voter could cast two out of their three votes for Islamic candidates while giving an independent Christian their last vote. In the highly ethnically fragmented nation of Papua New Guinea in the 1960s and 1970s, voters were able to list candidates preferentially on the ballot paper, which allowed for a spectrum of alliances and vote trading between competing candidates and different communal groups. When the preferential system was abandoned, groups no longer had an electoral incentive to act cooperatively, and their behaviour consequently became more exclusionary, see Papua New Guinea. Facilitating Stable and Efficient Government
The prospects for a stable and efficient government are determined by many factors other than the electoral system, but the results a system produces can contribute to stability in a number of important respects. The key questions in this regard are whether people perceive the system to be fair, whether government can efficiently enact legislation and govern, and whether the system avoids discriminating against particular parties or interest groups. The perception of whether results are 'fair' or not varies widely from country to country. Twice in Britain - in 1951 and 1974 - the party winning the most votes in the country as a whole won fewer seats than their opponents, but this was considered more a quirk of a basically sound system, see First Past the Post (FPTP), than an outright unfairness which should be reversed. Conversely, in Mongolia in 1992 the system (the Block Vote - see Block Vote) allowed the ruling Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party to win 92% of the seats with only 57% of the votes. This was considered by many to be not merely unfair but dangerous to democracy, and the electoral system was consequently changed for the elections of 1996. Holding the Government and Representatives AccountableAccountability is one of the bedrocks of representative Government, as it provides a check on individuals, once elected, betraying the promises they made during the campaign. An accountable political system is one where both the government and the elected members of parliament are responsible to their constituents to the highest degree possible. On the broader canvas, voters must be able to influence the shape of the government, either by altering the coalition of parties in power or by throwing out of office a single party, which has failed to deliver. Well-designed electoral systems facilitate both of these objectives. Accountability involves far more than the mere holding of regular national elections; it also depends on the degree of geographical accountability, which is largely dependent on the size and territorial nature of districts, see Boundary Delimitation, as well as the freedom of choice for voters to choose between candidates as opposed to parties, see Alternative Vote, and District Magnitude. In addition, there may be supplementary methods of accountability which can be utilized: in some American States, members of the State legislature can be 'recalled' if enough voters in their district demand it. Other jurisdictions make use of 'direct democracy' mechanisms such as referendums and initiatives. Encouraging Cross-Cutting Political PartiesThe weight of evidence from both established and new democracies suggests that longer-term democratic consolidation - i.e. the extent to which a democratic regime is insulated from domestic challenges to the stability of the political order - requires the growth and maintenance of strong and effective parties. Thus the electoral system should encourage this tendency rather than entrench or promote party fragmentation. Similarly, most experts agree that the system should encourage the development of parties that are based on broad political values and ideologies as well as specific policy programmes, rather than narrow ethnic, racial, or regional concerns. As well as lessening the threat of inter-societal conflict, parties based on these broad 'cross-cutting cleavages' are more likely to reflect national opinion than those based predominantly on sectarian or regional concerns. Promoting a Parliamentary OppositionEffective governance relies not only upon those 'in power' but also, almost as much, on those who sit in parliament but are out of government. The electoral system should help ensure the presence of a viable parliamentary opposition grouping that can critically assess legislation, safeguard minority rights, and represent their constituents effectively. Opposition groupings should have enough parliamentary members to be effective, assuming they warrant these members by their performance at the ballot box, and should be able to realistically present an alternative to the current administration. Obviously the strength of parliamentary opposition depends on many factors other than the choice of electoral system, but if the system itself makes parliamentary opposition impotent, democratic governance is inherently weakened. At the same time, the electoral system should hinder the development of a 'winner take all' attitude which leaves rulers blind to other views and the needs and desires of opposition voters, and in which both elections and government itself are seen as zero-sum contests. The Process of ChoiceThe choice of electoral system is one of the most important institutional decisions for any democracy. Yet, in historical terms, it is rare indeed that electoral systems are consciously and deliberately chosen. Often, the choice of electoral system is essentially accidental: the result of an unusual combination of circumstances, of a passing trend, or of a quirk of history. The impacts of colonialism and the effects of influential neighbours are often especially strong. Yet in almost all cases the effects of a particular electoral system choice have a profound effect on the future political life of the country concerned, and most cases electoral systems, once chosen, tend to remain fairly constant, as political interests quickly congeal around and respond to the incentives for election presented by the system. If it is rare that electoral systems are deliberately chosen, it is rarer still that they are carefully designed for the particular historical and social conditions present in a particular country. This is particularly the case for new democracies. Any new democracy must choose - or inherit - an electoral system to elect its parliament. But such decisions are often taken within one of two circumstances. Either political actors lack basic knowledge and information, and the choices and consequences of different electoral systems are not fully recognised or, conversely, political actors do have knowledge of electoral system consequences and thus promote designs which they perceive will maximise their own advantage. In both of these scenarios, the choices that are made are sometimes not the best ones for the long-term political health of the country concerned; at times, they can have disastrous consequences for a country's democratic prospects. The way in which an electoral system is chosen can thus be as important and enlightening as the choice itself. There are four ways in which most electoral systems are adopted: via colonial inheritance, through conscious design, by external imposition, and by accident. We will now deal with each of these processes in turn.
National Conventions - Constitutional AssembliesThere are three fundamental criteria for evaluating an electoral reform:
How well an electoral reform lives up to these three criteria depends a great deal on what process produces it. There are four basic types of electoral reform process: 1. Reform within a representative democratic regime, 2. Reform within an unrepresentative democratic regime, 3. Reform within a stable authoritarian regime; and 4. Reform during a transition from authoritarianism to democracy. If a reform takes place within a regime that is already democratic, with institutions that represent society relatively well, then democratic institutions can be expected to produce a legitimate outcome with minimal miscalculation. Some democracies, however, have developed institutions that do not represent some important societal interests or identities well. Some electoral rules, parties, legislatures, or executives exclude or under-represent certain regions, ethnic groups, economic interests, religions, ideological persuasions, or women. Electoral reforms that take place in such regimes are less likely to produce a legitimate reform, either because the interests that are over-represented are in a position to perpetuate their own power or because well-meaning reformers do not have enough information to anticipate the strength or preferences of the excluded groups accurately. In many cases electoral reforms have been imposed during authoritarian periods, with little input from parties or civil society. As the intent behind such reforms usually is to prevent certain electoral outcomes from a prior democratic period or to protect ideas and interests identified with the authoritarian regime, this is the most exclusionary process of all. Reforms that take place during a regime transition begin under authoritarian conditions but move toward democratic conditions as the transition approaches. However, because the negotiating parties' interests change during the process, and because no election tests their relative strengths before the transition takes place, this type of process is handicapped by uncertainty. Technical Merit Some of the threats to the technical merit of an electoral reform can arise in any type of reform process. The consequences of many electoral law provisions are well understood, so reformers can avoid quite a few problems by educating themselves about these provisions or by contracting outside consultants to apply the general knowledge to a particular country. However, the consequences of some electoral law provisions are still hotly debated among the experts and therefore probably not thoroughly understood, so there is always a risk of getting bad advice, no matter what kind of process is taking place. Moreover, politicians and parties all over the world have shown a remarkable ability to respond to reforms by adapting in ways not anticipated by the reformers. These adaptations can either preserve the status quo or transform the system in surprising ways. Therefore, anyone undertaking a reform should develop as much expertise as possible, plan creatively for as many contingencies as possible, and still be prepared for the unexpected. It may appear that technical errors are less likely to creep in if an electoral reform is designed by a panel of experts insulated by an authoritarian regime from conflicting pressures, irrational compromises, and piecemeal decision-making. This is not necessarily the case, however: some authoritarian rulers seek out the best technical advice available, while others delegate the task to a committee of amateurs. Moreover, in either case the authoritarian reformers lack reliable information about citizen preferences that is abundant in democratic regimes, and are therefore more likely to produce a reform that will have unanticipated consequences. Reforms adopted in established representative democracies are most likely to avoid such surprises. Furthermore, if authoritarian rulers wait until a regime transition has begun before attempting to design a new electoral law, the transition dynamic soon takes over. The more precipitous the transition, the higher the uncertainty and the more likely mistakes of all kinds become. Chances of a Break with the Past In many situations a radical reform of the electoral system is neither desirable nor desired, particularly when the system is perceived to be working well (in representative democratic regimes) to have worked well previously (in an authoritarian regime or during a transition). However, in unrepresentative democracies there is almost always some desire to reform the system, either because electoral laws are blamed for the inequities in representation or because electoral reform is believed to provide an appropriate remedy for problems caused by other factors. In some countries the electoral system has been blamed for problems contributing to the breakdown of the democratic regime; in these cases electoral reform is often high on the agenda of subsequent authoritarian rulers and can become an issue during a transition back to democracy. Therefore, one obvious precondition for a reform that breaks with the past is a perceived need for reform. But when this condition is satisfied, what conditions affect the chances that a satisfactory reform will be adopted? The outcome depends on the relative power of the proponents and opponents of reform. In a stable authoritarian regime, the authoritarian rulers are necessarily far more powerful than any other political actor, and therefore are able to dictate whatever modifications to the electoral law they wish. The Pinochet regime of 1973-1990 in Chile is a good example. General Pinochet appointed a Study Commission on the New Political Constitution in 1973, gave it detailed guidance in 1977, submitted the Commission's draft to the (regime-appointed) Council of State in 1978, accepted some of the Council's suggested revisions, and obtained ratification of the revised constitution in a rigged referendum in 1980. This new constitution contained many radical changes in the electoral system, including the adoption of two-member districts. When Pinochet lost a referendum in 1988 on whether he should continue as president, the transition to democracy began; but pro-democracy party leaders by and large decided to abide by the rule of the electoral law imposed from above rather than jeopardize the entire transition. Another example is Alberto Fujimori's radical revision of the electoral law following his autogolpe (presidential coup) in 1992. His rules for electing a constituent assembly ('Democratic Constituent Congress') abolished the upper chamber, preference voting, and even the allocation of seats by department. In their place he decreed an 80-member unicameral legislature elected by closed and blocked lists in a single national district. A radical break with the past is least likely in a highly representative democratic regime, in part because high-quality representation itself usually indicates that reform is not a high priority for most citizens, and in part because electoral reform usually runs counter to the interests of the representatives who were elected under the existing rules, and who are well-situated to block reform efforts. These conditions together account for the lack of fundamental electoral reform in the United States, outside of voting rights and redistricting. However, there is a situation in which representatives can conclude that a reform would serve their interests well: when voting patterns change to the detriment of the traditional parties. In such cases, representatives of the traditional parties may be motivated to change the electoral system in an attempt to stem or slow their own decline: a reform to avoid reform, so to speak. This was the surprising motivation behind the adoption of proportional representation in much of Western Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: not necessarily to be fair to the emerging working-class parties, but to allow liberal and other governing parties in decline to hold onto some of their former power. The chances for deep reform are hardest to predict in the case of unrepresentative democracies, because strong pressures for reform confront strong resistance. Pressures for reform are strong because underrepresented groups sooner or later demand a fairer electoral system and they tend to demand radical change. They also have the benefit of basic civil liberties and political rights, which make it possible for them to organize a powerful reform movement. However, they confront politicians and parties who benefit from the existing electoral system and feel threatened by proposals for change, yet who occupy the positions that give them the power to defeat attempts to legislate reform. Any outcome, from a radical break with the past to delays or a preservation of the status quo, is possible depending on the relative strength of the forces for and against change at any given moment. In such situations reform is often blocked or delayed for years, and if a reform passes, it tends to be watered down so much that reform movements are not satisfied. Occasionally reform movements gain enough influence to overwhelm the opposition of entrenched interests. One of the best examples of a reform process in an unrepresentative democracy comes from Colombia. Dictatorship gave way to elected governments in Colombia in 1958; however, for the next 16 years governments were elected under the terms of the 'National Front' pact, which rendered party competition meaningless in several ways. First, only the traditional Liberals and Conservatives were allowed as candidates for elected office. Second, these two parties backed each other's presidential candidates in alternate elections, ensuring alternation in power without giving voters a choice. Third, the electoral law allocated 50 percent of the legislative seats to each party regardless of the proportion of the vote won by each party; therefore, voters could have some impact on the choice of candidates or factions, but not on the parties themselves. Some degree of representation was afforded by the fact that the national leadership of the parties lost control of their parties' labels, which made it possible for various groups to present candidates on Liberal or Conservative slates; but even these candidacies relied on heavily clientelistic bases of support, and some groups, particularly on the left, preferred not to adopt one of the traditional party labels. As a result, electoral turnout was shockingly high and growing throughout the National Front period (Hartlyn 1988). Leftist groups shunned electoral competition in favor of armed rebellion even after the pact expired in 1974, partially because hundreds of former guerrillas or leftists who dared to try the electoral path were assassinated by death squads. Although no institutional reform by itself could bring peaceful participatory democracy to Colombia, many university students and NGO workers decided that a constitutional reform, including electoral reform, was a necessary part of the solution. The congress, however, was unwilling to reform the constitution, so none of the desired reforms were adopted for decades. However, in 1990 the students and NGOs distributed an unofficial constituent assembly ballot that voters could deposit along with their official ballots in the May 1990 presidential elections. When this grass-roots referendum turned out to be overwhelmingly positive, new President César Gaviria convened a December 1990 referendum and election of delegates to a National Constituent Assembly, even though the constitution allowed only the congress itself to amend the constitution. In the next year, this assembly changed the basis of election of the Senate to a single national district; introduced state-produced ballots that made it possible to split votes for legislative seats for the first time; temporarily eliminated the election of suplentes (alternates), which had been a big source of patronage; and separated the election of national and local officials. The assembly also provided for the direct election of governors and mayors and increased opportunities for popular referendums (Taylor 1996). Thus an unrepresentative congress delayed reform for a very long time in Colombia, at a very high political cost. Eventually civil society found an effective, although strictly speaking, unconstitutional, solution. Regime transitions do not necessarily entail electoral law reform, because electoral laws are not always held responsible for the deficiencies of any prior democratic regime. But when the existing or prior electoral laws are perceived to be problematic, a regime transition provides a favorable environment for a significant break with the past. The direction of the break, however, depends fundamentally on the timing because the defining characteristic of a transition is a shift in power from the authoritarian rulers to the democratic forces (O'Donnell and Schmitter 1986). Early in a transition, the authoritarian rulers have the upper hand in initiating and defining the content of an electoral reform, while in the late stages of transition, politicians, and parties have greater influence. Therefore, an early reform is more likely to break with any democratic past and a late reform is more likely to break with the authoritarian past. Mexico can be said to have been in a very slow and controlled regime transition since the late 1970s. Electoral reforms took place in Mexico about every three years, starting in 1977, but for decades the object of these reforms was to preserve the dominance of the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). At first, reform liberalized opportunities for opposition parties, but divided them; then it granted favors to the smallest challengers while discriminating against the largest one; then it increased opportunities for all challengers while adding guarantees for the PRI's majority. Only since 1994 has the electoral law been reformed sufficiently to ensure fair balloting and vote counting. In this case, therefore, many reforms took place at an early stage of transition when rulers were able to prevent major breaks with the authoritarian past. A reform that takes place late in the transition is more likely to reflect the interests of the democratic politicians. A good example comes from Brazil, where the transition was nearly completed by the accession of an opposition-backed candidate to the presidency in March 1985. By that time, most Brazilian parties had already taken shape as loose national agglomerations of regional, candidate-centered machines. Two months later, the congress approved Constitutional Amendment No. 25, which accomplished the following:
In December, it passed laws allowing coalitions in legislative elections and allowing voters to split their votes in executive and legislative elections. All three reforms made it easier for small parties and regional parties to win seats and strengthened candidates vis-a-vis parties (Mainwaring 1991 and 1997). The previous electoral law already contained incentives favorable to these outcomes in that the law provided for proportional representation in large-magnitude districts with open-list voting, which meant that preference voting for candidates completely determined the assignment of seats within parties. The new laws intensified the independence of candidates by allowing winning candidates to keep their seats even if their party or alliance failed to pass the threshold, if they would switch parties within 60 days. The 1987-88 constituent assembly maintained all of these provisions.
Legitimacy and Survival of a Reform In the short term, the legitimacy of an electoral law is a direct result of how well the reformers represent the citizens who must live with the law. Therefore, a reform is most likely to enjoy legitimacy when it is adopted in a representative democracy and least likely to be legitimate when it is adopted in an authoritarian regime; unrepresentative democracies should produce an intermediate result. The legitimacy of a reform during a transition depends partly on the timing, which determines whether it is a more democratic or a more authoritarian reform. It also depends in part on the degree of uncertainty about the relative strength of the parties to the negotiation: the greater the uncertainty, the more the reform process approximates the conditions of John Rawls' 'veil of ignorance,' which creates incentives to adopt a proportional electoral system (Schiemann and Benoit 1997). Societies do change, however, some faster than others. What citizens expect of their electoral law can therefore change also. In the long term the legitimacy of an electoral reform may diminish as new interests, parties, issues, and priorities arise, even in the most representative democracies. Uruguay is a good case in point. For presidential elections it long used the Double Simultaneous Vote (DSV), in which the winning candidate was the most-voted candidate within the most-voted party. Factions (sublemas) of the same party (lema) would run different presidential candidates, and the electoral law in effect created a direct primary held at the same time as the general election. It also guaranteed proportional representation of both lemas and sublemas in congress. For decades this electoral law reinforced an attractive balance between the governability afforded by a two-party system and the flexibility afforded by the varying sizes of the factions within the parties and the turnover among them. In the late 1960s, however, the hegemony of the two-party system began to erode as a third lema, the Broad Front, succeeded in winning a growing percentage of the vote, a trend that continued after the return to democracy in 1984. One negative side effect of the change in the party system was that on two occasions, the most-voted presidential candidate did not win the election, because he was not the candidate of the most-voted party. In response to growing questions about the legitimacy of election outcomes, congress reformed the electoral system in 1996 to prohibit parties from running more than one presidential candidate and institute a direct popular election of the president, with a majority runoff if necessary. In the long run, the legitimacy and survival of an electoral reform also depend on its technical merit and the degree to which it effectively addresses past problems. On balance, every reform process has its strengths and weaknesses. A preemptive reform in an authoritarian regime is good for achieving a true break with the electoral laws of the democratic past, but the new laws are less likely to enjoy popular legitimacy, and technical merit is not guaranteed. Reform in an unrepresentative democracy may be more likely to ensure technical merit, but is less likely to break with the past and probably will not enjoy or win popular support, either. Reform early in a transition to democracy is similar to that in an authoritarian regime, with a greater probability of technical errors due to the uncertainty and the pressure to adopt a reform quickly. Reform late in a transition is more likely to win legitimacy, especially if uncertainty is high, while breaking with authoritarian legacies, but is still prone to the same kinds of technical problems. Perhaps reform in a representative democracy is optimal: it may be less likely to break with the past, but less change is necessary. At the same time reform minimizes the chances that new laws will suffer from technical flaws and maximizes the chances of popular legitimacy. A Chilean Example of Adaptation to Reform Before returning Chile to democracy, General Pinochet reformed the electoral law to create 2-member districts all over the country. He believed that this system would favour the two largest parties - a Conservative Party sympathetic to him and the Christian Democratic party - and practically wipe out the parties of the left. However, in the first three elections of the new democratic regime (1989, 1993, and 1997), the Christian Democrats and the left, allied against conservative parties, colluded so that only one party from their alliance would present candidates in each district. This strategy preserved the smaller parties and allowed the left to survive. A Venezuelan Example of Adaptation to Reform In 1989, Venezuela shifted from a closed-list PR system to a mixed-member proportional (MMP) system in which half the seats were filled in single-member districts. This reform was supposed to make national deputies more accountable to their local constituents and less beholden to national party leaders who had ranked candidates on party lists. But in 1993, national party leaders frustrated this reform by retaining control over nominations for the single-member-district seats and by expelling deputies who broke party discipline. NegotiationsWhen countries are undergoing major constitutional change, electoral systems are sometimes chosen in direct negotiations between a governing party and opposition groups or among political parties or factions when a constitution is being written totally anew. These talks usually occur outside the formal rules and procedures for making decisions that govern national conventions and constituent assemblies. Electoral system choice through negotiations occurs in two conceptually distinct ideal types:
The latter talks often take place within the context of a more wide-ranging peace process in which new electoral laws are but one part of an overall settlement to fashion post-war political institutions. Negotiated Transitions: Authoritarianism to Democracy In negotiated or 'pacted' transitions, pressures for democratization have built up in a society and the government agrees to talk directly with opposition parties as a way to alleviate the pressure and peacefully move toward more open, multi-party politics. These types of transitions to democracy are contrasted with those transitions wholly managed and controlled by incumbent governments such as Kenya or Nigeria, or those that result from a popular upswell for constitutional change, leading to the total collapse of the incumbent regime such as Romania. In the course of government-opposition negotiations, the parties bargain over the nature, sequence, and extent of political reforms and often agree to sharing power for a period of time. Negotiated transitions can occur as a result of a series of pacts for incremental change or through one grand pact that spells out the terms of political reform. Spain's transition to democracy in the 1970s is an exemplary pacted transition. Following the death of Francisco Franco in 1975, the single-party 'Falangist' regime that had governed since Spain's civil war in 1936 was replaced by a multi-party, constitutional monarchy. Talks over political reform occurred between Prime Minister Adolfo Suarez, with the concurrence of King Juan Carlos I, and opposition forces. In these talks, Suarez negotiated with virtually all the major political forces and with the military; eventually, he was able to assure those on the right, including elements of the pro-Francoist ruling party, the UCD, that the reforms would not go too far. Suarez also persuaded those on the left, especially the opposition Socialist party, that the democratization process would be meaningful. Through these negotiations, the parties arrived at a formula for elections by which the opposition parties would be assured that they would have a role to play in the a future system in the context of dismantling the Francoist power structures. While the electoral system was presented in a spring 1977 government decree, it was the outcome of de facto, behind-the-scenes negotiations between Suarez and opposition parties The Spanish negotiators, in talks between a government commission and opposition parties before the first multi-party elections in June 1977, agreed on a fixed list proportional representation (PR) list system (d'Hondt) for the first multi-party elections, see List PR. The formula and three per cent threshold favoured the two largest parties and over-represented rural areas - each district was initially awarded two seats then the rest were by apportioned by population. PR was chosen for several reasons:
The longer-term effect of list PR in Spain was that regional parties were able to extract far-reaching concessions from national parties as they are needed to build coalitions. This facilitates some of the moves toward regional devolution, which seemed to have benefited the stability of the Spanish State. However, the perception that sub-national groups, such as Catalans, wielded undo political influence, has caused some resentment in the rest of the Spanish polity. Another example of transitional bargaining occurred in Hungary, after the fall of communism throughout Eastern Europe in 1989. As the transition to multi-party democracy unfolded, negotiations occurred among the political parties that quickly formed (or re-formed, as some had existed prior to the advent of Soviet hegemony over the state). These talks produced an interesting agreement for the first multi-party elections in April 1990 that highlight the issues surrounding electoral system choice by negotiation. The 'historical' parties such as social and Christian democrats favoured PR with county lists, which had been used prior to communism in 1945 and 1947, whereas the popular mood and many parties associated with the former regime - including incumbent legislators - favoured constituency representation. A long debate yielded an inability to arrive at a single formula, so the parties opted for a mixed bag: of 386 seats in the legislature, 176 were elected in single member districts (with a second run-off ballot to ensure a majority), 152 from regional party lists (with a four percent threshold), and 58 from national party lists, see Mixed Member Proportional. Peace Processes When a country has experienced violent strife or civil war, and when the parties have fought to a bloody stalemate without a clear victor emerging, a peace process may ensue. Peace processes are structured negotiations often facilitated by an outside mediator that result in agreements to drastically reform or wholly create a new political system. Electoral system reforms are often, if not invariably, a key element in constitutional negotiations that accompany peace processes. Electoral reform or the creation of new election systems has been a part of peace process negotiations in countries such as Bosnia, Cambodia, El Salvador, Liberia, Nicaragua, Sierra Leone, and more recently in Guatemala. For example, when white-minority Rhodesia collapsed in the late 1970s after a protracted civil war, yielding independent Zimbabwe, a key issue in the settlement talks was how white minority representation would be secured in the new order. In 'sham' elections held in 1979 - the first 'one-man, one-vote' poll in the country's history under the terms of an 'internal settlement' negotiated between the government and opposition forces that most observers perceived to be illegitimate - 72 of the 100 members of the House of Assembly were chosen by blacks from a 'common roll' on a party list PR system (a eight-district multimember system), and 28 by whites under the alternative vote (AV) in single-member districts, see Two-Round System. After the failure of these elections to garner internal and international legitimacy, the 1979 Lancaster House negotiations, which included the principal rebel forces and were therefore more legitimate, produced an agreement which only slightly altered the earlier formula: the reserved white seats were reduced to twenty (and elected by AV) and limited to a transitional period of ten years. The choice for PR for the 'common roll' and SMD for the 'white roll' reflected a pragmatic compromise for the parties at the table. It was simply practical to use PR for the long-excluded black majority - there was no voters' roll - and SMD for the minority whites, which had used this system in previous 'intra-white' elections. The twenty reserved seats for whites guaranteed representation for them in the post-independence parliament that exceeded their proportion of the total electorate. After the elections of 1985, when negotiation and compromise was no longer necessary, the post-independence regime did away with the reserved seats for whites and the entire legislature is now elected with SMD. South Africa is a well-studied case that straddles the fence between the two ideal types of pacted transitions and peace processes, and is an excellent case for understanding the dynamics of electoral system choice through negotiation, see South Africa: Election Systems and Conflict Management. When the negotiations over the end of apartheid and white minority rule began in 1990, it was clear that the previous electoral system for intra-white elections - first-past-the-post(FPTP)in single-member districts - would not be acceptable to any of the parties. There were practical considerations for the rejection of constituency-based electoral systems: there was no common voters' roll, and there were difficulties in delimiting constituencies without an accurate census and with the skewed population distribution that apartheid's segregationist laws had produced. However, there were also political considerations. The white minority parties, especially the incumbent National Party (NP), quickly realised that if FPTP in single-member districts were to be used in elections in which the black majority could vote, white candidates would likely lose in virtually every district because the black population is so widely spread throughout the country. PR would, at least, allow for some representation in the post-apartheid order. The African National Congress, the principal black majority party, also preferred a PR list system for the country's first elections for political reasons. The ANC's preference for fixed list PR was also strategic: having white parties represented inside the new political system, as opposed to their potential total exclusion, could diffuse some of the tension generated by their inevitable loss of political power. Another mostly black party, the regionally powerful Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), however, expected not to win many seats in a national election conducted under national PR; it's popular base was known to be quite limited. Moreover, it was strongly pushing a federal option for South Africa to retain and protect its provincial power base. It threatened to spoil the elections by boycotting - and, possibly, violently resisting - if its strongly federalist position was not included in the final settlement. In a last-minute compromise to induce the IFP to participate in the heralded April 1994 elections that ended apartheid in South Africa, the ANC and NP agreed to adopt a split national and regional fixed list PR system in which half of the new National Assembly would be chosen from regional lists and half from national lists. Half of the 400 National Assembly/Constituent Assembly members would be chosen from regional lists, and half from national lists. In addition, all the 90 members of the upper house, then called the Senate (since renamed the Council of Provinces), would be chosen from the regional lists. This compromise, which the IFP ultimately accepted, was sufficient to allow all parties to participate in the election, thereby enhancing the legitimacy of the outcome. The regional/national PR list formula also allowed these three main parties to 'win' something in the poll: the ANC garnered a strong majority in the National Assembly and majorities in seven of nine provinces, and the NP and IFP won legislative majorities in their provincial strongholds. Moreover, all three of these parties were represented in an initial government of national unity, which contributed to the stability of the South African transition. The system of fixed list PR may be done away with after the 1999 elections in South Africa if the detractors of the system - who argue that it lacks accountability and a meaningful link between members of parliament and the people - have their way. What is unusual about South Africa, in contrast to Zimbabwe, is that bargaining and give-and-take remain the order of the day even though the formal transitional negotiations have ended, so a mixed PR/constituency-based system still seems possible in the long run. When electoral systems are chosen as the result of negotiations, the outcome reflects a compromise among the interests of the parties at the table. Like other cases of electoral system choice, parties make choices based on their use of 'strategic imagination.' Parties to the talks ask themselves: How do we think the system will work for us, given our expected popularity, the spatial distribution of votes, and the popularity of other parties? Naturally, parties prefer those systems they believe will maximise their share of the votes. The outcomes also reflect the relative power that the parties at the table enjoy. When negotiations produce agreement on electoral systems, it usually means that all the parties to the agreement are satisfied that the system chosen is the best they can get given their own bargaining power and the power and preferences of others. External ImpositionExternal Imposition A small number of electoral systems were more consciously designed and imposed on nation states by external powers. Two of the most vivid examples of this phenomenon occurred in West Germany after the Second World War, and in Namibia in the late 1980s. In post-war Germany, both the departing British forces and the German parties were anxious to introduce a system which would avoid the damaging party proliferation and destabilisation of the Weimar years, and to incorporate the Anglo tradition of constituency representation because of unease with the 1919-1933 closed list electoral system which denied the voters a choice between candidates as well as parties. During 1946, elections in the French and American zones of occupation were held under the previous Weimar electoral system. In the British zone a compromise was adopted which allowed voters to vote for constituency members with a number of list PR seats reserved to compensate for any disproportionality that arose from the districts. Thus the Mixed-Member Proportional Representation (MMP) system, which has since been emulated by a number of other countries, was born. This mixed system was eventually adopted for all parliamentary elections in 1949 but it was not until 1953 that two separate votes were introduced, one for the constituency member, and another based on the Länder, which ultimately determined the party composition of the Bundestag. The imposition of a five percent national threshold for party list representation helped focus the party system on three major groupings after 1949 - the Social Democrats, Christian Democrats and Free Democrats - although in all a total of 12 parties gained representation in those first post-war national elections. The rationale for a nationally based list Proportional Representation (PR) system in Namibia came initially from the United Nations, which urged as early as 1982 that any future non-racial electoral system ensure that political parties managing to gain substantial support in the election be rewarded with fair representation. The option of discarding the First Past the Post (FPTP) electoral system (the whites-only system operating in what was the colony of south-west Africa) and moving to a rigid list PR system was then proposed by Pik Botha, the then South African Foreign Minister. Although the South Africans had previously unsuccessfully pressed for separate voters rolls ( la Zimbabwe 1980-1985) which would have ensured that whites gain seats in the new Assembly. There was some unease that the South Africans were promoting a PR electoral system solely to fractionalize the Constituent Assembly. This led the UN Institute for Namibia to advise all political parties interested in a stable independence government to reject a PR system because it would fractionalize party representation. But this advice remained unheeded and the option of a threshold for representation - one of the chief mechanisms for reducing the number of parties in a list PR system - was never put forward by the UN or made an issue by any of the political parties. For the first elections in 1989 the South West African People's Organization (SWAPO) had expressed a preference for keeping the single member district system, no doubt reasonably expecting (as the dominant party) to be advantaged by such winner-take-all constituencies. However, when the Constituent Assembly met for the first time in November 1989, and each parliamentary party presented their draft constitution, SWAPO gave in on the issue of PR apparently as a concession to the minority parties for which they hoped to gain reciprocal concessions on matters of more importance. Colonial Inheritance Inheriting an electoral system from colonial times is perhaps the most common way through which democratising societies come to use a particular electoral system. The map of electoral system usage in 'The International IDEA Handbook of Electoral System Design' dramatically illustrates the post-colonial diffusion of electoral systems. Out of 53 former British colonies and members of the Commonwealth of Nations, a full 37 (or 70 percent) use classic First Past The Post (FPTP) systems inherited from Westminster. Eleven of the 27 Francophone territories use the French Two Round System (TRS), while the majority of the remaining 16 countries use list Proportional Representation (PR), a system used by the French on and off since 1945 for parliamentary elections, and widely for municipal elections. Fifteen out of the 17 Spanish speaking countries and territories use PR (as does Spain), while Guatemala and Ecuador use list PR as part of their parallel systems. Finally, all six Lusophone countries use list PR, as in Portugal. Interestingly, the influence of French constitutional design has also played heavily on the institutional designers of the former Soviet Republics of the CIS. Eight of these satellite states use TRS in some form. Only Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Russia itself fail to follow the trend. Nevertheless, the electoral laws of the former Soviet Union have had a high impact on the consolidation of democracy in the new states of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, many of which retained the old Soviet requirement that turnout had to exceed 50 percent for the election in a given constituency to be declared valid. This has caused particular problems in the Ukraine, where the process of filling empty seats carried on for years, generating considerable popular disaffection. Colonial inheritance of an electoral system is perhaps the least likely way to ensure that the institution is appropriate to a country's needs, as the begetting colonial power was almost always, by its essence, very different socially and culturally from the society colonised. And even where the coloniser sought to stamp much of its political ethos on the occupied land, they rarely succeeded in obliterating indigenous power relations and traditional modes of political discourse. Indeed, the colonial inheritance of Westminster systems has been cited as an impediment to stability in a number of Anglophone nations such as the Caribbean, Nigeria, and Malawi. Mali's use of the French TRS has been widely questioned, and Jordan and Palestine's use of the British-inspired Block Vote has also led to problems. Evolution/AccidentAlthough much of the information presented here concentrates on the possibilities of deliberate 'electoral engineering,' it is worth remembering that most electoral systems are not deliberately chosen. Often, the choice of electoral system is accidental. Accidental choices are not necessarily poor ones; in fact sometimes they can be surprisingly appropriate. One example of this was the highly ethnically fragmented democracy of Papua New Guinea, which inherited the alternative vote from its colonial master, Australia, for its first three elections in the 1960s and 1970s. Because this system required voters to list candidates preferentially on the ballot paper, elections encouraged a spectrum of alliances and vote trading between competing candidates and different communal groups, with candidates attempting to win not just first preferences but second and third preference votes as well. This led to cooperative campaigning tactics, moderate positions, and the early development of political parties. When this system was changed, political behaviour become more exclusionary and less accommodating, and the nascent party system quickly unraveled. With the benefit of hindsight, PNG thus appears to have been the fortuitous recipient of a possibly uniquely appropriate electoral system for its social structure. Most accidental or evolutionary choices are, however, more likely to lead to unintended consequences - particularly for the actors who designed them. For example, when Jordan adopted the SNTV in 1993, on the personal initiative of King Hussein, it not only of increased minority representation but also of facilitated the election of Islamic fundamentalists to the legislature, see Jordan - Electoral System Design in the Arab World. Many fledgling democracies in the 1950s and 1960s adopted copies of the British system, despite consistent misgivings from Westminster that it was 'of doubtful value as an export to colonies in Africa and Asia.' The sorry history of many such choices has underlined the importance of designing electoral and constitutional rules for the specific conditions of the country at hand, rather than blithely assuming that the same 'off the shelf' constitutional design will work identically in different social, political, or economic consequences. Design ComponentsAt the most basic level, electoral systems translate the votes cast in a general election into seats won by parties and candidates. The key variables are
Electoral system design has a close relationship to other more administrative aspects of elections discussed on this web site; such as the distribution of polling places, see Voting Sites, the nomination of candidates, see Parties and Candidates, the registration of voters, see Voter Registration, who runs the elections and so on, see Electoral Management. These issues are of critical importance, and the possible advantages of any given electoral system choice will be undermined unless due attention is paid to them. Electoral system design also affects other areas of electoral laws:
In this section we will focus some of the other aspects of electoral law which accompany the question of the specific electoral formula to be used. These include elements of 'direct democracy' - referendums and plebiscites, see Referendums and Plebiscites; citizen initiatives, see Citizen Initiative; and legislative recall, see Legislative Recall. A discussion of when to hold elections for a legislature and how often, see Frequency/Date/Day of Elections; how to come up with an appropriate parliamentary size, see Parliamentary Size; ways of voting on a ballot paper, see Way of Voting; special electoral mechanisms - such as provisions for compulsory voting - see Compulsory Voting; minority representatives, see Minority Provisions; and for representation of women, see Special Mechanisms for Women. Direct Democracy OptionsMost of this site examines the institutions of 'representative democracy;' however, in the following three files, we analyze some mechanisms for 'direct democracy.'
Referendums and PlebiscitesNationwide votes on a specific issue are an accepted way of resolving political issues in many countries around the world. Such votes are usually termed 'referendums', though there are two special types of referendum for which a different name is sometimes used. First, when a vote is brought about by a demand from a prescribed number of ordinary citizens, for example by signing a petition, the resulting vote is termed an 'initiative'. Second, the term 'plebiscite', though sometimes used interchangeably with referendum, has negative connotations in a number of countries, where it is used for votes that were not held under genuinely democratic conditions. A referendum gives the people the chance to vote directly on a specific issue. Although people can also make choices at general elections, these elections are usually fought on a number of issues and often no clear verdict on any one issue is delivered. Referendums have been used in many countries; in Switzerland they are very common, see Switzerland, in some countries there may be on average one or two per year, and in most countries they are rare. Generally speaking, they are not used to settle ordinary political issues of the sort that arise routinely, but to deal with major issues or issues that seem to transcend the regular party alignments. The most common situation in which a referendum is seen to be appropriate is a major regime change; not only the reform of an existing constitution, but the adoption of a new constitution or, the biggest step of all, the decision of a people to declare independence. For example, Norway's decision to separate from Sweden in 1905 was made by the Norwegian people in a referendum in which 99.9 per cent voted for independence, a powerful expression of national pride. Similarly, Iceland held a referendum on becoming independent from Denmark. Spain's adoption of democratic reform in the late 1970s after the death of the dictator Franco was approved by the people through a referendum. Likewise, new constitutions have come into being through referendums in Denmark, France, and Ireland. The decision to move to multi-party politics has been taken by referendum in some African countries, such as Gabon and Malawi. In each case, it has been important for the legitimacy of the decision that this step towards independence or democracy has been taken by the people directly and not by the political elite. A fundamental issue that has arisen in a number of European countries has been membership in the European Union, which has implications for the sovereignty of individual states. Of the current 15 member states of the EU, 5 have held referendums on whether to join: these are Austria, Denmark, Finland, Ireland and Sweden. In addition, Britain, once in, held a referendum on whether to leave, while the people of Norway twice voted not to join even though the political elite on each occasion was in favour of membership. This list illustrates the way in which referendum issues are often really major questions that rise above the sort of day-to-day political issues that arise routinely in a country. Generally speaking, referendums are best suited to such questions, and to issues that cut across the usual lines of division in a society rather than to issues that run along those lines. For example, suppose a country has two main linguistic groups, with one language being spoken by 60 per cent of the population and the other by 40 per cent, and constant political tensions over the language issue. If a referendum were held to resolve the question of which should become the country's sole language, this would solve nothing, because the minority group would be unlikely to accept the majority vote in favour of the other language as a fair way of resolving the dispute. Ethnic disputes, too, are not easily resolvable by referendum. In other words, where a question of minority rights, and how far a majority can impose its wishes on a minority, is concerned, a referendum is inappropriate, because it may become a mere instrument of majoritarianism. In such a situation, the only possible use for the referendum would be to test the acceptability of a compromise worked out by the elites, see Negotiations. Likewise, if a country is divided along left-right lines, there is little to be gained by holding a referendum on a left-right issue, which at best would be likely to replicate the vote in a general election. So, when referendums are held on political questions, these are usually ones that cut across the usual party divisions. Examples include votes on nuclear power in Austria and Sweden, or on divorce in Ireland. Even if we can frame guidelines as to the most appropriate way to use the referendum, it does not follow that these will always be heeded. Indeed, there are many ways in which the referendum might be misused or even abused, and there are examples of most of these. In France, for example, quite a number of the referendums held since the Second World War have been held for opportunistic political reasons, when the government saw a chance to embarrass or divide the opposition. This is an argument for regulating the circumstances in which referendums can - or must - be held; otherwise, if they can take place too easily on the whim of the government of the day, the institution of the referendum is liable to become discredited and such votes will not serve a useful function. Indeed, all aspects of referendums need regulation. It is particularly important that the rules governing the referendum are drawn up in advance so that everyone knows what they are. Areas where this is necessary include the following:
Referendums, like most other political institutions, potentially have both advantages and disadvantages. The advantages include their legimitising role: a decision taken directly by the people is likely to be accepted as legitimate even by opponents of the idea, who might not have accepted a similar decision taken by the parliament or government. This has been apparent in votes on the European Union in Denmark and on divorce in Ireland, where referendums have settled contentious issues. In addition, referendums increase popular participation in decision-making and have an educative effect on the population, who inevitably becomes better informed on the issues at stake. Among the possible disadvantages are that the instruments of representative government, such as parliaments, may be undermined, and that the public may not be sufficiently well informed to make sound political decisions. There is also a fear of majoritarianism, a concern that the majority might use the referendum to trample on minority rights. Looking at referendum practice around the world may not bear out the utopian hopes of some early pro-referendum campaigners, but neither does it support the fears of those who see the referendum as potentially destructive to democracy. Most countries that have the referendum institution seem to have benefited from it and have incorporated it as a feature of the political process. For example the issue of Danish involvement in the European Union was settled by two extremely closely argued referendums in 1992 and 1993; in each case the turnout was over 80 per cent, the process left the Danes as the best informed people in Europe about EU issues, and the outcome had a legitimacy that a decision by parliament could never have had. On the other hand, excessive use of the referendum can have negative effects. Across the world, the most frequent user of the referendum is Switzerland, where turnout in many votes is below 50 per cent, perhaps because the Swiss tire of voting so often - on average there are about 10 popular votes a year. Even so, the referendum is a full and accepted aspect of the Swiss political system, and some Swiss commentators even want it to be used more widely. In Italy the referendum has been a more destructive force. The Italian rules allow a fixed number of voters to launch a challenge to an existing law, and on occasions Italians have been called upon to vote on up to 12 different issues on the same day. Italian referendum practice has co-existed uneasily with representative government at certain times. In countries where the institutions of representative government are weak or in a fledgling state, it may be unwise to allow groups of voters to demand referendums on laws that they dislike, since this creates the risk that tough but necessary decisions that might have been proved correct in the long term will be voted down by the people. While the institutions of representative government can co-exist comfortably with the referendum, representative government and the initiative sit less easily together. The Swiss political system works smoothly enough with the widespread use of the initiative, but most other countries would find it much more difficult to carry on stable and effective government with such broad initiative provisions. Moderate use of the referendum does not seem to weaken representative government, and may even strengthen it, but excessive use may both weaken representative government and undermine the value of the referendum itself. See also Distribution Requirements and Popular Consultations: Referendums, Plebiscites, Recall. Citizen InitiativeIn the United States, Massachusetts voters have been authorized to use the citizen initiative since 1715 to place articles in the town warrant (fixed agenda) to call a town meeting. Currently twenty-three state constitutions, commencing with South Dakota's in 1898, authorize the use of petitions to place propositions on the referendum ballot. The constitutional initiative exists in seventeen American states and the statutory initiative may be employed in twenty-one states. The governor's veto power does not extend to initiated statutes. The device also may be used in most states to adopt and amend local government charters and in many municipalities to enact ordinances. The United States Supreme Court in Pacific States Telephone and Telegraph Company v. Oregon, 223 U.S. 118 (1912) rejected a challenge to the initiative that it violated the United States constitution which guarantees each state a republican form of government. Initiatives may be classified as
The first two categories are self-explanatory. Under the direct initiative, the entire legislative process is circumvented as propositions are placed directly on the referendum ballot if the requisite number and distribution of valid petition signatures are collected and certified. The indirect initiative, employed in eight states, involves a more cumbersome process as a proposition is referred to the legislative body upon the filing of the required number of certified petition signatures. Failure of the legislative body to approve the proposition within a stipulated number of days - varying from forty in Michigan to adjournment of the Maine State Legislature - leads to the proposition being placed automatically on the referendum ballot. In Massachusetts, Ohio, and Utah additional petition signatures must be collected to place the proposition on the ballot. Only the Massachusetts Constitution authorizes use of the indirect initiative to place proposed constitutional amendments on the ballot. The Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, and Washington State Legislatures are authorized to place a substitute proposition on the ballot whenever an initiative proposition qualifies for the ballot. Although a section of the Constitution of Alaska provides only for the direct initiative, another section allows the State Legislature to enact a legislative substitute that voids the initiative petition provided the substitute is 'substantially the same.' Maine, Massachusetts, and Wyoming authorize only the indirect statutory initiative. Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, South Dakota, Utah, and Washington authorize employment of both types. The advisory initiative allows voters to circulate petitions to place non-binding questions on the ballot at an election to pressure legislative bodies to enact specific bills into law. Such initiatives were used infrequently prior to the late 1970s and generally attracted only local notice. The growth of the environmental and nuclear freeze movements results in the employment of the initiative to generate national media attention. States which authorize use of the initiative to place proposed statutes on the referendum ballot, except Alaska, require the preliminary filing of a proposed petition with the Attorney General or Secretary of State who checks the petition for conformance with constitutional and/or statutory requirements. In Alaska, sponsors file the petition with the Lieutenant Governor who also receives all signed petitions filed by the deadline date. Three states require a deposit - $100 to $1,000 - when an application is filed and the deposit is refunded if the proposition qualifies for the ballot. In three states the petition is reviewed by state officers who may suggest wording changes to the sponsors. The Attorney General (Lieutenant Governor in Alaska) is directed to prepare a ballot title and a summary of the proposition, which is printed at the top of each petition. Similarly, a local government clerk typically is responsible for preparing the ballot title and summary. The Secretary of State is usually responsible for printing petition forms at public expense, but in Idaho the sponsors are responsible for printing the petitions. The required number of signatures to place a proposition on the ballot is based on a percentage of the votes cast at the most recent general election or a percentage of the votes cast for Governor (Secretary of State in Colorado). Signatures requirements vary from three percent of the votes cast for Governor in Massachusetts to fifteen percent in Arizona and Oklahoma. The Massachusetts Constitution stipulates a petition must be submitted to the General Court (State Legislature) and will be placed on the referendum ballot only if approved by one-fourth or more of the members in two consecutive sessions. When placed on the ballot, the proposal is ratified if approved by a majority of the votes cast on the proposition provided the majority includes thirty percent or more of the total number of ballots cast in the election. The arguments for and against the citizen initiative are similar to the pro and con arguments associated with the protest referendum, see Referendums and Plebiscites, and the recall, see Legislative Recall. The early initiative supporters were convinced that the collective wisdom of the voters was superior to that of elective representatives, but recognized that not all needed laws should be enacted by the initiative and the referendum. In theory, the initiative would be exercised only when elected legislative bodies failed to enact needed bills on important subjects or enacted laws not responsive to the wishes of the electorate. Proponents maintain that the initiative
Numerous arguments against the initiative have been mustered by its opponents - legislators make better laws, poorly drafted initiated statutes create implementation problems, initiative statutes may not be coordinated with related statutes, the wording of the proposition may confuse voters, the initiative oversimplifies issues, 'minorities' may be affected adversely by a successful initiative campaign, and governmental inflexibility is introduced if an initiative proposition can not be amended by the state or local legislative body. The continued successful use of the initiative is evidence that legislative bodies are not always responsive to the public will. Although the initiative is a patchwork approach to law making, initiated statutes in general have not caused serious implementation problems. Critics notwithstanding, the general electorate has been discriminating in examining the pro and con arguments of an initiated proposition prior to deciding how to vote. On balance, the indirect initiative strengthens the governance system because this type has the benefit of the legislative process, including public hearings and committee review, study, and recommendations. Should the legislative body fail to approve the proposition, voters have been advantaged in their decision-making capacity by information on the proposition generated by the legislative process. The indirect initiative is a useful adjunct to the conventional law-making process and can be an effective counterbalance to an unrepresentative legislative body and no more undermines representative government than the executive veto and the judicial veto. A major initiative advantage is the fact it makes the operation of interest groups more visible in comparison with their lobbying activities in a state legislature and a local legislative body. Support for the indirect initiative does not suggest that it should be employed frequently. It should be a reserve power of a last-resort weapon and the relative need for its use depends upon the degree of accountability, representativeness, and responsiveness of legislative bodies. Legislative RecallConstitutional and statutory provisions in twenty-six states of the United States authorize voters by petition to place the question of the removal of all or specified public officers on a referendum ballot prior to the expiration of their terms of office. In addition, municipalities in 'home rule' states may draft a new charter or charter amendment providing for the recall. The state legislature in several states lacking constitutional or general statutory 'home rule' provisions has enacted special charters for local governments containing authorization for employment of the recall by voters. The constitutional or statutory recall provision in six states excludes judges from the recall. Seven states permit only one attempt to recall an officer during their term of office, but three states allow a second attempt if proponents reimburse the state for the cost of the first recall election. The use of the recall is subject to restrictions contained in constitutional, statutory, and local charter provisions. Only elected officers are subject to the recall with the exceptions of the Montana recall law and a small number of local government charters, which permit the recall of administrative officers. Furthermore, most recall provisions prohibit its use during the first 2 to 12 months of an officers' term and during the last 180 days in 5 states. Whether the recall is a political or a judicial process varies from state to state on the basis of constitutional or statutory provisions or court rulings. In states where the recall is a political process, traditional rights protecting defendants do not apply since the authorizing provision does not mandate that the targeted officer must be charged with cause - malfeasance, misfeasance, nonfeasance, or violation of oath of office. If the process is a judicial one, the targeted officer enjoys traditional judicial guarantees. The recall process, in common with the initiative and the protest referendum, commences with the filing by ten petitioners with the secretary of state or local clerk of a notice of intention to circulate petitions for an election to determine whether a named officer should be removed from office. The notice usually includes a 200 word statement of reasons for the proposed recall, and the named officer may file a 200 word response. Subsequently, the secretary of state or local clerk prints official petitions which are made available to proponents who most commonly are required to collect signatures of registered voters equal to twenty-five percent of the votes cast for gubernatorial candidates in the last election or for candidates for the involved office. California and Georgia have geographical requirements relative to the minimum number of signatures that must be collected in each of five counties or each congressional district, respectively. Although the required signatures are collected, a recall election is not held in eight states provided the targeted officer resigns within five or ten days of certification of the required signatures. If an election is scheduled, the reasons for removal of the officer and the officer's defense, up to a maximum of 200 words each, are printed on the ballot. Voters in nine states are limited to deciding whether the officer should be recalled. If the officer is removed, a successor is elected in a subsequent special election. In the other states, voters decide whether to remove the officer and simultaneously vote to elect a successor in the event the officer is removed. Early experience with the recall revealed that an officer could be removed from office by a majority vote, but is reelected by a plurality vote if three or more candidates split the votes. To prevent this occurrence, constitutional and statutory provisions and local government charters stipulate that an officer may not be a candidate for reelection if the recall is successful. Furthermore, these provisions stipulate that a targeted officer who resigns may not be appointed to the same or similar office for a period of two years. Officers subject to the recall are not limited in spending their own funds to retain office by state corrupt practices (campaign finance) acts as the result of the United States Supreme Court's ruling in Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 at 143 (1976). Classical representation theory is premised upon the belief that regularly scheduled elections are sufficient to ensure that elected officers will be accountable and responsive to the voters. Governmental corruption and unrepresentative governing bodies in the post civil war period in the United States generated several reform movements including the populists whose agenda sought to place the citizens back in control of government. They advocated the recall, initiative, and protest referendum. The latter two were authorized first by a South Dakota constitutional amendment in 1898. The first governmental unit to adopt the recall was the city of Los Angeles whose 1902 'home rule' charter also included the initiative and referendum. The original opponents of the recall argued that there was no need for this control device since other methods - impeachment process, legislative address (directing the governor to remove a named officer), and statutes providing for automatic vacating of an office upon conviction of a felony - exist to remove officers who abused the public trust. Opponents also argued the recall would destroy representative government by restraining energetic officers, discourage qualified persons from seeking public office, allow the losing political party a second opportunity to win the office, encourage frivolous harassment of officers, and permit removal of officers for inadequate reasons. Furthermore, it was maintained that the recall would destroy judicial independence. Recall proponents advance six arguments. They maintain the device (recall)
Experience with the recall in general supports the recall proponents. It seldom has been used to remove elected state officers (one governor, eight legislators, and one judge), but has been employed more frequently to remove local government officers. Other removal methods seldom are applied. Although it is difficult to measure, it appears that the existence of the recall encourages public officers to be more accountable and responsive to their constituents. The threat of the use of the recall may cause elected officers to reconsider their positions on issues and/or behaviour and may encourage voters to play a more important supervisory role relative to their elected officers. Note to readers: while the United States is the primary case study of the use of legislative recall, the Canadian province of British Columbia introduced legislative re-call (re-election) by petition (40% of registered voters) in 1995. See also Popular Consultations: Referendums, Plebiscites, Recall. Frequency/Date/Day of Elections
Legislative terms should be long enough to provide some continuity and consistency in government and policy, long enough to allow new representatives to learn the ropes of legislating, and long enough to avoid 'voter fatigue' where citizens give up on going to the polls because they feel that they made their political choice too recently. However, the term of office of a parliament needs to be short enough to maintain an accountable link between the voter, representative, and government. In democracies the average length of office for lower houses of bicameral parliaments is two to five years, while for upper chambers it is four to nine years. Elections can be staggered between presidential and parliamentary elections and even within sections of the legislature. For example, one third of the US House of Representatives are returned every two years. Lastly, parliaments can either have fixed terms (US) or maximum terms (UK) which allow the government of the day to choose exactly when the elections are held. One advantage of fixed terms is that the sitting government finds it more difficult to manipulate the political stage towards a certain election date picked by them, but fixed terms of office can also mean that the campaigning period becomes tediously long and turns off the majority of voters. Voter participation in elections can be dramatically influenced by the day (or days) on which elections are held. If high participation is deemed to be a normative good then holding the elections on a day which facilitates the 'ease of voting' makes sense. Thus elections can be held on the weekend or on a public holiday (perhaps one specially called for the election). If the election is held on a public holiday there is more justification for making voter turnout compulsory, see Compulsory Voting. Voter turnout may well be higher in a season of better weather. This is especially true in developing world countries where basic transportation is more of an issue. Therefore, elections are likely to have higher turnout when they are not held in the rainy season of a tropical country, or in the deep of mid winter in a cold climate nation. Parliamentary SizeHow large should a country's representative assembly be? The question is not trivial. Assembly size has measurable effects on the representation of political parties. Especially, in smaller magnitude systems (such as single-member districts, but also small multimember districts) having more seats means more districts in which smaller parties with localized support have greater chances for representation. An assembly that is too small for the country may thus shut out important interests. Regardless of district magnitude, a small assembly may create a feeling of 'distance' between representatives and voters, even voters who favor large parties. On the other hand, an assembly that is overly large may create an unwieldy legislative process and generate a need for more complex intra-assembly committee structures or encourage the delegation of more legislative authority to the executive branch. Thus the question arises of what is the 'optimal' assembly size for a given country of a given population. One of the most important activities of a legislator is communication. A legislator is engaged in communication with both constituents and other legislators. Obviously, there are other persons with whom legislators communicate and there are other activities in which legislators are engaged besides communication. Nonetheless, a crucial feature of the working life of a legislator is to perform the representation function - communicating with constituents - and to perform the lawmaking function in which a legislator must communicate with other legislators. Assembly sizes that are small for a given country will minimize communication channels among legislators, and hence streamline the lawmaking function, but at the expense of multiplying the communication channels with constituents. Conversely, assembly sizes that are large for a given country will reduce communication channels with constituents - hence, other things equal, 'improving' representation' - but will make the lawmaking process less effective due to multiplication of communication channels involving other legislators. In between assemblies that are 'too small' and those that are 'too large' for a given country, there is an optimal size that minimizes the total number of communication channels. Actual Assembly Sizes and Nations' Populations The reasoning above would suggest that there would be a systematic relationship between assembly size and population. A study of actual assembly sizes for established democracies in the advanced industrial states revealed the following cube-root relationship between population and assembly size:
where S is the number of seats in the lower or sole house of the assembly, and P is the total population of the country. However, it was also found that for countries in the developing world, this appealingly simple relationship overpredicted the size of assemblies. The reason appears to be that what is relevant is not the total population, but the 'active' population, Pa. The active population - that portion that can be assumed to be actually involved in market exchange and therefore in seeking political representation - can be estimated as:
where L is the literacy rate and W is the working-age fraction of the total population. Thus, if a country had a population of ten million, with a 90% literacy rate and 55% of the population of working age, its active population would be Pa = 10,000,000 x .90 x .55 = 4,950,000. If a country had a population of ten million, 55% of which was of working age, but its literacy rate was only 75%, then its active population would be Pa = 10,000,000 x .75 x .55 = 4,125,000. In developed countries, there is little difference between active and total population, but in developing countries, there may be a difference. When all countries with assemblies were investigated, the following relationship between active population and number of seats in the assembly was revealed:
Thus to take our two examples above, the country with the active population of 4,950,000 would be predicted to have an assembly of 215 members, while the country with the active population of 4,125,000 would be predicted to have an assembly of 202 members. Very few countries have assemblies that are larger than twice the size predicted by this equation and only a few have assemblies that are smaller than half the predicted value. So, the equation may be thought of as a useful predictor of the suitable size of a country's assembly, once the active population of the country can be ascertained. A Theoretical Model Now the question that remains is whether this relationship is purely empirical, or if it can be given a theoretical foundation. There is indeed a theoretical basis for the equation: The 'communications channel' model, alluded to above, allows us to derive the relationship. If S is the number of assembly seats and Pa the total active population, then the average constituency of one assembly member consist of Pa/S active citizens. Because the assembly member is both a sender and receiver of information, the total number of constituent communication channels, cc, is 2Pa/S. Inside the assembly, every member communicates with S-1 other members, again in a dual capacity as both sender and receiver of information. He also monitors the channels connecting the other S-1 members to one another. The total number of channels inside the assembly, cs, is:
which may be simplified to S2/2 for any value of S large enough to be a realistic national assembly size (because the term, S/2 -1, will have negligible effect) . So the total number of channels making demands on the assembly member is:
The assembly size that is optimal is the one that minimizes the total number of communication channels for a given active population. That number may be determined by calculating the derivative dc/dS and making it zero:
The result is 2Pa = S3, which then gives us the model:
Obviously, as with any theoretical model, much detail is left out. Yet the empirical fit is quite good, and so the model tells us that we might expect pressures to change assembly size if a given country's assembly falls too far above or below the model's prediction. If a country were to set its assembly size according to this model, and to adjust its assembly size periodically according to the model as active population grows, pressures to change the size of the assembly would be less likely to result than if other methods are used, or periodic adjustments are not permitted. DistrictingThe way in which district or constituency boundaries are drawn can be of as crucial importance to the final results as the type of electoral system used. That is why an entire section of this site has been dedicated to assessing the science of districting, see Electoral Systems that Delimit Electoral Districts. At one extreme, single member district boundaries can be 'gerrymandered' to the advantage of one particular party or group. This was particularly apparent in the Kenyan elections of 1993 when huge disparities between the sizes of electoral districts - the largest had 23 times the number of voters as the smallest - contributed to the ruling Kenyan African National Union party's winning a large parliamentary majority with only 30% of the popular vote. However, gerrymandering is also common in local government in the United States where the party controlling the state legislature often has control over districting. Boundary designers often work to three major principles when drawing lines around people on a map:
It is true to say that boundary delimitation becomes a much greater problem and important issue the smaller the number of members elected from the district. Boundary delimitation for single member districts is the most politicized science.
Way of VotingBeyond proportionality, there are other ways of thinking about how electoral systems behave. One way is to assess what degree of choice on the ballot paper is given to a voter under each system. This gives us a very different way of illustrating the differences between electoral system types. Ballots may be categorical or ordinal in structure, and they can be centred on candidates, on parties, or allow the voter to express a choice between both candidates and parties. Categorical ballots compel the voter to choose one candidate or party, while ordinal ballots allow the voter to express a more sophisticated range of choice. As Figure Three shows, some electoral systems give an ordinal choice within a candidate-centred ballot. For example, preferential voting systems such as the Alternative Vote (AV) and the Single Transferable Vote (STV), see Alternative Vote and Single Transferable Vote, do this by allowing the voter to rank-order all candidates with numbers. Similarly, the Block Vote, see Block Vote, the Two-Round System (TRS), see Two-Round System, and some forms of List PR, see Open, Closed and Free Lists allow the voter to split his or her vote between the candidates of different parties, either via a second round of voting (TRS), having multiple votes to distribute (Block Vote) or via a candidate choice outside the particular PR party list (in 'free list' PR systems). Finally, some electoral systems can offer a choice of both an ordinal and a categorical ballot. Since 1984 the STV ballot for the Australian Senate has included a 'party ticket' box which, when chosen, means that the ballot is treated as though the voter had numerically listed all candidates in the order that their favoured party had chosen.
© International IDEA While ordinal ballots clearly allow voters a greater degree of choice, categorical ballots are more common; indeed, over three-quarters of all the electoral systems analysed in 'The International IDEA' handbook use them. Straight either/or choices between candidates are found in FPTP, SNTV, and the open List PR systems, while categorical choices between parties are inherent within closed List PR systems and the Party Block adaptation of the Block Vote system, see Block Vote. Electoral systems in which an elector has more than one vote, such as MMP, see Mixed Member Proportional or Parallel systems, see Parallel, also logically entail the ability to split votes between two parties. In these cases, however, the choice on each separate ballot is clearly a categorical one, although the overall effect of the two ballots is to create an ordinal choice. See also Ballot Design How votes become seatsIn proportional representation systems there are five key mathematical formulae through which votes are translated into seats. In list PR systems, see List PR, there are 'highest average' methods (D'Hondt and Sainte-Lagu ) and 'largest remainder' methods (Hare and Droop). The single transferable vote form of PR, see Single Transferable Vote, almost always uses the Droop quota. Examples of each method are given below:
Special Mechanisms
There are many ways to enhance the representation of women, minorities, and communal groups. These include multi-member Proportional Representation (PR) or semi-PR election systems, which use reasonably large district magnitudes of seven or more members, thus encouraging parties to nominate women and minorities to increase their electoral chances. A very low threshold, or the elimination of a threshold entirely, in PR systems can also facilitate the representation of hitherto under-represented or unrepresented groups. A few List PR countries require that women make up a proportion of the nominated candidates. As the files in Minority Provisions and Special Mechanisms for Women illustrate, in plurality or majority systems, seats can be set aside in parliament for minority and communal groups.
Compulsory VotingUniversal suffrage is today considered a sine qua non of democratic rule. But what about universal participation? Should the right to vote be complemented with a legal duty to exercise it to assure this goal? While a social norm of voting may be said to exist in many democracies, few have elevated it to a legal citizen duty. Nevertheless, it is an option available to new democracies and worth contemplating as a means to assure high levels of voting, which is likely to enhance the legitimacy of representative institutions and of the political system generally. Among the long-standing democracies that make voting compulsory in elections are Australia, Belgium, and Luxembourg. Other well established democratic nations - The Netherlands in 1970 and Austria more recently - repealed such legal requirements after they had been in force for decades. Mandatory voting is also used in Latin America. Examples there include Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, and Ecuador. In some countries voting has been made compulsory at the discretion of sub-national governments, or is applied only to certain types of elections. Although high levels of turnout can also be found under voluntary voting, there is little doubt that compulsory voting laws are quite effective in raising levels of participation in the countries that have them. This can be inferred from the differences in turnout in a cross-national comparison; better still, it is evident in the surges and declines in turnout following adoption and repeal of mandatory voting laws, respectively, in jurisdictions that availed themselves of this option. It is not possible to generalize about the percentage gain in turnout that can be achieved by making voting obligatory. The increase depends on two factors: how many non-voters are available for mobilization - what the turnout looks like in the status-quo condition - and the effectiveness of the law, which will be affected by the respect the law commands and/or the vigor with which it is enforced. Obviously, the highest potential gains can be realized where voter participation is very low. In a situation where turnout is already high for other reasons (e.g., because of intense partisanship and very competitive races, or because of a well-entrenched social norm) any gain attributable to compulsion will - by contrast - only be incremental. As for the degree of compliance among recalcitrant voters and the reasons for it, the evidence is less unequivocal. In a number of countries the effectiveness of mandatory voting laws apparently does not depend on the law being actively enforced and penalties being imposed. This would indicate that the law per se engenders compliance; perhaps because it helps solidify a social norm of voting that is enforced by society informally without requiring government action. This cannot be taken for granted, however, as respect for the law - and thus compliance - is likely to vary cross-nationally. Mere enactment of compulsory voting will not necessarily assure high turnout. Such a law might also have to be given some teeth. If the conditions allowing for the law to shape behavior by virtue of its normative authority do not exist, the success of mandatory voting may depend on the manner of enforcement. This would naturally require a certain minimum level of administrative capacity on the part of the state, and would also entail costs, although all or part of the cost may be recovered through fines. Countries that enforce mandatory voting laws typically levy fines. Some impose public embarrassment on non-voters or even deny government services or benefits. While there appear to be strong practical and philosophical underpinnings to the desire to implement compulsory voting, there are significant objections against mandatory voting in principle and practice. The most common objection on normative grounds is that citizens ought to have the right NOT to vote as much as the right to vote. Some citizens boycott the election on principle arguing that compulsory voting impinges upon this basic freedom, while many people's failure to vote is borne out of apathy. Second, the argument has been made in Australia that compulsory voting frees political parties from their responsibilities to campaign, energize, and transport voters. This state of affairs favours the established parties over the minor parties and independents whose supporters are more likely to be motivated. Finally, compulsory voting carries with it tremendous cost and administration implications for the state. There are the questions of the accuracy of the voters' list, voter information, and the mechanisms for the follow-up fine or punishment system for non-voters. Things Election System Designers Ought to Consider First and most obvious is the question whether low turnout is, or is likely to be, a problem. If not, the case for mandatory voting will be weaker, although sometimes it is argued that a legally entrenched duty to vote is of symbolic value and may reinforce a social norm of voting. Thus, keeping turnout up even when the conditions that stimulated high turnout before the institution of mandatory voting attenuate or disappear altogether. Second, if compulsory voting is agreed upon, there are more specific design issues: should such a provision be embodied in the constitution or in statutory law? Should voting merely be declared to be a 'civic duty' (as in Italy's constitution), or established as an affirmative citizen obligation, as in Australia? What sanctions should be used and under what conditions should they be imposed, if at all? In many jurisdictions the sanction provided by law are not actually, or only rarely, applied. What legal excuses (e.g., illness, physical impairment, absence due to travel) should be condoned? Should certain population groups - illiterates, persons of advanced age - be exempted from the duty? There are also financial and administrative considerations: can non-voters be identified and targeted for enforcement in an efficient and effective manner? If fines are levied, do most offenders have the ability to pay? Should alternative sanctions be imposed in lieu of fines? If so, what form should they take? Can the enforcement system by self-financing by recovering its costs?
Third, before mandatory voting is imposed, the objections, both normative and political, must be addressed effectively. The 'right to abstain' is often asserted in the United States, and explicable with reference to its individualistic and rights-focused political culture, but the argument is aired elsewhere as well. Ideological resistance may also exist in formerly communist nations, which still labor under the legacy of forced participation in state-sponsored activities. Nevertheless, all governments ultimately rely on coercion to back up socially desirable policies and to assure compliance. Even more importantly, many obligations that governments impose and that citizens take for granted, such as taxes, conscription, and even compulsory schooling, are much more onerous, time-consuming and intrusive than a citizen's occasional trip to a polling station. Given the importance of elections, the social good to be furthered could be seen to outweigh individual inconvenience. Also, it must be noted that with conventional election administration and balloting methods citizens cannot actually be forced to make voting choices anyhow, lest the secrecy of their vote be compromised. At best the state can bring a recalcitrant citizen to the polling place. The only act that can be compelled is attendance, leading some scholars to suggest that we speak of 'compulsory turnout' rather than 'compulsory voting.' The Dutch law was in effect written in such a way as to merely require attendance. Objections may also be fuelled by considerations of partisan advantage and disadvantage. Empirical studies in a number of countries have shown class skews in electoral participation. To the extent that mandatory voting laws raise turnout, parties of the left might stand to benefit disproportionately. Parties drawing their support from the socially and economically advantaged segments of the electorate, by contrast, might suffer losses in vote share. Not surprisingly such concerns also figure prominently in current debates over whether to continue mandatory voting in countries that have it, most notably Belgium and Australia. There is a pragmatic argument for mandatory voting that may appeal to political parties across the spectrum, particularly in a situation where a party system is not yet consolidated. When the state assumes responsibility for citizens turning up at the polling stations, parties and candidate can focus on promoting their programs and on swaying voters, rather than dissipating their energies on getting the voters to come. This was apparently the reason why the introduction of compulsory voting in Australia earlier in the century was rather noncontroversial. The socialization of the cost, and the benefits this provides for political parties may make the proposal more palatable politically, thus facilitating adoption, perhaps even by consensus. At least as long as one of the parties does not have a clear mobilizational advantage under the voluntary voting regime, which would be neutralized by compulsory voting. Finally, a word must be said about side effects. It should be noted that mandatory voting will in all likelihood increase the percentage of invalid ballots due to deliberate spoiling or casting of blank ballots as a form of protest. But this may not be a persuasive argument against mandatory voting laws for two reasons. First, evidence indicates that the increase in turnout exceeds the increase in invalid ballots so that there are net gains in participation. Second, even invalid ballots can play a useful function. Indeed, under a compulsory voting regime the casting of an invalid ballot may become an additional electoral choice option that carries a political message (a vote for none-of-the-above, as it were). It is certainly much easier to interpret than mere abstention because it requires a positive act, whereas abstention constitutes a mere failure to participate. Moreover, a ballot spoiler would still be a participant operating within the system, using the ballot as a means to communicate disaffection. While nonvoting might easily be dismissed as a sign of complacency or apathy, a rise in the percentage of invalid ballots under a mandatory voting regime could serve as an indicator that the concerns of a growing segment of the public are not being heeded by politicians.
Minority ProvisionsReserved Seats Reserved seats are one way of ensuring the representation of specific minority groups in parliament. Parliamentary seats are reserved for identifiable ethnic or religious minorities in countries as diverse as
Representatives from these reserved seats are usually elected in much the same manner as other members of parliament, but are sometimes elected only by members of the particular minority community designated in the electoral law. While it is often deemed to be a normative good to represent small communities of interest, it has been argued that it is a better strategy to design structures, which give rise to a representative parliament naturally, rather than through legal obligation. Quota seats may breed resentment on the behalf of majority populations and shore up mistrust between various cultural groups. Instead of formally reserved seats, regions can be over-represented to facilitate the increased representation of minority groups. In essence this is the case in the United Kingdom, where Scotland and Wales have more MPs in the British House of Commons than they would be entitled to if population size alone were the only criteria. The same is true in the mountainous regions of Nepal. Another possibility is the 'best loser' system used in Mauritius, in which some of the highest-polling losing candidates from a particular ethnic group are awarded parliamentary seats to balance overall ethnic representation. Electoral boundaries can also be manipulated to serve this purpose. The Voting Rights Act in the United States has in the past allowed the government to draw weird and wonderful districts with the sole purpose of creating majority Black, Latino, or Asian-American districts; this might be called 'affirmative gerrymandering'. However, the manipulation of any electoral system to protect minority representation is rarely uncontroversial, see US: Ethnic Minorities and Single-Member Districts.
Communal Representation A number of ethnically heterogeneous societies have taken the concept of reserved seats to its logical extension. Seats are not only divided on a communal basis, but the entire system of parliamentary representation is similarly based on communal considerations. This usually means that each defined community has its own electoral roll, and elects only members of its 'own group' to Parliament. In some cases, however, such as Fiji from 1970-1987, electors could vote not only for their own communal candidates but for some 'national' candidates as well. Most communal-roll arrangements were abandoned after it became clear that communal electorates, while guaranteeing group representation, often had the perverse effect of undermining the path of accommodation between different groups, since there were no incentives for political intermixing between communities. The issue of how to define a member of a particular group, and how to distribute electorates fairly between them, was also strewn with pitfalls. In India, for example, the separate electorates, which had existed under colonial rule - for Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and others - were abolished at independence, although some reserved seats remain to represent scheduled tribes and castes. Similar communal-roll systems used at various times in Pakistan, Cyprus, and Zimbabwe have also been abandoned. Despite a controversial history of use, Fiji continues to elect its parliament from separate communal rolls for indigenous Fijian, Indian, and 'general' electors. The one predominant example of a communal-roll system left among contemporary democracies is the optional separate roll for Maori voters in New Zealand, see New Zealand: A Westminster Democracy Switches to PR. Maori electors can choose to be on either the national electoral roll or a specific Maori roll, which elects five Maori MPs to Parliament. The results of New Zealand's first PR elections in 1996 could, however, be said to have weakened the rationale for the communal system: twice as many Maori MPs were elected from the general rolls as from the specific Maori roll. Fiji is also moving away from its communal roll system to more open electoral competition to encourage the development of a multi-ethnic political system. Special Mechanisms for WomenThere are a number of different ways for ensuring that women are represented in parliament. First, there are statutory quotas where women must make up at least a minimum proportion of the elected representatives. This happens in a handful of cases: Italy, where women must make up 50% of the Proportional Representation (PR) ballot, Argentina (30%), and Brazil (20%). It has also been proposed for the Indian Lok Sabha. Such quotas are usually perceived as a transitional mechanism to lay the foundation for a broader acceptance of women's representation. Second, the electoral law can require parties to field a certain number of women candidates; this is the case in the PR systems of Belgium and Namibia, while in Argentina there is the extra proviso that women must be placed in 'winnable' positions and not just at the bottom of a party's list, while in Nepal five percent of the single-member district candidates must be women. Third, political parties may adopt their own informal quotas for women as parliamentary candidates. This is the most common mechanism used to promote the participation of women in political life, and has been used with varying degrees of success all over the world: by the ANC in South Africa, the PJ and the UCR in Argentina, CONDEPA in Bolivia, the PRD in Mexico, the labour parties in Australia and the United Kingdom, and throughout Scandinavia. The use of women-only candidate short-lists by the Labour Party at the 1997 United Kingdom elections almost doubled the number of female MPs, from 60 to 119. Reserved seats have also been set aside for women in Taiwan and other countries. Again, as with all reserved seats, these mechanisms help guarantee women make it into elected positions of office, but some women have argued that quotas end up being a way to appease, and ultimately sideline, women. Being elected to a legislature does not necessarily mean being given substantive decision-making power, and in some countries women parliamentarians, particularly those elected from reserved or special seats, are marginalized from real decision-making responsibility. See Candidates' Qualifications Majority-Plurality SystemsThe distinguishing feature of plurality-majority systems is that they almost always use single-member districts. In a First Past the Post system, sometimes known as a plurality single-member district system, the winner is the candidate with the most votes, but not necessarily an absolute majority of the votes (see First Past the Post (FPTP)). When this system is used in multi-member districts it becomes the Block Vote (see Block Vote). Voters have as many votes as there are seats to be filled, and the highest-polling candidates fill the positions, regardless of the percentage of the vote they actually achieve. Majoritarian systems, such as the Australian Alternative Vote (see Alternative Vote) and the French Two-Round System (see Two-Round System), try to ensure that the winning candidate receives an absolute majority (i.e. over fifty percent). Each system, in essence, makes use of voters' second preferences to produce a majority winner, if one does not emerge from the first round of voting. First Past the Post (FPTP)To date, pure First Past the Post (FPTP) systems are found in the United Kingdom and those countries historically influenced by Britain. Along with the United Kingdom, the most analyzed cases are Canada, India, New Zealand, and the United States of America. However, New Zealand switched to a MMP system of Proportional Representation in 1993 (see New Zealand: A Westminster Democracy Switches to PR). FPTP is also used by a dozen Caribbean nations; by Belize and formerly Guyana in Latin America; by ten Asian states (including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Malaysia); and by many of the small island nations of the South Pacific. Eighteen African nations, mostly former British colonies, use FPTP systems. In total, out of the 212 countries and related territories (see The Global Distribution of Electoral Systems) sixty-eight - just under one third - use FPTP systems. In FPTP systems, the winning candidate is simply the person who wins most votes. In theory, a candidate could be elected with two votes, if every other candidate only secured a single vote. Alterations to this rule transform the system into the Block Vote, the Two-Round System, or the Single Non-Transferable Vote, and these systems are dealt with in more detail in Block Vote, Two-Round System and Single Non-Transferable Vote. However, one adaptation that can also be categorized as FPTP was used in Nepal in the early 1990s. There, due to the low level of literacy in much of the electorate, candidates ran under a party symbol, rather than as individuals. Voters chose between parties, rather than between candidates. Candidates for office were allowed to run in more than one district, if they wished. Any candidate elected in two or more seats would then have to choose which district they would represent. Partial elections were held to fill the vacated seats. See the following case studies UK: Electoral System Experimentation in Cradle of FPTP, The Canadian Electoral System: A Case Study, India - First Past the Post on a Grand Scale and Papua New Guinea. See also First Past the Post - Advantages and First Past the Post - Disadvantages. First Past the Post - AdvantagesFirst Past the Post (FPTP), like other plurality-majority electoral systems, is defended primarily on the grounds of simplicity and its tendency to produce representatives beholden to defined geographic areas. The most often cited advantages of FPTP are that:
First Past the Post - Disadvantagesl plurality-majority systems, with First Past the Post (FPTP) being the chief culprit, have been criticized for the reasons outlined below. Excluding Minority Parties from Fair Representation Here we take the word 'fair' to mean that a party which wins approximately ten percent of the votes should win approximately ten percent of the parliamentary seats. In the 1983 British general election, the Liberal-Social Democratic Party Alliance won twenty-five percent of the votes, but only three percent of the seats. In the 1981 New Zealand election the Social Credit Party won twenty-one percent of the vote, but only two percent of the seats. In the 1989 Botswana general election the Botswana National Front won twenty-seven percent of the votes, but only nine percent of the seats. This pattern is repeated time and time again under FPTP (see UK: Electoral System Experimentation in Cradle of FPTP and New Zealand: A Westminster Democracy Switches to PR). Excluding Minorities from Fair Representation As a rule, under FPTP, parties put up the most broadly acceptable candidate in a particular district so as to avoid alienating the majority of electors. Thus it is rare, for example, for a black candidate to be given a major party's nomination in a majority white district in Britain or the USA. There is strong evidence that ethnic and racial minorities across the world are far less likely to be represented in parliaments elected by FPTP. In consequence, if voting behaviour does dovetail with ethnic divisions, then the exclusion from parliamentary representation of ethnic minority group members can be destabilizing for the political system as a whole (see US: Ethnic Minorities and Single-Member Districts). Excluding Women from Parliament The 'most broadly acceptable candidate' syndrome also affects the ability of women to be elected to parliamentary office, because they are often less likely to be selected as candidates by male-dominated party structures. Evidence across the world suggests that women are less likely to be elected to parliament under plurality-majority systems than under PR ones. The Inter-Parliamentary Union's annual study of 'Women in Parliament' in 1995 found that on average women made up eleven percent of the parliamentarians in established democracies using FPTP, but the figure almost doubled to twenty percent in those countries using some form of Proportional Representation. This pattern has been mirrored in new democracies, especially in Africa. Encouraging the Development of Ethnic Parties In some situations, FPTP can encourage parties to base their campaigns and policy platforms on hostile conceptions of clan, ethnicity, race, or regionalism. In the Malawi multi-party elections of 1994, a history of colonial rule, missionary activity, and Hastings Banda's 'Chewa-ization' of national culture combined to plant the seeds of regional conflict which both dovetailed with, and cut across, pre-conceived ethnic boundaries. The South voted for the United Democratic Front of Bakili Muluzi, the Centre for the Malawi Congress Party of Hastings Banda, and the North for the Alliance for Democracy led by Chakufwa Chihana. There was no incentive for parties to make appeals outside their home region and cultural-political base. Exaggerating 'Regional Fiefdoms' This is where one party wins all the seats in a province or district. In some situations, FPTP tends to create regions where one party, through winning a majority of votes in the region, wins all, or nearly all, of the parliamentary seats. This both excludes regional minorities from representation and reinforces the perception the politics is a battleground defined by who you are and where you live, rather than what you believe in. This has long been put forward as an argument against FPTP in Canada (see The Canadian Electoral System: A Case Study). Leaving a Large Number of 'Wasted Votes' Votes which do not go towards the election of any candidate are often referred to as 'wasted votes.' Related to 'regional fiefdoms' above is the prevalence of wasted votes, when minority party supporters begin to feel that they have no realistic hope of ever electing a candidate of their choice. This can be a particular danger in nascent democracies, where alienation from the political system increases the likelihood that extremists will be able to mobilize anti-system movements. Being Unresponsive to Changes in Public Opinion A pattern of geographically-concentrated electoral support in a country means that one party can maintain exclusive executive control in the face of a substantial drop in popular support. In some democracies under FPTP, a fall from sixty percent to forty percent of a party's popular vote nationally, may represent a fall from eighty percent to sixty percent in the number of seats held, which does not affect its overall dominant position. Unless seats are highly competitive, the system can be insensitive to swings in public opinion. Open to the Manipulation of Electoral Boundaries Any system with single-member districts is susceptible to boundary manipulation, such as unfair gerrymandering or malapportionment of district boundaries (see Boundary Delimitation). This was particularly apparent in the Kenyan elections of 1993 when huge disparities between the sizes of electoral districts - the largest had 23 times the number of voters as the smallest - contributed to the ruling Kenyan African National Union party's winning a large parliamentary majority with only thirty percent of the popular vote. Block Vote
The Block Vote is simply the use of First Past the Post (FPTP) (see First Past the Post (FPTP)) voting in multi-member districts. Each elector is given as many votes as there are seats to be filled, and they are usually free to vote for individual candidates regardless of party affiliation. In most Block Vote systems they may use as many, or as few, votes as they wish. As of September 1997, the Palestinian Authority, Bermuda, Fiji, Laos, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Thailand, the Maldives, Kuwait, the Philippines and Mauritius all use Block Vote electoral systems. The system was also used in Jordan in 1989 (see Jordan - Electoral System Design in the Arab World) and in Mongolia in 1992, but was changed in both countries as a result of unease with the results it produced. A few seats in the British House of Commons, in particular the University seats, were elected by the Block Vote up until 1945. Party Block Vote (PB) For the election of a number of their Members of Parliament (MPs)(all in the cases of Djibouti and Lebanon, and almost all in the cases of Singapore, Tunisia, and Senegal), five countries use an electoral system which falls somewhere between FPTP and the Block Vote as described above. We shall refer to this as the Party Block Vote. As in FPTP, voters usually have a single vote, but unlike FPTP, there are multi-member districts and voters choose between party lists of candidates rather than individuals. The party winning most votes takes all the seats in the district, and its entire list of candidates is duly elected. As in FPTP, there is no requirement to win an absolute majority of the votes. In some countries, the PB is used to ensure balanced ethnic representation, as it enables parties to present ethnically diverse lists of candidates for election. In Lebanon, for example, each party list must be comprised of a mix of candidates from different ethnic groups. In Singapore, there is a range of single-member and multi-member districts. While MPs for the single-member seats are elected by FPTP, most MPs are elected from multi-member districts known as Group Representation Constituencies, which each return between three and six members from a single list of party or individual candidates. Of the candidates on each party or group list, at least one must be a member of the Malay, Indian, or some other minority community. Voters choose between these various lists of candidates with a single vote. While each elector votes only once, in most districts they are effectively choosing all members with one vote. Singapore also uses 'best loser' seats for opposition candidates in some circumstances--as does Ecuador where, if the party which takes second-place wins half the votes of the first party, it is rewarded with a seat (see Ecuador: The Search for Democratic Governance). Block Vote - AdvantagesThe Block Vote is often applauded for retaining the voter's ability to vote for individual candidates, and allowing for reasonably-sized geographical districts. At the same time, it stresses the role of parties and strengthens those parties demonstrating most coherence and organizational ability. The advantages of the Party Block Vote are:
Block Vote - Disadvantages
Under the Block Vote, when voters cast all their votes for the candidates of a single party, which is often the case, the system tends to exaggerate all the disadvantages of FPTP, in particular its disproportionality. In Mauritius in 1982 and 1995, for example, the former opposition won every seat in the legislature with only sixty-four and sixty-five percent of the vote, respectively. This created severe difficulties for the effective functioning of a parliamentary system based on concepts of government and opposition. A critical flaw of the Party Block is the production of 'super-majoritarian' results, where one party can win almost all of the seats with a simple majority of the votes. In the Singaporean elections of 1991, for example, a sixty-one percent vote for the ruling People's Action Party gave it ninety-five percent of all seats in parliament. Alternative VoteThe Alternative Vote (AV) is a relatively unusual electoral system, today used only in Australia, and, in a modified form, in Nauru. Recently, the system has been muted as the best alternative to FPTP in the United Kingdom. AV was used for general elections in Papua New Guinea between 1964 and 1975 (see Papua New Guinea), and in 1996 was recommended as the new electoral system for Fiji. It is thus a good example of the regional diffusion of electoral systems discussed earlier: the majority of past, present, and likely future usage of AV has all occurred within the Oceania region. Like elections under a First Past the Post (FPTP) system, AV elections are usually held in single-member districts. However, AV gives voters considerably more options than FPTP when marking their ballot. Rather than simply indicating their favoured candidate, under AV electors rank the candidates in the order of their choice, by marking a '1' for their favourite candidate, '2' for their second-choice, '3' for their third choice, and so on. The system thus enables voters to express their preferences between candidates, rather than simply their first choice. For this reason, it is often known as 'preferential voting' in the countries using it. AV also differs from FPTP in the way votes are counted. Like FPTP or Two-Round Systems, a candidate who has won an absolute majority of votes (fifty percent plus one) is immediately elected. However, if no candidate has an absolute majority, under AV the candidate with the lowest number of first preferences is 'eliminated' from the count, and their ballot examined for their second preferences. These are then assigned to the remaining candidates in the order as marked on the ballot. This process is repeated until one candidate has an absolute majority, and is declared duly elected. For this reason, AV is usually classified as a majoritarian system, as a candidate requires an absolute majority, and not just a plurality, of all votes cast to secure a seat. See case studies of the Australia The Alternative Vote in Australia, Sri Lanka Sri Lanka: Changes to Accommodate Diversity, and Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea. See advantages Alternative Vote - Advantages and disadvantages Alternative Vote - Disadvantages. Alternative Vote - AdvantagesOne advantage of transferring ballots is that it enables the votes of several aligned candidates to accumulate, so that diverse but related interests can be combined to win representation. The Alternative Vote (AV) also enables supporters of candidates who have little hope of being elected to influence, via their second and later preferences, the election of a major candidate. For this reason, it is sometimes argued that AV is the best system for dealing with elections in deeply divided societies, as it can compel candidates to seek not only the votes of their own supporters but also the 'second preferences' of others (see Papua New Guinea). To attract these preferences, candidates must make broadly-based, centrist appeals to all interests, and not focus on narrower sectarian or extremist issues. The experience of AV in the relatively stable social environment of Australia has also tended to support these arguments. The major parties, for example, typically try to strike bargains with minor parties for the second preferences of their supporters prior to an election - a process known as 'preference swapping'. Furthermore, because of the majority support requirement, AV increases the consent given to elected members, and thus can enhance their perceived legitimacy. Alternative Vote - DisadvantagesThe Alternative Vote (AV) has a number of disadvantages.
Nevertheless, Nauru uses a modified version of AV, mostly in two-member districts. Under the Nauruan system, there are no eliminations, and preferences are counted simply as 'fractional votes'; a first preference is worth one, a second preference is worth a half, a third preference is worth a third, and so on. If no candidate has an absolute majority of first preferences, these lower-order preferences are tallied and the candidate(s) with the highest total(s) wins the seat. Two-Round SystemThe final type of plurality-majority system used for parliamentary elections is the Two-Round System (TRS), also known as the run-off or double-ballot system. Each name indicates the central feature of the system: that it is not one election, but takes place in two rounds, often a week or a fortnight apart. The first round is conducted in the same way as a normal First Past the Post (FPTP) election. If a candidate receives an absolute majority of the vote, then they are elected outright, with no need for a second ballot. If, however, no candidate receives an absolute majority, then a second round of voting is conducted, and the winner of this round is declared elected. The details of how the second round is conducted vary in practice from state to state. The most common method, as used in the Ukraine, is for the second round of voting to be a straight 'run-off' contest between the two highest vote-winners from the first round; this is called a majority-runoff system (see Ukraine - The Perils of Majoritarianism in a New Democracy). It produces a result that is truly majoritarian, in that one of the two candidates will necessarily achieve an absolute majority of votes and be declared the winner. A variant on this procedure is used for legislative elections in France, the country most often associated with the TRS. For these elections, any candidate who has received the votes of over 12.5% of the registered electorate in the first round can stand in the second round. Whoever wins the highest numbers of votes in the second round is then declared elected, regardless of whether they have won an absolute majority or not. Unlike straight majority-runoff, this system is not truly majoritarian, as there may be up to five or six candidates contesting the second round of elections. We therefore refer to it as a majority-plurality variant of the TRS. Two-Round Systems are used to elect over thirty national parliaments and are an even more common method for electing presidents. Along with France, many of the other independent nations which use TRS are territorial dependencies of the French Republic, or have been historically influenced in some way by the French. In francophone Sub-Saharan Africa, the Central African Republic, Mali, Togo, Chad, Gabon, Mauritania, and the Congo, and in North Africa, Egypt use the system. Cuba, Haiti, Iran, Kiribati and the Comoros Islands also use Two-Round Systems for their legislative elections, as do the post-Soviet bloc states of Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Moldova, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. Unsurprisingly, in Western Europe, France is joined by Monaco in using TRS. Albania and Lithuania run TRS elections alongside List PR elections as part of their parallel systems, while Hungary uses TRS to decide the results of the majoritarian district electoral component of its Mixed Member Proportional PR system. Two-Round System - AdvantagesFirst and foremost, the Two-Round System (TRS) allows voters to have a second choice for their chosen candidate, or even to change their minds on their favoured choice between the first and the second rounds. It thus shares some features with preferential systems like the Alternative Vote (AV) (see Alternative Vote), in which voters are asked to rank candidates, while also enabling voters to make a completely fresh choice in the second round if they so desire. Secondly, it encourages diverse interests to coalesce behind the successful candidates from the first round in the lead-up to the second round of voting, thus encouraging bargains and trade-offs between parties and candidates. TRS also enables the parties and the electorate to react to changes in the political landscape that occur between the first and the second rounds of voting. In addition, TRS systems lessen the problems of 'vote splitting', the common situation under First Past the Post (FPTP) elections where two similar parties 'split' their combined vote between them, thus allowing a less popular candidate to win the seat. Finally, because electors do not have to rank candidates with numbers to express their second choice, TRS may be better suited to countries with widespread illiteracy than systems which use preferential numbering like the AV or the Single Transferable Vote (see Single Transferable Vote). Two-Round System - DisadvantagesIt is perhaps surprising that Two-Round Systems (TRS) are the third most popular among the 211 country cases analyzed in this guide. The system places considerable pressure on the electoral administration to run a second election soon after the first, significantly increasing the cost of the overall election process and the time between the holding of an election and the declaration of a result; this can lead to instability and uncertainty. The TRS also places an additional burden on the voter, and sometimes there is a sharp drop-off in turnout between the first round and the second. In addition, the TRS shares many of the disadvantages of a First Past the Post (FPTP) system, without its countervailing simplicity. Research has shown that the TRS in France produces the most disproportional results of any Western democracy. See the case study of Mali: A Two-Round System in Africa. Semi-Proportional SystemsSemi-PR systems are those which inherently translate votes cast into seats won in a way that falls somewhere between the proportionality of Proportional Representation (PR) systems and the majoritarianism of plurality-majority systems. The three Semi-PR electoral systems used for legislative elections are the Single Non-Transferable Vote (SNTV), Parallel (or mixed) systems, and the Limited Vote (LV). SNTV Systems In SNTV systems, each elector has one vote, but there are several seats in the district to be filled, and the candidates with the highest number of votes fill these positions. This means that in a four-member district, for example, one would on average need only just over twenty percent of the vote to be elected. This allows for the election of minority-party candidates, and improves overall parliamentary proportionality (see Single Non-Transferable Vote). Parallel Systems Parallel systems use both PR lists and plurality-majority ('winner-take-all') districts (see Parallel). However, unlike Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) systems (see Single Transferable Vote), under Parallel systems the PR lists do not compensate for any disproportionality within the majoritarian districts. Parallel systems have been widely adopted by new democracies in Africa and the former Soviet states (see The Global Distribution of Electoral Systems). LV Systems The LV falls between SNTV and the Block Vote, as there are multi-member districts, and winning candidates are simply those who poll most votes. Voters have fewer votes than there are seats to be filled, but more than one vote (see Limited Vote). See case studies on Japan Japan - Electoral Reform, Russia Russia - An Evolving Parallel System and Jordan Jordan - Electoral System Design in the Arab World.
ParallelParallel (or mixed) systems use both Proportional Representation (PR) lists and 'winner-take-all' districts. However, unlike MMP systems (see Single Transferable Vote), the PR lists do not compensate for any disproportionality within the majoritarian districts. Parallel systems are currently used in twenty countries, and are a feature of electoral system design in the 1990s - perhaps because, on the face of it, they appear to combine the benefits of PR lists with single-member district representation. The Cameroon, Croatia, Guatemala, Guinea, Japan, South Korea, Niger, Russia, the Seychelles, and Somalia use First Past the Post (FPTP) single-member districts alongside a List PR component, while Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Lithuania use the Two-Round System for the single-member district component of their system. Andorra uses the Block Vote to elect half its MPs, while Tunisia and Senegal use the Party Block to elect a number of their deputies. Taiwan is unusual in using SNTV, a Semi-PR system, alongside a PR system component. The balance between the number of proportional seats and the number of plurality-majority seats varies greatly. Only in Andorra and Russia is there a 50/50 split. At one extreme, eighty-eight percent of Tunisia's parliamentarians are elected by the Party Block, with only nineteen members coming from PR lists. At the opposite end, 113 of Somalia's seats are proportionally elected, and only ten are based on FPTP districts. However, in most cases the balance is much closer. For example, Japan elects sixty percent of MPs from single-member districts, with the rest coming from PR lists. See case studies on Japan - Electoral Reform, Russia - An Evolving Parallel System and Ecuador: The Search for Democratic Governance. Parallel - Advantages
In terms of 'disproportionality', Parallel systems' results fall somewhere between straight plurality-majority and Proportional Representation (PR) systems, but in most cases they do give the voter both a district choice and a party choice on the national level, because they require two ballots. A second advantage is that, when there are enough PR seats, small minority parties who have been unsuccessful in the plurality-majority elections can still be rewarded for their votes by winning seats in the proportional allocation. Lastly, this hybrid system should, in theory, fragment the party system less than a pure PR electoral system.
Parallel - Disadvantages
One downside of the Parallel system's increased menu of options is that two classes of MPs can be created:
Furthermore, the fact that Parallel systems fail to guarantee overall proportionality means than some parties may still be shut out of representation despite winning substantial numbers of votes. Parallel systems are also relatively complex, and can leave voters confused as to the nature and operation of the electoral system.
Limited Vote
The Limited Vote (LV) is one of the rarer systems in use today, but it has some advocates due to the way in which it facilitates the election of strong minority candidates and allows for a 'personal' vote for individual candidates. In essence, LV falls between SNTV and the Block Vote, as there are multi-member districts, and winning candidates are simply those who poll most votes. Voters have fewer votes than there are seats to be filled, but more than one vote. In practice this system is only used in Gibraltar, for lower house elections, in Spain for the upper house of the Spanish Cortes, and in local government elections, primarily in the United States. The LV most often gives voters one fewer vote than there are seats to be filled, as is the case in Spain, and as was the case in the United Kingdom between 1867 and 1885.
Advantages of the Limited Vote SystemIn its Spanish and British manifestations the Limited Vote (LV) shared many of the properties of the Block Vote, but some scholars have argued that because it facilities minority representation it should be referred to as a semi-proportional system. Indeed, the LV works much like the Block Vote (see Block Vote) with minorities given a slightly better chance to win representation.
Disadvantages of the Limited Vote SystemThe Limited Vote retains a moderately high degree of disproportionality. Majority governments can be elected on a minority of the vote, and smaller parties can be excluded from the legislature. In 1982 the Spanish Socialists won forty-seven percent of the total votes but sixty-five percent of the seats, while the Union of the Democratic Centre won seven percent of the votes but only 0.5% of the seats. Single Non-Transferable Vote
Under the Single Non-Transferable Vote (SNTV), each elector has one vote, but there are multiple seats in each district to be filled. Those candidates with the highest vote totals fill these positions. This means that in, for example, a four-member district, one would need just over twenty percent of the vote to ensure election. Conversely, a large party with seventy-five percent of the vote spread equally among three candidates is likely to take three of the four seats. As of 1997, SNTV is used for parliamentary elections in Jordan (see Jordan - Electoral System Design in the Arab World) and Vanuatu, and for 125 out of 161 seats in the Taiwanese parliament. However, its most well known application was for Japanese lower house elections from 1948 to 1993.
Advantages of the Single Non-Transferable VoteThe most important difference between the Single Non Transferable Vote (SNTV) and the plurality-majority systems described earlier is that SNTV is better able to facilitate minority party representation. The larger the district magnitude (the number of seats in the constituency), the more proportional the system becomes. In Jordan, SNTV has enabled a number of popular non-party pro-monarchist candidates to be elected, which is deemed to be an advantage within that embryonic party system. But, at the same time, the system encourages parties to become highly organized, and to instruct their voters to allocate their votes to candidates in a way which maximizes a party's likely seat-winning potential. While SNTV gives voters a choice among a party's list of candidates, it is also argued that the system fragments the party system less than pure PR systems do. Over forty-five years of SNTV experience, Japan demonstrated quite a robust 'one party dominant' system. Finally, the system is praised for being easy to use and easy to count. Single Non-Transferable Vote - Disadvantages
On the negative side, the Single Non Transferable Vote (SNTV), as a semi-PR system, is still not able to guarantee that the overall parliamentary results will be proportional. Small parties with say around ten percent support, whose votes are widely dispersed, may not win any seats, and larger parties can receive a substantial 'seat bonus' which propels a national plurality of the vote into an absolute parliamentary majority. In 1980, the Japanese Liberal Democrats won fifty-five percent of the seats with only forty-eight percent of the votes (see Japan - Electoral Reform). The proportionality of the system can be increased by incrementally increasing the number of seats to be filled within multi-member districts, but this weakens the voter-MP relationship that is so prized by those who advocate defined geographical districts. Multi-member districts of nine members in Jordan, and seven members in Vanuatu, are at the very top end of manageable SNTV constituencies. As SNTV gives voters only one vote, the system contains few incentives for political parties to appeal to a broad spectrum of voters in an accommodating manner. As long as they have a reasonable core vote, they can win seats without needing to appeal to 'outsiders'. Furthermore, the fact that multiple candidates of the same party are competing for the same votes means that internal party fragmentation and discord can be accentuated, and that 'clientelistic' politics, where politicians offer subtle electoral bribes to groups of defined voters, is exaggerated. Finally, SNTV requires parties to consider complex strategic considerations of both nominations and vote management. Putting up too many candidates can be as unproductive as putting up too few, and the need for a party to discipline its voters into spreading their votes equally across all a party's candidates is paramount. PR Systems
The rationale underpinning all proportional representation (PR) systems is to consciously reduce the disparity between a party's share of the national vote and its share of the parliamentary seats. If a major party wins forty percent of the votes, it should win approximately forty percent of the seats, and a minor party with ten percent of the votes should also gain ten percent of the parliamentary seats. The use of party lists helps to achieve proportionality, whereby political parties present lists of candidates to the voters on a national or regional basis (see List PR). However, it can be achieved just as easily if the proportional component of an MMP system compensates for any disproportionality arriving out of the majoritarian district results (see Mixed Member Proportional). But preferential voting can work equally well: the Single Transferable Vote, where voters rank-order candidates in multi-member districts, is another well-established proportional system (see Single Transferable Vote). PR systems are a common choice in many new democracies. Over twenty established democracies, and just under half of all 'free' democracies, use some variant of PR (see The Global Distribution of Electoral Systems). PR systems are dominant in Latin America and Western Europe, and make up a third of all the systems in Africa. While seats are often allocated within regionally-based multi-member districts, in a number of countries (e.g. Germany, Namibia, Israel, Netherlands, Denmark, South Africa, and New Zealand) the parliamentary seat distribution is effectively determined by the overall national vote. The formula used to calculate the allocation of seats after the votes have been counted can have a marginal effect on PR electoral outcomes. Formulae can be either by 'highest average' or 'largest remainder' methods (see Transforming Votes to Seats). However, district magnitudes (see District Magnitude) and the threshold for representation are of more importance to overall PR results (see Thresholds). The greater the number of representatives to be elected from a district, and the lower the required threshold for representation in the legislature, the more proportional the electoral system will be, and the greater chance small minority parties will have of gaining representation. In Israel, the threshold is 1.5 percent, while in Germany it is 5 percent. In the Seychelles a ten percent threshold is imposed for the twenty-three PR seats. In South Africa in 1994, there was no legal threshold for representation, and the African Christian Democratic Party won two seats out of 400, with only 0.45 percent of the national vote. Other important choices involve the drawing of district boundaries (see Boundary Delimitation); the way parties constitute their PR lists (see Open, Closed and Free Lists); the complexity of the ballot paper (e.g. the range of choice given to the voter - between parties, or between candidates and parties - see Way of Voting); arrangements for formal or informal 'vote-pooling'; and the scope for agreements between parties, such as that provided by systems which use apparentement (see Apparentement). Allocation of SeatsA slightly different way to the simple division in Overview of looking at the range of choice within Proportional Representation (PR) systems is to differentiate systems by whether they use one or two 'tiers' to allocate seats, and by whether the lists are open, closed, or free (panachage). Countries that allocate seats only on one tier may do it by using national lists, as in Namibia and the Netherlands, or entirely by regional lists, as in Finland (see Finland: Candidate Choice and Party Proportionality) and Switzerland (see Switzerland). The Single Transferable Vote (STV) has almost always been used as a one-tier system (as in Ireland - see Ireland: The Archetypal Single Transferable Vote System). Two-tier allocations may entail both national and regional lists, as in South Africa, regional lists only as in Denmark, a national PR list and a single-member district component as in Germany and New Zealand, or regional lists and a single-member district component as in Bolivia. Malta created a two-tier system out of its STV system in the mid-1980s by providing for some extra compensatory seats to be awarded to a party if it wins a majority of the votes but fewer seats than its rivals. See: South Africa: Election Systems and Conflict Management,Germany: The Original Mixed Member Proportional System,New Zealand: A Westminster Democracy Switches to PR,Bolivia: Electoral Reform in Latin America and Malta: STV With Some Twists.
List PR
Most of the seventy-five Proportional Representation (PR) systems identified in The Global Distribution of Electoral Systems use some form of List PR; only nine examples use MMP or Single-Transferable Vote (STV) methods. In its simplest form, List PR involves each party presenting a list of candidates to the electorate, voters voting for a party, and parties receiving seats in proportion to their overall share of the national vote. Winning candidates are taken from the lists in order of their position on the lists. See also List PR - Advantages and List PR - Disadvantages.
List PR - AdvantagesIn many respects, the strongest arguments for Proportional Representation (PR) derive from the way in which the system avoids the anomalous results of plurality-majority systems, and facilitates a more representative legislature (see First Past the Post - Disadvantages). As a number of examples in the developing world in this book show, for many new democracies, particularly those facing deep societal divisions, the inclusion of all significant groups in the parliament can be a near-essential condition for democratic consolidation. Failing to ensure that both minorities and majorities have a stake in these nascent political systems can have catastrophic consequences (see South Africa case study South Africa: Election Systems and Conflict Management). PR systems in general are praised for the reasons outlined below. Faithfully Translate Votes Cast into Seats Won PR systems avoid some of the more destabilizing and 'unfair' results thrown up by plurality-majority electoral systems. 'Seat bonuses' for the larger parties are reduced, and small parties can gain access to parliament without polling huge amounts of votes. Create Few Wasted Votes When thresholds are low, almost all votes cast within PR elections go towards electing a candidate of choice. This increases the voters' perception that it is worth making the trip to the polling booth at election time, as they can be more confident that their vote will make a difference to electoral outcomes, however small. Facilitate Minority Parties' Access to Representation Unless the threshold is unduly high, or the district magnitude is unusually low, any political party with even a few per cent electoral support should gain representation in the legislature. This fulfils the principle of inclusion, which can be crucial to stability in divided societies, and has benefits for decision-making in all democracies. Allow Parties to Present Diverse Lists of Candidates The incentive under List PR systems is to maximize the national vote, regardless of where those votes might come from. Every vote, even from an electorally weak area, goes towards filling another quota, and thus gaining another seat. While this point should not be overemphasized, the experience of South Africa suggests that List PR gives the political space which allows parties to put up multi-racial, and multi-ethnic, lists of candidates. Encourage the Election of Minority Representatives When, as is often the case, voting behaviour dovetails with a society's cultural or social divisions, then List PR electoral systems can help ensure that parliament includes members of both majority and minority groups. This is because parties can be encouraged by the system to craft balanced candidate lists, which appeal to a whole spectrum of voters' interests. For example, the South African National Assembly elected in 1994 was fifty-two percent black (eleven percent Zulu, the rest of Xhosa, Sotho, Venda, Tswana, Pedi, Swazi, Shangaan, and Ndebele extraction), thirty-two percent white (one-third English, two-thirds Afrikaans), seven percent Coloured and eight percent Indian. The Namibian parliament is similarly diverse, with representatives from the Ovambo, Damara, Herero, Nama, Baster, and white (English and German speaking) communities. Make it More Likely that Women are Elected PR electoral systems are often seen as more friendly to the election of women than plurality-majority systems. In essence, parties are able to use the lists to promote the advancement of women politicians, and allow the space for voters to elect women candidates without limiting their ability to vote with a mind on other concerns. As noted earlier, in single-member districts most parties are encouraged to put up a 'most broadly acceptable' candidate, and that person is seldom a woman. While much of the evidence for a link between PR and women's representation comes from Western democracies, there is some preliminary evidence to suggest that a similar pattern is being followed in new democracies, such as those in Africa (South Africa, Mozambique), and in Central and South America (Argentina, Brazil, and Costa Rica). Restrict the Growth of 'Regional Fiefdoms' Because PR systems reward minority parties with a minority of the seats, they are less likely to lead to situations where a single party holds all the seats in a given province or district. Lead to More Efficient Government It has been argued, in relation to established democracies, that governments elected by PR methods are more effective than those elected by First Past the Post (FPTP). The Western European experience suggests that parliamentary-PR systems score better with regard to governmental longevity, voter participation and economic performance. The rationale behind this claim is that regular switches in government between two ideologically polarized parties, as can happen in FPTP systems, makes long-term economic planning more difficult, while broad PR coalition governments help engender a stability and coherence in decision-making which allows for national development. Make Power-Sharing More Visible In many new democracies, power-sharing between the numerical majority of the population who hold political power and a small minority who hold economic power is an unavoidable reality. Where the numerical majority dominates parliament, negotiations between different power blocks are less visible, less transparent, and less accountable. It has been argued, in particular in Africa, that PR, by including all interests in parliament, offers a better hope that decisions are taken in the public eye, and by a more inclusive cross-section of the society. List PR - DisadvantagesThe majority of the criticisms of Proportional Representation (PR) are based around two broad themes:
The most cited arguments against using PR are that it leads to:
Furthermore, the use of a PR system presumes some kind of recognized party structure, since voters are expected to vote for parties rather than individuals or groups of individuals. This makes List PR particularly difficult to implement, and probably less meaningful, in those societies which do not have parties, or have very embryonic and loose party structures (see Jordan - Electoral System Design in the Arab World). Lastly, PR systems often have a barrier to surmount because they are still unfamiliar systems to many countries with English or French colonial histories, and because some variants are seen as being too complex for voters to understand or for the electoral administration to implement. Mixed Member Proportional
Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) systems, as used in Germany (see Germany: The Original Mixed Member Proportional System), New Zealand (see New Zealand: A Westminster Democracy Switches to PR), Bolivia (see Bolivia: Electoral Reform in Latin America), Italy, Mexico, Venezuela, and Hungary, attempt to combine the positive attributes of both majoritarian and Proportional Representation (PR) electoral systems. A proportion of the parliament (roughly half in the cases of Germany, Bolivia, and Venezuela) is elected by plurality-majority methods, usually from single-member districts, while the remainder is constituted by PR lists. This structure might on the surface appear similar to that of the Parallel systems described earlier; but the crucial distinction is that under MMP the list PR seats compensate for any disproportionality produced by the district seat results. For example, if one party wins ten percent of the national votes but no district seats, then they would be awarded enough seats from the PR lists to bring their representation up to approximately ten percent of the parliament. In all but one of the seven countries using MMP, district seats are elected using FPTP, while Hungary uses the Two-Round system previously described. Italy's method is considerably more complicated, with one-quarter of the parliamentary seats being reserved to compensate for wasted votes in the single-member districts. In Venezuela there are 102 FPTP seats, 87 National List PR seats and 15 extra compensatory PR seats. In Mexico 200 List PR seats compensate for the usually high imbalances in the results of the 300 FPTP seats, but an extra provision states that no single party can win more than 315 parliamentary seats, and if they receive less than sixty percent of the vote the maximum becomes 300 seats. Mixed Member Proportional - Advantages
While Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) retains the proportionality benefits of Proportional Representation (PR) systems, it also ensures that voters have geographical representation. They also have the luxury of two votes, one for the party and one for their local MP.
MMP - Disadvantages
One problem of Mixed Member Proportional System (MMP) is that the vote for their local MP is far less important than the party vote in determining the overall allocation of parliamentary seats, and voters do not always understand this. Furthermore, and akin to the difficulties inherent within Parallel systems (see Parallel - Disadvantages), MMP can create two classes of MPs. It should also be remembered that in translating votes into seats, MMP can be as proportional an electoral system as pure List PR, and is therefore bedevilled with all the previously-cited advantages and disadvantages of PR. However, one reason why MMP is sometimes seen as less preferable than straight List PR is that it can give rise to what are called 'strategic voting' anomalies. In New Zealand in 1996, in the constituency of Wellington Central, some National Party strategists urged voters not to vote for the National Party candidate, because they had calculated that under MMP his election would not give the National Party another seat in parliament, but simply replace another MP from their party list. It was therefore better for the National Party to see a candidate elected from another party, providing he was in sympathy with the National Party's ideas and ideology, than for votes to be 'wasted' in support of their own candidate.
Single Transferable VotePolitical scientists have long been advocated the Single Transferable Vote (STV) as one of the most attractive electoral systems. However, its use for national parliamentary elections has been limited to a few cases - Ireland since 1921 (see Ireland: The Archetypal Single Transferable Vote System), Malta since 1947 (see Malta: STV With Some Twists), and once in Estonia in 1990. It is also used in Australia for elections to the Tasmanian House of Assembly, the Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly, and the federal Senate (see The Alternative Vote in Australia); and in Northern Ireland local elections. In the nineteenth century, Thomas Hare in Britain and Carl Andru in Denmark independently invented the core principles of the system. STV uses multi-member districts, with voters ranking candidates in order of preference on the ballot paper in the same manner as the Alternative Vote (see Alternative Vote). In most cases this preference marking is optional, and voters are not required to rank-order all candidates; if they wish they can mark only one. After the total number of first-preference votes are counted, the count then begins by establishing the 'quota' of votes required for the election of a single candidate. The quota is calculated by the simple formula:
The first stage of the count is to ascertain the total number of first-preference votes for each candidate. Any candidate who has more first preferences than the quota is immediately elected. If no-one has achieved the quota, the candidate with the lowest number of first preferences is eliminated, with his or her second preferences being redistributed to the candidates left in the race. At the same time, the surplus votes of elected candidates (i.e., those votes above the quota) are redistributed according to the second preferences on the ballot papers. For fairness, all the candidate's ballot papers are redistributed, but each at a fractional percentage of one vote, so that the total redistributed vote equals the candidate's surplus (except in the Republic of Ireland, which uses a weighted sample). If a candidate had 100 votes, for example, and their surplus was ten votes, then each ballot paper would be redistributed at the value of 1/10th of a vote. This process continues until all seats for the constituency are filled. Single Transferable Vote - AdvantagesAs a mechanism for choosing representatives, the Single Transferable Vote (STV) is perhaps the most sophisticated of all electoral systems, allowing for choice between parties and between candidates within parties. The final results also retain a fair degree of proportionality, and the fact that in most actual examples of STV the multi-member districts are relatively small means that an important geographical link between voter and representative is retained. Furthermore, voters can influence the composition of post-election coalitions, as has been the case in Ireland, and the system provides incentives for inter-party accommodation through the reciprocal exchange of preferences. STV also provides a better chance for the election of popular independent candidates than List PR, because voters are choosing between candidates, rather than between parties (although a party-list option can be added to an STV election; this is done for the Australian Senate - see The Alternative Vote in Australia). Single Transferable Vote - Disdvantages
The Single Transferable Vote (STV) is often criticized on the grounds that preference voting is unfamiliar in many societies, and demands, at the very least, a degree of literacy and numeracy. The intricacies of an STV count are themselves quite complex, which is also seen as being a drawback. STV also carries the disadvantages of all parliaments elected by PR methods, such as under certain circumstances increasing the power of small minority parties. Moreover, at times the system, unlike straight List PR, can provide pressures for political parties to fragment internally, because at election-time members of the same party are effectively competing against each other, as well as against the opposition, for votes. Many of these criticisms have, however, proved to be little trouble in practice. STV elections in Ireland (see Ireland: The Archetypal Single Transferable Vote System), Malta (see Malta: STV With Some Twists) and Tasmania (see The Alternative Vote in Australia) have all tended to produce relatively stable, legitimate governments comprised of one or two main parties. PR Related IssuesThe consequences of different proportional representation systems for parliamentary and government representation are not merely influenced by the 'type' of PR system used but also a number of other technical issues concerning the design of the PR electoral system, see PR Systems. File Thresholds details the important impact of thresholds for the parliamentary representation of political parties. File Apparentement discusses the opportunities for parties to come together for the sake of pooling their votes for seat allocation (apparentement). File Open, Closed and Free Lists looks at the voter's ability to choose between candidates and parties on a PR ballot paper - whether the lists are 'open, closed, or free.' While District Magnitude analyzes the crucial variable of 'district magnitude,' or how many legislators are elected from each district.
Thresholds
All electoral systems have thresholds of representation: that is, the minimum level of support which a party needs to gain representation, either legally imposed (formal), or merely mathematically de-facto (effective). In some cases, these thresholds are a by-product of other features of the electoral system, such as the number of seats to be filled and the number of parties or candidates contesting the election, and are thus categorized as 'effective' thresholds. In other cases, however, these thresholds are written into the electoral law, which defines the PR system, and are therefore 'formal'. In Germany, New Zealand, and Russia, for example, there is a five percent threshold: parties which fail to secure five percent of the vote are ineligible to be awarded seats from the PR lists, see Germany: The Original Mixed Member Proportional System, see New Zealand: A Westminster Democracy Switches to PR, and see Russia - An Evolving Parallel System. This provision had its origins in the German desire to limit the election of extremist groups, and is designed to stop very small parties from gaining representation. However, in both Germany and New Zealand there exist 'back-door' routes for a party to be entitled to seats from the lists; in the case of New Zealand a party must win at least one constituency seat, and in the case of Germany three seats, to by-pass the threshold requirements. In Russia in 1995 there were no 'back-door' routes, and almost half of the party-list votes were wasted. Elsewhere, legal thresholds range from 0.67 percent in the Netherlands to 10 percent in the Seychelles, see The Netherlands. Parties, which gain less than this percentage of the vote, are excluded from the count. In all of these cases the existence of a formal threshold tends to increase the overall level of disproportionality, because votes for those parties who would otherwise have gained representation are wasted. In Poland in 1993, even with a comparatively low threshold of five percent, over 34 percent of the votes were cast for parties, which did not surmount it, see Poland: Between Fragmentation and Polarisation. But in most other cases thresholds have a limited effect on overall outcomes, and some electoral experts therefore see them as unnecessary and often arbitrary complications to electoral rules, which in most cases are best avoided. ApparentementHigh effective thresholds can serve to discriminate against small parties - indeed, in some cases this is their express purpose. But in many cases an in-built discrimination against smaller parties is seen as undesirable, particularly in those cases where several small parties with similar support bases 'split' their combined votes and consequently fall beneath the threshold, when one aligned grouping would have gained enough combined votes to have won some seats in the legislature. To get around this problem, many countries that use list PR systems also allow small parties to group together for electoral purposes, thus forming a 'cartel' or apparentement to contest the election. This means that the parties themselves remain as separate entities, and are listed separately on the ballot paper, but that votes gained by each party are counted as if they belonged to the entire cartel, thus increasing the chances that their combined vote total will be above the threshold and hence that they may be able to gain additional representation. This device is a feature of a number of List PR systems in continental Europe, Chile before 1973, Brazil after 1979, and in Uruguay, Argentina, see Argentina, and Israel, see Electoral Reform in Israel. Open, Closed and Free ListsThere are a number of important variations in ways of voting between the various List Proportional Representation (PR) systems. One of the most important is whether lists are open, closed, or free in terms of the ability of electors to vote for a preferred candidate as well as for a party. The majority of List PR systems in the world are closed, meaning that the order of candidates elected by that list is fixed by the party itself, and voters are not able to express a preference for a particular candidate. The List PR system instituted for the first democratic South African elections in 1994 was a good example of a closed list, see South Africa: Election Systems and Conflict Management. The ballot paper contained the party names and symbols, and a photograph of the party leader, but no names of individual candidates. Voters simply chose the party they preferred; the individual candidate elected as a result was pre-determined by the parties themselves. This meant that parties could include some candidates (perhaps members of minority ethnic and linguistic groups, or women) who might have had difficulty getting elected otherwise. One negative aspect of closed lists is that voters have no say in determining who the representative of their party will be. Closed lists are also extremely unresponsive to changes in events. In East Germany's pre-unification elections of 1990, the top-ranked candidate of one party was exposed as a secret-police informer only four days before the election, and immediately expelled from the party; but because lists were closed, electors had no choice but to vote for him if they wanted to support his former party. Many of the List PR systems used in continental Europe therefore use open lists, in which voters can indicate not just their favoured party, but their favoured candidate within that party. In most of these systems the vote for a candidate as well as a party is optional and, because most voters plump for parties rather than candidates, the candidate-choice option of the ballot paper often has little effect. But in some cases (Finland is one - see Finland: Candidate Choice and Party Proportionality) this choice becomes highly important, because people must vote for candidates, and the order in which candidates are elected is determined by the number of individual votes they receive. While this gives voters much greater freedom over their choice of candidate, it also has some less desirable side effects. Because candidates from within the same party are effectively competing with each other for votes, this form of open list can lead to intra-party conflict and fragmentation. It also means that the potential benefits to the party of having lists, which feature a diverse slate of candidates, can be overturned. In open-list PR elections in Sri Lanka for example, the attempts of major Sinhalese parties to include minority Tamil candidates in winnable positions on their party lists have been quashed because many voters deliberately voted for lower-placed Sinhalese candidates instead, see Sri Lanka: Changes to Accommodate Diversity.
Some other devices are used in a small number of jurisdictions to add additional flexibility to open-list systems. In Luxembourg and Switzerland electors have as many votes as there are seats to be filled, and can distribute them to candidates either within a single party list or across several party lists as they see fit, see Switzerland. The capacity to vote for more than one candidate across different party lists (known as panachage), or to cast more than one vote for a single highly-favoured candidate (known as cumulation), both provide an additional measure of control to the voter and are categorized here as free list systems.
District MagnitudeThere is near-universal agreement among electoral specialists that the crucial determinant of an electoral system's ability to translate votes cast into seats won proportionally is the district magnitude; i.e., the number of members to be elected in each electoral district. Under a single-member system such as First Past The Post (FPTP), Alternative Vote (AV) or the Two-Round System (TRS), there is a district magnitude of one; voters are electing a single representative. Under a multi-member system, by contrast, there will by definition be more than one member elected in each district. Under any proportional system, the number of members to be chosen in each district determines, to a significant extent, how proportional the election results will be. The systems, which achieve the greatest degree of proportionality, will utilise very large districts, because such districts are able to ensure that even very small parties are represented in the legislature. For example, a district in which there are only three members to be elected means that a party must gain at least 25 percent +1 of the vote to be assured of winning a seat. A party, which has the support of only ten percent of the electorate, would not win a seat, and the votes of this party's supporters could therefore be said to have been wasted. In a nine-seat district, by contrast, ten percent +1 of the vote would guarantee that a party wins at least one seat. This means not only that the results are more proportional, but that there is also more chance that small parties will be able to be elected. The problem is that as districts grow larger - both in terms of the number of seats and often, as a consequence, in their geographic size as well so the linkage between an elected member and their constituency grows weaker. This can have serious consequences in societies where local factors play a strong role in politics, or where voters expect their member to maintain strong links with the electorate and act as their 'delegate' in the legislature. Because of this, there has been a lively debate about the best level of district size. Most scholars agree, as a general principle, that district magnitudes of somewhere between three and seven seats per district tend to work quite well, and there is also general agreement that odd numbers like three, five, and seven work better in practice than even numbers, particularly in a two-party system. But this is only a rough guide, and there are many situations where a higher number may be both desirable and necessary to ensure satisfactory representation and proportionality. In many countries, the electoral districts follow pre-existing administrative divisions, perhaps state or provincial boundaries, which means that there may be a wide variation in their size. Numbers at the high and low ends of the spectrum tend to deliver more extreme results. At one end of the spectrum, a whole country can form one electoral district, which normally means that the quota for election is extremely low and even very small parties can gain election. In the Netherlands, for example, the whole country forms one district of 150 members, which means that election results are extremely proportional, but also means that parties with extremely small vote shares, even less than one percent, can gain representation, and that the link between an elected member and a geographic area is extremely weak, see The Netherlands. At the other end of the spectrum, PR systems can be applied to situations in which there is a district magnitude of only two. A system of List PR is applied to two-member districts in Chile, for example, and as the Chilean case study indicates, this delivers results which are quite disproportional, even though a proportional formula is used, because only two parties can gain representation in each district, see Chile: Proportionality or Majoritarianism?. This has tended to undermine the benefits of PR in terms of representation and legitimacy. Both of these polarized examples serve to underline the crucial importance of district magnitude in any system of proportional representation. It is arguably the single most important institutional choice when designing a PR electoral system, and is also of crucial importance for a number of non-PR systems as well. The Single Non-Transferable Vote, for example, delivers semi-proportional results despite its lack of a proportional electoral formula, precisely because it is used in multi-member districts, see Single Non-Transferable Vote. Similarly, the Single Transferable Vote when applied to single-member districts becomes the Alternative Vote, which retains some of the advantages of STV but not its proportionality, see Single Transferable Vote and see Alternative Vote. In majoritarian systems, as district magnitude increases, proportionality is likely to decrease. To sum up, when designing an electoral system, the district magnitude is in many ways the key factor in determining how the system will operate in practice, the extent of the link between voters and elected members, and the overall proportionality of election results. The Global Distribution of Electoral SystemsAs Table One illustrate, just over half (114, or 54 percent of the total) of the independent states and semi-autonomous territories of the world which have direct parliamentary elections use plurality-majority systems. Another 75 (35 percent) use PR-type systems, and the remaining 22 (ten percent) use semi-PR systems, all but two of which are Parallel systems.
- Table One: The World of Electoral Systems (May 1997) -
NB: 36 established democracies as categorised by Arend Lijphart in Democracies, 2nd ed. (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1998). Lijphart includes all countries considered democratic now, and for the last 20 years, which have a population of at least a quarter of a million people. Free and Not Free classifications from Freedom in the World 1995-1996 (New York, Freedom House, 1997). When classified by population size, the dominance of plurality-majority systems becomes even more pronounced, with parliaments elected by First Past The Post (FPTP), Block Vote (BV), Alternative Vote (AV) or Two-Round System (TRS) methods representing collectively 2.44 billion people (59 percent of the total). Proportional representation electoral systems are used in countries totaling 1.2 billion inhabitants, and semi-PR systems are used to represent just under half a billion people. In our survey the seven countries which do not have directly-elected national parliaments constitute 1.2 billion people, but China makes up 99 percent of that figure. Individually, First Past the Post systems are the most popular, with 68 out of 211 nation-states and related territories giving them 32 percent of the total, followed by the 66 cases of List PR systems (31 percent), see First Past the Post (FPTP) and List PR. But when it comes to people, FPTP systems are used in countries which contain almost twice as many people as those in List PR countries. The 1.8 billion figure in Table One is inflated by India (913 million) and the United States (263 million), but FPTP is also used by many tiny Caribbean and Oceanian islands as well. The largest country that uses List PR is Indonesia with 191 million people, but it is predominantly a system used by middle-sized Western European, Latin American and African countries. Next in order are Two-Round Systems (15 percent) and Parallel systems (9 percent), see Two-Round System and Parallel. While TRS systems are used in more countries, Parallel systems are used by more people. This is largely because Russia (148 million inhabitants) and Japan (125 million) use classical Parallel systems. The Block Vote is used in 13 countries and territories, 6 percent of the countries included, but its 143 million people only represent three percent of the total, see Block Vote. Conversely, Mixed Member Proportional systems are used in only seven countries, but the collective 265 million people of Germany, Venezuela, New Zealand, Mexico, Italy, Bolivia, and Hungary represent six percent of the total, see Mixed Member Proportional. The Single Transferable Vote, see Single Transferable Vote, Alternative Vote, see Alternative Vote, and Single Non-Transferable Vote see Single Non-Transferable Vote systems are the rarest electoral systems in use today, with only two examples of each. The use of AV in Australia and Nauru mean that 18 million people live under AV systems, while Jordan and Vanuatu's SNTV systems represent only five million people, and Ireland and Malta's STV systems four million. If we look at electoral systems in 'established democracies' (i.e., those states with a population of more than a quarter of a million which have held continuing free elections for over 20 years), then we find that proportional representation systems are more numerous with 21 (59 percent) out of the 36 states, but the size of India and the United States still means that 71 percent of people living in these 36 countries live under FPTP systems. MMP systems are over-represented among established democracies at 11 percent, and in fact are used by four million more people than the more widespread List PR systems. Since Japan's switch to a Parallel system there are no examples of SNTV in established democracies, while conversely both the world's examples of STV, Ireland and Malta, fall into this category. If we take a slightly broader view, to take in the tide of democratization which has occurred through the 1980s and 1990s, we find that 98 independent states and related territories are ranked as 'free', on the basis of political rights and civil liberties, in the 1995-96 Freedom House Freedom in the World. Among these countries the distribution of electoral systems bears a close relationship to the overall pattern-proportionately there are slightly more FPTP and List PR systems and around half the number of TRS and Parallel systems, but it is difficult to say that any single electoral system is really any more popular in the 'free' world than the world overall. However, among the 46 countries ranked as 'not free', there are a disproportionate number of Two-Round and Block Vote Systems, and considerably fewer PR systems. In all, plurality-majority systems make up 70 percent of the electoral systems of the 'not free' world. Across continents, the distribution of electoral systems is more mixed. As Table Two and the attached map show, FPTP systems make up approximately 30-45 percent of the total in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and the Americas (overwhelmingly North America and the Caribbean). The system is less common in Europe and the former Soviet Union, but relatively dominant in the island states and territories of Oceania. List PR systems are similarly spread throughout Africa, the Americas (Central and South America), and post-communist Eastern Europe. However, List PR is more dominant in Western Europe (61 percent), and together the three PR systems (List PR, MMP, and STV) constitute three-quarters of all electoral systems in Western Europe. By contrast, almost a third of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and Eastern Europe use French-type Two-Round Systems, while over a third of all countries which use the Block Vote are found in Asia.
- Table Two: Regional Distribution of Systems -
Other Types of Elections
The majority of files on this website concentrate on electoral system provisions for legislative/parliamentary elections. But electoral system design needs to be sophisticated enough to take into account the requirements of elections to other institutions. In the following three files we briefly address the requirements and electoral system choices for:
Presidential Elections
The science of the design of an electoral system to choose a president is somewhat different from that of designing mechanisms to choose legislatures. Presidencies are almost always single offices, and thus proportionality cannot be achieved between majority and minorities. The executive office also entails different powers and responsibilities, and thus the designer may want to prioritize the Design Principle (see Design Principles) criteria in a different way. Presidents can be elected by one of three systems:
Territorial distribution requirements may also be imposed under each of these systems (see Distribution Requirements). First Past the Post
The most straightforward way of electing a president is to simply award the office to the candidate who wins most votes. This is the case for presidential elections in Mexico, Kenya, the Philippines, Zambia, South Korea, Malawi, Iceland, and Zimbabwe. Clearly, such a system is simple, cheap, and efficient. However, in a strongly competitive multi-candidate race it leaves open the possibility that the president will be elected with so few votes that the vast majority of the electorate voted against them. This was the case in Venezuela in 1993, when Rafael Caldera won the presidency with 30.5% of the popular vote. Similarly, at his May 1992 election, the Philippines' President, Fidel Ramos, was elected from a seven-candidate field with only twenty-five of the popular vote. FPTP presidential elections can also exacerbate the problems of winner-take-all politics in a divided society. In Angola in 1992, the UNITA leader, Jonas Savimbi, lost a straight plurality winner-take-all presidential election to Jose dos Santos of the MPLA by forty-nine to forty percent, and immediately re-started the civil war, as he had little incentive to play the democratic opposition game. Presidential Elections - Two-Round System
As in parliamentary elections, one way to avoid candidates being elected with only a small proportion of the popular vote is to hold a second ballot if no one candidate wins a majority on the first round. This can be
France, many Latin American countries, and a number of states in Francophone Africa like Mali and the Ivory Coast use Two-Round Systems (TRS) to elect their presidents; indeed, many more countries who elect presidents use this system than use FPTP. Elsewhere in Africa the system is used by Sierra Leone, Namibia, Mozambique, Madagascar, the Congo and the Central African Republic; in Europe it is used by Finland, Austria, Bulgaria, Portugal, Poland, Russia, and the Ukraine. There are, however, a number of adaptations to straight majority-runoff and majority-plurality rules. In Costa Rica a candidate can win on the first round with only forty percent of the vote; conversely, in Sierra Leone a second round is only avoided if one candidate gets fifty-five percent in the first. In Argentina, a successful candidate must poll forty-five percent, or forty percent plus more than a ten percent lead over the second-placed candidate. Uruguay's presidential election formula, used until the adoption of a straight TRS system in 1996, escapes any previously-outlined categorization. Individual political parties who exist, for electoral purposes, within coalitions (or lema) with other parties can present their own candidate in the presidential election. Voters choose between individual candidates, and then all the candidate votes of a lema are added together. The highest polling lema wins the seat, and the highest polling candidate within that lema fills the seat. TRS presidential elections are deemed to be useful for maximizing the consent given to what is often the most powerful office in government. In particular, they tend to avoid the pitfall of a president wielding vast influence on the back of a minority of the voters. A number of countries also have minimum turnout rates for their presidential elections, typically set at a minimum turnout of fifty percent, as in Russia and many of the former Soviet republics; this is an additional mechanism for ensuring majority support. The utility of such provisions is illustrated by the election in 1996 of two presidents, from very different countries, who both came to power with the support of only one-fifth of the eligible voting-age population: President Clinton of the United States was elected with only twenty-three percent support, and President Chiluba of Zambia with twenty percent. Neither of these results would have been possible under the TRS or majority-turnout requirements of other jurisdictions. However, as with all Two-Round Systems, presidential elections held under TRS rules maximize the cost and resources needed to run elections, and the turnout drop-off between the first and second rounds of voting can often be severe and damaging. Latin America has had a particularly problematic experience with TRS. Apart from those countries where parties could create winning pre-electoral alliances, so that presidential candidates could be elected in the first round (such as Brazil in 1994 and Chile in 1989 and 1994), TRS has led in many cases to minority governments and reduced governability. The system has deepened the polarization of multi-party systems, and accentuated problems of legislative gridlock. For example, in the 1990 elections in Peru, Alberto Fujimori obtained fifty-six percent of the votes in the second round, but his party won only fourteen of sixty seats in the Senate, and thirty-three seats of 180 in the Chamber of Deputies. In Brazil in 1989, Fernando Collor de Melo was elected in the second round with just under half of the votes, but his party won, in non-concurrent parliamentary elections, only three of seventy-five Senate seats and only forty of 503 seats in the Chamber of Deputies. In Ecuador, minority governments have been a constant outcome since the TRS was introduced for presidential elections in 1978. Preferential Voting
One way of getting around the disadvantages of the Two-Round System (TRS) is to merge the first and second round into one election. There are several ways of doing this. The most straightforward adaptation is the preferential system used for presidential elections in Sri Lanka (see the Sri Lankan case study Sri Lanka: Changes to Accommodate Diversity). There, voters are asked to mark not only their first choice candidate, but also (if they wish) their second or third choices by placing the numbers '1', '2' and '3' next to the names of the candidates, in the same manner as the Alternative Vote (see Alternative Vote) and the Single Transferable Vote (see Single Transferable Vote) described earlier. If a candidate gains an absolute majority of first preference votes, they are immediately declared elected. However, if no candidate gains an absolute majority, all candidates other than the top two are eliminated, and their second or third choice votes are passed on to one or the other of the two leading candidates, according to the preference ordering marked. Whoever achieves the highest number of votes at the end of this process is declared elected. This system thus achieves in one election what TRS achieves in two, with significant cost savings and greater administrative efficiency. The disadvantages of the Sri Lankan system include:
This is not a disadvantage of the Alternative Vote (AV), which is used to elect the Irish President (see Ireland: The Archetypal Single Transferable Vote System). The procedure for marking the ballot is virtually identical to the Sri Lankan case, with the exception that Irish voters can mark as many preferences as they wish, and are not restricted to three as is the case in Sri Lanka. But the way the votes are counted is quite different. Instead of simultaneously eliminating all but the top two candidates, under the Alternative Vote the lowest-placed candidate is eliminated, and the corresponding votes transferred according to their next preference. This process is repeated until one candidate has an overall majority, or until all preferences have been counted. Unlike the Sri Lankan case, under Irish AV a lower-placed candidate who picks up lots of preference votes can still overtake higher-placed candidates and ultimately win the seat. The most recent example of a president winning through the transfer of preferences in this manner was the 1990 election of Mary Robinson to the Irish Presidency. Despite these differences, both systems have the same core aim: to make sure that whoever wins the election will have the support of the majority of the electorate. The use of preference votes to express a second choice means that a second round of voting is not required, and this results in significant cost savings, as well as benefits in administrative, logistics, and security terms. Distribution Requirements
One way of trying to ensure that a president has the support of a broad cross-section of the electorate is to introduce a distribution requirement, which acts as another hurdle to be cleared before a candidate can be declared duly elected. In Nigeria in 1993, presidential candidates had to not only win a plurality of the vote, but also secure at least one-third of the votes in at least two-thirds of the thirty-one provinces. In Kenya, to be elected president, a candidate had to receive at least twenty-five percent of the vote in at least five out of the eight provinces. In spite of this, in 1992 a divided opposition allowed Daniel Arap Moi to become President with only thirty-five percent of the vote. Distribution requirements have the benefit of encouraging presidential candidates to make appeals outside their own regional or ethnic base, and if appropriately applied can work very well. However, too stringent requirements can result in no one candidate being elected, creating a vacuum of power fraught with the dangers of instability. And if no single candidate fulfils all the requirements at the first time of asking, none is likely to do so in a re-run.
Upper House ElectionsNot all parliaments, of course, consist only of one chamber; many parliaments, particularly in larger countries, are bicameral, that is, composed of two chambers. Although there are wide variations between the various types of second chamber (also often known as an 'upper house' or a 'senate'), two generalizations about them can be made:
The most common use of second chambers is in federal systems, to represent the constituent units of the federation. For example, states in the USA (see US: Ethnic Minorities and Single-Member Districts) and Australia (see The Alternative Vote in Australia), Länder in Germany, and provinces in South Africa are all separately represented in an upper house. Typically, this involves a weighting in favour of the smaller states or provinces, as there tends to be an assumption of equality of representation. Another common type of alternative representation is the deliberate use of the second chamber to represent particular ethnic, linguistic, religious, or cultural groups. A second chamber may also deliberately contain representatives of civil society. In Malawi, for instance, the constitution provides for thirty-two of the eighty senators to be chosen by elected senators from a list of candidates nominated by social 'interest groups'. These groups are identified as women's organizations, the disabled, health and education groups, business and farming sectors, trade unions, eminent members of society, and religious leaders. The much-maligned British House of Lords is occasionally defended on the grounds that it contains individuals with specific policy expertise, who can check the government legislation drawn up by generalist politicians. Because of these variations, many second chambers are either partly elected, indirectly elected, or not elected. Of those that are elected, most jurisdictions have chosen to reflect the different roles of the two houses by using a different electoral system for their upper house to that which they use for their lower house. In Australia, for example, the lower house is elected by a majoritarian system (AV - see Alternative Vote), while the upper house, which represents the various states, is elected using a proportional system (STV see Single Transferable Vote). This has meant that minority interests who would normally be unable to win election to the lower house still have a chance of gaining election, in the context of state representation, in the upper house. Regional and Local Government Elections
Any of the electoral systems outlined above can be used at the local or municipal government level. However, often there are a number of special considerations borne out of the particular role that local government plays in a political system. First, because local government is more about the 'nuts and bolts' issues of everyday life, geographical representation is often given primacy; single-member districts can be used to give every neighbourhood a say in local affairs. Because these districts are so small, they are usually highly homogeneous, which is sometimes seen to be a good thing, but if diversity within a local government district is what is called for, the 'spokes of a wheel' principle of districting can be applied. Here, district boundaries are not circles drawn around identifiable neighbourhoods, but are segments of a circle centering on the city centre and ending in the suburbs. This means that one district includes both the urban and the suburban voters, and makes for a mix of economic class and ethnicity. In contrast, some countries which use Proportional Representation (PR) systems for local government see defined municipalities as the perfect way to have one single-list PR district which can proportionally reflect all the different political opinions in the municipality. However, one consideration peculiar to the requirements for a local government electoral system is that specific space needs to be made for independents and the representatives of local associations who are not driven by party-political ideology. It is also true that the choice of a local election system may be made as a function, or part of, a compromise involving the system for a national parliament. For example, in some newly democratizing countries such as the Congo and Mali, tradition and the French influence have resulted in a Two-Round System for the national parliament, while a desire to be inclusive and more fully reflect regional and ethnic loyalties resulted in the choice of PR for municipal elections. Country Case Studies
Argentina
ArgentinaOn December 10, 1983, Argentina returned to democracy after almost eight years of authoritarian rule, and since then has had free and fair elections. When Alfonsín transferred the presidential sash to Carlos Saúl Menem in 1989 it was the first time in Argentinean history that a fairly elected president from one party transferred the presidency to a fairly elected president of another party. In April 1994 elections were held to form a Constituent Assembly. Among the many amendments to the 1853 Constitution were provisions for presidential reelection, reduction of the president's term, abolition of the electoral college system, and the adoption of a second round of voting under certain circumstances. The presidential term was reduced from six to four years, and a second round of voting will be required if no candidate receives at least 45 per cent of the vote in the first round or if the winner has 40 per cent of the vote but a margin of victory over the second-place candidate of less than 10 percent. However, the reform did not touch some of the prominent features of Argentinean electoral system - strong federalism, proportional representation (PR), see List PR, closed-list ballots, see Open, Closed and Free Lists, and a threshold of three per cent of the electoral register in each district. Under the new constitution the president, who is chief of state and head of government, is directly elected for a four-year term by universal adult suffrage. The National Congress (Congreso de la nación) has two chambers. The Chamber of Deputies (Cámara de Diputados) has 257 members elected for a four-year term by proportional representation, with half of the seats renewed every two years. They are eligible for re-election. Prior to the reform, senators were indirectly elected for a nine-year term by the provincial legislatures. Now the members of the Senate are elected in 25 three-seat electoral districts (24 provinces and the city of Buenos Aires) for a six-year term, with one-third renewed every two years. Each of the 25 electoral districts chooses three senators directly. Two seats are awarded to the most-voted party and one to the second-largest party. Governors, Municipal Mayors, and local authorities are elected according to their provincial or municipal constitutions. Deputies are still elected by closed lists, which means that citizens are not allowed to change the order of candidates or to cross out names on the list. Moreover, most parties use closed primaries to select and order their lists. Rank and file and party elites therefore have an important impact on legislators' behavior. Each of the 25 electoral districts has its own electoral laws. Nonetheless, it is remarkable that eleven provinces practice the 'double simultaneous vote,' as in Uruguay. This law allows simultaneous intra- and inter-party competition. Political parties present several candidates who compete against one another but whose votes are added together to define which party pooled the most votes. The winner is the most-voted candidate in the most-voted party. Two partisan and institutional features contributed to the success of Argentinean democracy from democratization in 1983 to the 1994 constitutional reform. First, the two-party system ensured that the president would have a sizable bloc of legislators in congress. Second, these legislators practiced a moderate to high level of discipline, enabling presidents to pass legislation with relative ease. Nonetheless, four additional elements that triggered the reform of 1994 were undermining the performance of the democratic system. First, the federal government controlled the flow of resources from the central government to the provinces. Second, the capacity of the president to interfere with the judicial branch undermined the system of checks and balances. Third, the closed party lists for legislative elections produced a great deal of discomfort among citizens who claimed that legislators were more loyal to party leaders than to their constituents' problems. Finally, the abuse of presidential decrees of necessity and urgency weakened the congress' ability to check the executive. The reform of the 1853 constitution in August 1994 was the result of an extra-parliamentary agreement known as the 'Pacto de Olivos' signed between Menem and former president Raúl Alfonsín. On the one hand, Menem's major objective was reelection, and it was achieved. On the other hand, Alfonsín objectives were more diffuse and difficult to understand. In essence he wanted to give a more pronounced parliamentarian style to Argentinean politics. This is why the 'chief of cabinet' was created: an official who could be removed by the congress. Neverthless, the creation of this office did not reduce the high concentration of power in the presidency. In May 1995 President Menem secured re-election with 49.8 per cent of the vote, but a major transformation occurred in the party system: a third force, FREPASO, came in second place with 29.3 per cent of the vote, leaving the Radicals in a historically low third place with 17 per cent of the votes. In the legislative elections of October 1997 the opposition Radicals and FREPASO built a coalition called 'Alianza' in many provinces to defeat the Peronist party. As a result of these elections, not only were the Peronists defeated in the largest provinces, but they also lost control of the province of Buenos Aires, where almost 40 per cent of all Argentinean citizens live. The leader of FREPASO, Graciela Fernández Mejide, a human rights activist, became the most serious challenger for the yet-unknown Peronist party candidate for the 1999 presidential race. The 1997 legislative elections raised an important question about Argentina's political future. The incumbent Peronist party lost almost 10 percent of its support and its majority in the lower chamber, thus it will have to strike deals with the opposition if it is to pass legislation.
The Alternative Vote in AustraliaAustralia is by far the most well established and best known example of Alternative Vote (AV), see Alternative Vote, in action. The system was introduced by the Nationalist government in Australia in 1918 to replace the existing first-past-the-post (FPTP), see First Past the Post (FPTP), system after it became clear that several aligned conservative candidates all standing in the same electorate could split their vote between them under first-past-the-post, thus handing victory to the less popular but more disciplined Labor Party forces. Its introduction was thus intimately related to the need to counter the possibilities of vote splitting and to encourage and reward collaboration or coalition arrangements between parties. This ability to aggregate aligned interests, rather than divide them, has long been a (largely unrecognised) feature of Australian electoral politics, but it has not been until relatively recently that the full potential of preference distribution as an instrument for influencing policy decisions has been made clear. There is an important difference between 'full preferential' and 'optional preferential' versions of AV. If the decision to mark preferences beyond the first choice is left to the voter, rather than being made compulsory, then the winning candidate must gain an absolute majority of votes in the count, but not necessarily a majority of those cast. A ballot where preferences have not or cannot be assigned to a continuing candidate are said to 'exhaust'. By contrast, in Australia it is a legislative requirement for all preferences to be marked to cast a valid ballot. A major consequence of this is that parties distribute 'how to vote' cards to their supporters on voting day, giving them the party's preferred preference ordering for all candidates which can then be copied on to the ballot by the electors, large proportions of whom do just that. Commentators on Australian politics historically tended to regard the alternative vote as a variation of FPTP, in most cases giving results nearly identical to that system in terms of election outcomes and the structure of party systems. Douglas Rae, for example, in his seminal work on the consequences of electoral laws, stated baldly that 'the Australian system behaves in all its particulars as if it were a single-member district plurality formula'. A number of other commentators have argued that preferential voting makes little difference to Australian electoral results and have not been central in determining how governments are constituted. The common element in all these judgements is the fact that they were predominantly based on the Australian federal elections of the 1950s and 1960s where, with the notable exception of the role of the Democratic Labor Party (DLP), preference distribution had little effect on electoral outcomes. Today preferences play a much more important role in deciding the outcome of Australian elections than in previous decades. It is not possible to assume that voters' primary choice would be replicated under a FPTP system, but if it were the results of the 1961, 1969, and 1990 elections would have been reversed. The decline of what was a very stable two party system, the rise of minor parties, and the increasing influence of independent candidates have all meant that the impact of preference voting has been higher during the 1990s than at any time in the past. Table 1 sets out the proportion of seats in which a distribution of preferences has been necessary to determine the result. The second column is the percentage of seats in which the eventual winner did not lead on first preferences, and thus produced a different outcome than would have been the case under FPTP. Table 1: Proportion of Seats Where Preferences Distributed and Outcomes Changed, 1963-1996
As the table indicates, almost half of all seats in recent elections have been determined by the distribution of preferences, although in most cases the number of winners who 'came from behind' to win a seat on preferences is small, averaging around six percent in the 1990s. Even this small amount would, however, have been enough to change government in several elections. The most graphic example of preference votes directly affecting the choice of government occurred at the 1990 federal election, where the incumbent Australian Labor Party (ALP) was polling badly and looked to be heading for electoral defeat, and where voter support for left-of-centre parties such as the Australian Democrats and Greens reached its height. The ALP, under the influence of senior strategist Senator Graham Richardson, assiduously courted the green vote, both indirectly via interactions with the major environmental lobby groups and directly via media appeals to potential green voters, appealing directly for the second or third preferences of minor party supporters, offering policy concessions on key issues and arguing that the Labor Party was far closer to their core interests than the major alternative, the Liberal/National coalition. This strategy was markedly successful: with minor party support levels at an all time high of around 17 percent, the ALP was the beneficiary of around two-thirds of all preferences from Democrat and Green voters - a figure which probably made the difference between it winning and losing the election. This was thus a 'win-win' situation for both groups: the ALP gained government with less than 40 percent of the first-preference vote, while the minor parties, which did not win lower house seats, nonetheless saw their preferred major party in government and committed to favourable policies in their areas of concern. To see how this type of preference swapping worked in practice, one needs only examine the victory of the ALP's Neville Newell in the seat of Richmond at the 1990 federal election. Newell scored only 27 percent of the first preference vote. The coalition candidate, and then leader of the National Party, Charles Blunt won over 41 percent of first preferences, and looked set for an easy victory. However, the count saw a combination of preferences from minor parties and independents, especially the anti-nuclear campaigner Helen Caldicott, flow through to Newell and enable him to win the seat with 50.5 percent of the full preference vote.
Newell won the seat because he was able to secure over 77% of Caldicott's preferences when she was excluded at the seventh count. Caldicott herself had received the majority of preferences from the other independent candidates. The ALP in Richmond, as in other seats, was thus the beneficiary of a strategy aimed at maximising not just its own vote but at maximising the preferences it received from others: the 'second preference' strategy. As support for the Australian Democrats and green parties reached its height in 1990, so the ALP's assiduous campaigning for second preferences saw it receive around two-thirds of the preferences from these parties, which proved decisive for their electoral victory. The success of the ALP's strategy in 1990 was notable not least because historically the process of preference transfers has tended to benefit the non-Labor parties rather than the ALP. AV has had two main positive effects on the non-Labor parties: it facilitated the coalition arrangement between the Liberal and Country (now National) parties by enabling them both to stand candidates in some seats without the danger of vote splitting, and it enabled the preferences of one small party, the DLP, to flow predominantly against the ALP and hugely assist the coalition maintain government in the 1960s. In the 1970s, the ALP advocated a return to first-past-the-post (FPTP). But when the ALP regained office in 1983, its policy was to retain AV, but make the expression of preferences optional rather than compulsory. Optional Preferential AV
Optional preferential AV is identical to full preferential AV except that voters are not required to express a preference for every candidate; if they wish, they can express a preference for only one. In the words of former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, optional preferential voting is 'perhaps the only electoral procedure in the world which allows electors to express their indifference to candidates.' A national survey in 1979 showed that the majority of Australian electors favoured the optional version, with 72 percent for optional and only 26 percent favouring compulsory preference marking. One clear advantage of the optional version is that the problems of spoilt ballots due to numbering errors associated with the full preferential system are largely removed. For this reason, optional preference marking is probably the only form of AV suited to conditions of low literacy or numeracy. Optional preferential AV is currently used for state elections in New South Wales, where it was introduced by the Wran Labor government in 1981, and in Queensland, where it was introduced in 1992 on the recommendation of the Electoral and Administrative Review Commission, who considered that full preferential voting forced voters to express preferences for candidates about whom they may know little or nothing. The rate of 'plumping' for one candidate only, without marking subsequent preferences, has increased over time in both these cases. The decision to express preferences also appears to be closely related to the recommendations made by parties on their 'how-to-vote' cards. In a survey conducted at two by-elections in 1992, fully 75 percent of electors followed party voting directions, resulting in plumping rates of 43 percent in one district (Gordon) and 63 percent in another (Kuring-gai). In the Kuring-gai case, less than 33 percent of electors filled in all squares on the ballot paper. In Queensland, plumping rates stood at 23 percent at the first OPV election in 1992, but were significantly higher in those cases where how-to-vote material from one of the major parties did not suggest preferences. There is also a clear partisan component to plumping rates, which reflects the long-standing coalition arrangements between the Liberal and National parties: in both NSW and Queensland. Labor voters are considerably more likely to 'plump' than supporters of the coalition parties. The Effects of AV In Australia, interest in preferential voting tends to increase with its perceived partisan effect. The influence of preferences on electoral outcomes has clearly increased in recent decades and played a crucial role in the 1990 Labor victory in particular. The collapse of the Democrat vote in 1993 and the Coalition landslide at the 1996 federal election has meant that the effects of preference distribution have received less attention since then, although it has facilitated the election of increasing numbers of independent candidates (two in 1993, five in 1996), most of whom win their seats by overtaking major party candidates on preferences. Analyses of the effects of AV in Australia have tended to concentrate almost exclusively on its partisan impacts. Some commentators have seen the system as an instrument for maintaining the dominance of the two major parties, the ALP and the Liberal/National Coalition, and for restricting the role of minor parties in the lower house to one of influencing the policies of the major parties rather than gaining election themselves. Others claim that it can enhance the power and position of minor parties, especially if they have the potential to hold the balance of power between two major parties. There is widespread agreement that AV has facilitated coalition arrangements such as that between the Liberal and National parties, and that it works to the advantage of centre candidates and parties, encouraging moderate policy positions and a search for the 'middle ground'. The sometimes fiery and aggressive rhetoric of Australian politics has often distracted observers from recognising just how much co-operative behaviour there is between parties - via preference swapping deals, for example - and how close the major parties are on most substantive policy issues. There is little doubt that the AV electoral system provides a significant institutional encouragement for these centrist tendencies.
The Canadian Electoral System: A Case StudyWhen three of the remaining British colonies in North American federated in 1867 - the same year Britain extended its suffrage to 10 percent of the electorate - the new Dominion of Canada naturally adopted British institutions of electoral democracy. Canada's founding fathers, in contrast with their Australian counterparts two generations later, failed to ask if the British First Past the Post (FPTP) system was suited to a federal country dispersed over far-flung regions. Though some local and provincial experimentation with different systems of election took place after the Western provinces entered confederation earlier this century, it proved short-lived. Today, not only are the 301 Members of Parliament elected through FPTP, but so are all members of the ten provincial legislatures and two territories. Indeed, over the years, the federal electoral system moved even more closely to the pure FPTP plurality model as the few two-member districts that existed were gradually eliminated. That FPTP is appropriate for Canada has largely been taken for granted in part because Canadians' familiarity with electoral experiences outside its borders generally extends only to the US and UK. Yet, this does not fully explain how a country so much concerned with constitutional reform has not proven open to altering its electoral institutions - especially, as we shall see, given the anomalies they have produced. This is not to say that reform to a more proportional system has never been proposed; only that it has not made it to the political agenda. The Task Force on Canadian Unity (Pepin-Robarts Commission) in its 1979 Report included a recommendation for just over 20 percent of the seats in the House of Commons to be accorded to the parties proportional to their support and from those provinces in which there was underrepresentation. A slightly different proposal was submitted by the left-leaning New Democratic Party, the party most underrepresented under FPTP. Yet when the Trudeau government unceremoniously rejected the Pepin-Robarts report, electoral reform of the House of Commons was also shelved. The fact that the issue was off the political agenda became clear ten years later when Pierre Lortie, Chairman of the Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing set up by the Mulroney government in 1990, made it clear that changing the electoral system as such was outside the Commission's mandate. Discussion of electoral reform of federal legislative institutions concentrated on a proposal supported by the Western provinces to turn the appointed upper chamber, the Senate, into an elected one. But when Senate reform died with the rejection of a Constitutional amendment proposal in a 1992 referendum, this possible avenue to electoral regimes other than FPTP was closed. Ironically, the distorting effects of the FPTP electoral system on representation in the House of Commons - combined with Canadians' tendency to identify politically along regional lines - have probably never been greater than in the last two federal elections. In 1993, the voters repudiated the ruling Progressive Conservatives, but the electoral system almost decimated Canada's oldest party. Rather than electing the 46 members of 295 that a proportional system would have given them, the Tories managed to elect only two. In contrast, the two regionally-based parties, the Bloc Québécois and Reform, with 13.5 and 19 percent of the popular vote respectively, elected 54 and 52 MPs. In 1997, of the 301 seats in Parliament, the Liberals won 155, Reform 60, the Bloc Québécois 44, the NDP 21 and the Tories 20. Had the seats been distributed according to the parties' popular support, the Conservatives would have placed third with 58 seats, just behind Reform's 59, with the NDP up and the Bloc Québecois down to 33 each, leaving the Liberals with 118. Two thirds of the Liberals' seats came from Ontario, while Reform dominated the Western provinces, and the Bloc Québécois Québec - 'quartering Canada' - as The Economist put it, producing what Canadian pundits called a 'Rainbow Parliament.' Had the seat been distributed according to the popular support for the parties, Liberals, Conservatives, and NDPers would have won seats in all provinces or regions; Reformers in all but Québec. And this, of course, is to leave out the fact that under PR the parties would have had an incentive to expend their efforts and resources beyond the regions where they do well: the Conservatives would have put far more effort into the West; the NDP and Reform would have worked much harder for support in Québec. Indeed, there is good reason to assume that the low turnout of just over two-thirds of registered voters is linked to the fact that in most ridings only one or two of the parties were real contenders, with supporters of the others effectively disenfranchised. Electoral reform toward a more proportional system was proposed by a number of columnists and editorialists in the wake of the two elections, and raised by the leaders of the Progressive Conservative Party, but only wistfully. And in November 1997, a private member's bill was submitted by a leading member of the NDP proposing Parliament endorse PR and appoint an all-party committee to conduct public consultation on the question and report back with a concrete proposal which would then be put to Canadians for their approval a national referendum. Yet, like other private members' bills, this one will die on the order paper. By and large, politicians view electoral reform as a non-starter in which they are unwilling to invest precious political capital. While this is understandable it is also regrettable. While the FPTP system has produced some majority governments, the tendency of the system to polarize rather than promote compromise has not necessarily served Canada well. As a thought experiment, one can imagine the outcome if the one serious recent effort to bring electoral reform to a provincial political agenda had succeeded. This was in Québec in the early 1980s when an investigatory commission advocated adoption of a regional-list system of PR, a recommendation endorsed by the Québec cabinet but one that due to lack of support from the opposition, and even in the governing party caucus - was never presented to the legislature. Had it been adopted, the balance of power today would be held by parties representing the twenty-five percent of Québeckers who want change but prefer a compromise short of the sovereignty favoured by the Parti Québécois. The only electoral reform efforts that made it to the political agenda were provisions adopted in certain Western provinces allowing for the recall of legislators. As far as electoral-system reform is concerned, the only real prospect might be for Canada to once again follow Britain's example. If Britain proves prepared seriously to consider changing the electoral system it bestowed upon Canada, Canadians might follow suit. SwitzerlandThe Swiss parliament has two chambers, the National Council and the Council of States. In the National Council, the cantons are represented according to population. In the Council of States, each canton has two representatives, but there are also a few half-cantons with one representative each. For the National Council, there are uniform electoral rules for the country at large; for the Council of States, it is up to each canton to determine the electoral rules as long as they are democratic. When modern Switzerland was founded in 1848, the electoral rules for the National Council were winner-take-all in single member districts such as FPTP, see First Past the Post (FPTP). After World War I, the rules were changed to party list proportionality, see List PR. Currently, the National Council has 200 members that are elected in 26 electoral districts, corresponding to the 26 Swiss cantons and half-cantons. The largest canton, Zurich, elects 35 representatives, and the smallest cantons, only one. The parties submit candidate lists in each canton containing the names of their candidates for that canton's seats. The results are counted separately for each canton. Having 26 electoral districts instead of a single national district works against the smaller parties. If Switzerland were treated as a single electoral district, only one-half of one percent of the vote would be needed to win one of the 200 National Council seats. With elections taking place in 26 separate districts, however, a higher percentage of votes is needed to win. In Zurich, a party must win about three percent of the vote to win one of the canton's 35 seats. In the small cantons with only one seat, the party with the most votes wins the seat. Thus, if the number of seats per district is reduced to one, the proportionality system becomes a system of winner-take-all (FPTP). In contrast to countries like Germany, Switzerland has no minimal threshold of votes that a party must reach to receive any representation at all. Thus the principle of proportionality is applied in its pure form. The candidates on the party lists are ranked by the voters and not by the parties. The latter merely submit a list of names without rank, usually in alphabetical order. The number of names cannot be more than the number of seats to be filled from each respective canton. In ranking the individual candidates the voters have three options:
The only condition is that the overall number of names is not greater than the number of seats to be elected from the canton. A voter also can decide to make no changes at all on the list. In this case, no preference is given to any of the candidates, but the ballot counts for the number of seats attributed to the party. Voters may further complicate their list by writing in candidates from other parties (panachage). Thus, a Socialist voter may put a Free Democratic candidate on the list, either once or twice. With this write-in possibility, computation of the results becomes very complicated. In the above example, the Free Democratic write-in candidate counts for the Free Democratic party and detracts from the Socialist party strength; the voter has split their vote between the two parties. Voters can go even further and write in candidates from as many parties as they wish, but, again, the total number of names is not allowed to exceed the number of seats in the canton. The computation of the results proceeds in the following way: for each canton, the number of seats each party receives is determined on the basis of the total votes for candidates of this party. Second, candidates win these seats in order of their ranking. This ranking is based on the number of times a candidate's name appears on all the lists, including write-ins on other parties' lists. The freedom of choice that the Swiss system permits the voter weakens the party's control over its candidates, and thus party discipline is low. Although a Swiss party still controls whether or not a candidate gets listed, it cannot determine a candidate's chances of election through rank on the list. Once candidates are listed, they are on their own and must try to get a maximum number of voters to write them in twice, and a minimum to cross them out. Although this system seems to give great power to the electorate, it also increases the influence of interest groups. These groups inform their members about the candidates who favour their interests and for whom two votes should be cast, as well as about candidates who should be crossed out because they do not favour the group's interests. A teachers' group, for example, will inform its members which candidates are sympathetic to teachers' needs and which are not. Letters are sent out by a large number of groups ranging from business groups to trade unions. Candidates depend on political parties only for getting listed on the ballot; to be elected, they must obtain the support of a large number of different interest groups. The Swiss still vote for party lists, but their electoral system allows them to express preferences for and against particular candidates. The election also takes place in relatively small districts, where voters feel more at home than in a single national district. These factors together personalize the relations between voters and candidates. With this electoral system the Swiss currently have 14 parties in the National Council. Besides taking part in elections, Swiss voters have also a great say through the referendum, see Referendums and Plebiscites. Indeed, of all the national referenda held in Western democracies since World War II, more than two-thirds were held in Switzerland. Voters have the right to call for a popular referendum on every bill decided by parliament. The only requirement is that 50,000 signatures be obtained, which is relatively easy in a country of 7 million inhabitants. The voters also have the final say on constitutional amendments. All constitutional amendments decided by parliament must be submitted to the voters. A minimum of 100,000 voters can also submit a constitutional amendment of their own, which will first be debated by parliament but finally decided in a popular referendum. This instrument of the popular constitutional initiative is widely used and can be applied to whatever question the people wish to decide. When the referendum was introduced in the 19th century, it was expected that its effect would be innovative. The founders of modern Switzerland anticipated that the voters would be open to change, but the opposite was true and the referendum has often had a delaying effect. The best example is the introduction of female suffrage only in 1971. Parliament was prepared much earlier than male voters to grant women the right to vote. This example is typical in the sense that it shows how it often takes a long time to convince the Swiss voters to accept a new idea. Chile: Proportionality or Majoritarianism?The Chilean Congress is bicameral, comprised of a Chamber of Deputies as the lower house, whose members serve four-year terms, and a Senate as the upper house, whose members serve for eight years. The 120 seats in the lower house are directly elected using an open-list PR system, but an usual and distinguishing feature of the Chilean system is that all seats are elected from two-member districts, which makes it more difficult for small parties to gain representation on their own. Parties, or coalitions of parties, present a list of two candidates, and voters indicate a preference for one candidate within one of the lists. The votes of both candidates on each list are totaled first, then the two seats are allocated. The first seat is awarded to the most popular candidate from the list with the most votes; then that list's vote total is divided by two. If this number is still higher than any other list's total of votes, the second candidate gets the second seat. Otherwise, the second seat goes to the candidate with the most personal votes from the second-placed coalition's list. This two-member PR system was designed in 1989 by the outgoing military regime of General Augusto Pinochet. The stated goal was to encourage broad cross-partisan coalitions and discourage the representation of small parties, particularly the Communists, who had thrived under Chile's more permissive PR system, which utilised larger multi-member districts, up to 1973. On this count, the system appears to be working. Parties can win representation in Congress only if they are part of one of the two largest lists in a given district. Those parties on the radical left that have been unwilling or unwelcome to enter the centre-left Concertación coalition have been virtually disenfranchised, winning no seats and watching their vote share drop from 11 percent to six percent in the two elections since redemocratization. The incentive that this electoral system gives to form coalitions has carried over from the electoral arena to government, and is so formidable that Chile's traditional multi-party system now performs very much like a two-party system. Although parties remain organizationally distinct and candidates bear party labels on ballots, these labels have effectively been superseded by coalition labels. Coalition leaders negotiate candidate nominations jointly and can impose discipline across all members of the coalition. The result is that the Chilean Congress has come to be organized around two major coalitions that are more stable than was previously the case in Chile's fluid multi-party system. A second important effect of the system is that, given the distribution of electoral support in Chile, elections systematically over-represent the coalition of the right, the Unión Para Progreso (UPP). The system ensures that in every district, the top two coalition lists will win equal representation unless the top list more than doubles the vote total of the second-placed list. This too is the result of a conscious choice by system designers. Based on the results of a 1988 plebiscite as well as previous elections, the military regime knew its supporters were a minority in almost every region of the country, but that its support was consistently in the range of 30 to 40 percent, whereas the Concertación had majority support and intended to sustain their coalition. The Chilean electoral system is unique in its tendency to over-represent second-place finishers; and indeed in both the 1989 and 1993 elections the UPP has won a six to seven percent greater share of seats than its proportional share of the vote. The Concertación has expressed a desire to increase the number of deputies elected from each district, thus making the system more proportional. However, all changes have been steadfastly opposed by the UPP and the appointed senators who, together, hold a majority in the Senate. As the system enters its third electoral cycle in 1997, the electoral interests of all parties that have succeeded under these rules may progressively undermine support for radical reform. Germany: The Original Mixed Member Proportional SystemAfter the use of the absolute-majority Two Round System (TRS), see Two-Round System, in the German Empire, and the use of a pure proportional representation system in the Weimar Republic, see Mixed Member Proportional, a new electoral system was established by the Parliamentary Council in 1949. The system was created by the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany - the West German Constitution. It was thus a result of inter-party bargaining between democratic forces in West Germany. Like the Basic Law, it was originally considered to be provisional, but has remained essentially unchanged since 1949, see External Imposition. The German electoral system is classified as a personalised proportional system (Personalisierte Verh ltniswahl) or, as it is known in New Zealand as a Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) system, see Single Transferable Vote. Its essence is the way in which it combines a personal vote in single-member districts with the principle of proportional representation. Currently, the German parliament (Bundestag) has 656 seats, not including possible surplus seats (see below). Each voter has two votes. The first vote (Erststimme) is a personal vote, given to a particular (party) candidate in one of the 328 single-member constituencies. The second vote (Zweitstimme) is a party vote, given to a party list at the federal state level (Landesliste). Candidates are allowed to compete in single-member districts as well as simultaneously for the party list. The candidates who achieve a plurality in the single-member districts are elected (Direktmandate). However, the second vote determines how many representatives will be sent from each party to the Bundestag. On the national level, all the second (Zweitstimme) votes for the parties are totalled. Only parties obtaining more than five percent of the votes at the national level or, alternatively, having three members elected directly in the single-member constituencies, are considered in the national allocation of list PR seats. The number of representatives from each party that has passed the legal threshold is calculated according to the Hare formula. Seats are then allocated within the 16 federal states (Länder). The number of seats won directly by a party in the single-member districts of a particular federal state are then subtracted from the total number of seats allocated to that party's list. The remaining seats are assigned to the closed party list. Should a party win more Direktmandate seats in a particular federal state than the number of seats allocated to it by the second votes, these surplus seats ( berhangmandate) are kept by that party. In such a case, the total number of seats in the Bundestag temporarily increases.
The German system is not, as sometimes supposed, a mixed system, but a PR system. It differs from pure proportional representation only in that the five percent threshold at national level excludes very small parties from parliamentary representation, and thanks to proportional representation a relatively wide range of social and political forces are represented in Parliament. Furthermore, the electoral system is, to some extent, open to social and political changes. In spite of the threshold, new political parties supported by a substantial part of the electorate have access to Parliament. Besides the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU), Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Free Democratic Party (FDP), which have been in the Bundestag since 1949, a new Green Party (GR NE) gained seats in 1983 and 1987. After falling below the threshold in 1990, the Greens, in a coalition with Alliance '90, were able to return to Parliament in 1994. After German unification, even small East German parties gained parliamentary seats. In the all-German elections of 1990, the East German Alliance '90/Greens and the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) cleared the five percent threshold which was applied, separately in the territory of former East Germany and former West Germany, for that one election. Four years later, the PDS took advantage of the 'alternative clause' by winning four of the required three Direktmandate seats. The personal vote for a candidate in single-member constituencies aims to ensure a close relationship between voters and their representatives. In practice, however, the advantage of these districts should not be overestimated. In Germany, elections in the single-member districts are mainly based on party preferences and not on the personality of the candidates. The initial hopes that MMP would guarantee a close voter-representative relationship have consequently only partly materialized, despite efforts by representatives to establish strong links with their constituencies. Nevertheless, this constituency element within a PR system does at least help to bridge the gap between voters and representatives which is normally widened by ordinary closed-list PR systems. Furthermore, the two-vote system enables voters to split their votes strategically between existing or possible coalition partners. In fact, vote splitting is common among the supporters of smaller parties. Since candidates of smaller parties have little chance of winning a single-member district, their supporters frequently give their first vote to a constituency candidate from the larger coalition party. Similarly, supporters of bigger parties may 'lend' their second vote to a minor party within the coalition, in order to ensure that it will pass the legal threshold. Thus, vote splitting is strategically used by voters to support the coalition partner of 'their' party or, at least, to indicate their coalition preferences. By producing highly proportional outcomes, the electoral system makes manufactured majorities, where one party wins an absolute majority of the parliamentary seats on a minority of the popular votes, very unlikely. In fact, over the last five decades in Germany, manufactured majorities have never occurred. Majority governments have usually been coalition governments, and any change of government has resulted from changes in the configuration of the coalition. German coalition governments are usually stable and regarded as legitimate by the electorate, and, because of a coalition's built-in incentives to co-operate, many Germans prefer a coalition government to a single-party government. The main checking function is fulfilled by an opposition, which is fairly represented. It is important to note that the relationship between government and opposition in German politics is more consensual and co-operative than conflictual or hostile. This, however, is a result of history and political culture rather than of the electoral system per se. To date, the MMP system has not shown any great drawbacks in Germany. It has lasted long enough to have a high level of institutionalized legitimacy; the basic principles of single-member districts and list PR representation have been left unaltered since 1949. However, some minor changes of the electoral system have taken place. Chief among these was the switch to two separate votes in 1953, before then the voter had only a single vote to apply to both district and national PR allocation. Nevertheless, several attempts to reform the electoral system substantially have been made since 1949, and most intensely in the 1960s, when opponents of the PR system demanded the introduction of a FPTP system. This was partly due to political manoeuverings to enhance the position of the stronger parties, and partly based on a theoretical school of thought which favoured the British model; but all attempts were unsuccessful. More recently, the electoral system has been criticized for producing too many surplus seats without compensating the disadvantaged parties in Parliament. Ecuador: The Search for Democratic GovernanceEcuador is one of the longest-lived third wave democracies in South America. In the late 70´s, the military government sponsored a peaceful transition to democratic rule by calling several social and political groups to the drafting of a new constitution. The Constitution was ratified by a referendum in 1978 and the democratically elected government took office in 1979. The new electoral system was designed to serve very specific purposes:'to reduce the number of parties, to encourage discipline and loyalty in the political parties, and to encourage popular participation'. The electoral law included the enfranchisement of the illiterate, provisions to create national parties (appealing to cross national constituencies), and a vote threshold to eliminate all parties that performed poorly in two consecutive elections. As we will see, different electoral reforms had an insignificant impact for articulating a highly volatile electorate or for reducing the highly fragmented party system that has characterized Ecuadorian politics over the past two decades. Presidents in Ecuador are elected for a four-year period and are banned from immediate reelection. Traditionally, a plurality rule was used to elect presidential candidates, but the close outcome of the 1968 election (in which the top three candidates were separated by only two percentage points), inspired reformers to adopt a majority run off or two-round system (TRS). Reformers believed that the rule would help reduce the number of parties and endorse the presidential mandate with greater electoral legitimacy. However, the election system weakened the party system structure in three significant ways. First, it discouraged the formation of electoral coalitions in the first round, since every party or political movement played their chances of moving to the second round (after all, a candidate only needed to get an average of 26 percent of valid votes to be in the run off). Secondly, the system allowed the participation of political outsiders who campaigned on charisma and personal attributes rather than on party ideology. Thirdly, because legislators were elected on the first round of the presidential race, the largest legislative party was not always the same as the president´s party. This feature of the electoral calendar challenged, among other factors, the formation of presidential-led coalitions in Congress. For the most part of the democratic period, the unicameral Congress featured a mixed composition of legislators. A fixed number of 'National'deputies that ranged from 12 (from 1979 to 1996) to 20 (in 1998) were elected from a single district.'Provincial' deputies on the other hand, were elected through proportional representation from the 22 provinces, in a varying number from 57 (in 1979) to 103 (in 1998). While 'National' deputies were elected for a four-year term, 'Provincial' deputies were renewed in midterm elections, every two years. Immediate legislative reelection was banned by the 1979 Constitution, in order 'to avoid the 'fossilization' of the political elite.' The prohibition, in place from 1979 to 1994, discouraged the formation of legislative careers. Like similar cases in Costa Rica and Mexico, only ten percent of Congresspeople returned to serve for at least another term in office when it was allowed by the constitution. The frequent renewal of deputies through midterm elections without immediate reelection made of Congress a highly volatile, inexperienced legislative body, unaccountable to the electorate and short sighted in its policy-making activity. The rule used to convert votes into legislative seats was a closed-list PR system, see List PR based on a combined formula of quota and largest reminders (Hare and D´Hondt). This rule was first used in 1945 and remained in place throughout much of the contemporary democratic period until 1996, and it yielded a slight tendency to reward larger parties at the expense of smaller ones. Candidates who wanted to maximize their electoral possibilities had to bargain with party leaders the order of their appearance in party lists, but once elected, they showed little or no discipline with party lines. Moreover, without the possibility for reelection, legislators frequently switched parties in order to accommodate their personal needs and enhance carreer prospects outside Congress. In recent years, several social and ethnic groups in Ecuador voiced their concerns for adopting a more representative and participatory electoral system that would give them greater leverage in the policy-making process. The increasing popular discontent produced the civilian overthrown of President Bucaram in February of 1997, who was accused of major corruption scandals. The political crises triggered a process of constitutional reforms through the election of a National Assembly the following year. Several major changes resulted form the 1998 Constitutional Assembly. In order to encourage pre-electoral alliances, the Assembly approved a modified two round system by which a presidential candidate only needs to obtain 40% of the votes in the first round to be elected president. The removal of midterm legislative elections (together with the abolition of the non-reelection rule in 1996) sought to promote continuity and stability of legislative parties. Ecuador also adopted a peculiar open-list PR system for the allocation of legislative seats. According to this system of 'unlimited vote' the voter has the right to cast as many votes as there are seats to be filled in each district (the size of the district magnitude) and may give those votes to candidates all of the same party, or may freely vote for candidates across parties. Although proportional in theory, this system, used in the 1998 legislative elections, rewarded the top voted candidates in each district using plurality criteria. Different from proportional representation systems, there was no 'pooling' at the party level, that is, party leaders had no control over allocation of seats. It is also not PR, because the criterion for allocating seats is personal, not partisan. Even if voters cast all their votes for candidates of the same party, votes are counted for each individual candidate on the list, not as a party vote. The system further weakened the role of political parties in the Ecuadorian democracy by making them more dependent on the followings of their local caciques and candidates who were able to cultivate a personal vote. Aware of the constitutional and methodological inconsistencies of the previous electoral rule, Congress approved a reform of the Electoral Law in March of 2000 to introduce 'vote pooling'. In this modified version, each party pools votes obtained by individual candidates and the total sum of votes obtained will be used to distribute seats according to a D´Hondt formula of proportional representation. Party leaders in turn distribute allocated seats to the most voted candidates within each party. The revised version of the electoral formula will be first applied at the national level in the 2002 general elections. Finally, the election of National deputies was also eliminated for the 2002 election, leaving Congress with provincial representations only. Despite extreme and frequent experimentation with its electoral framework, Ecuador has not been able to promote an effective combination of representative politicians with effective government. Over time, there has been a permanent government effort to manipulate the electoral system to reduce party system fragmentation and encourage the formation of pre electoral alliances that could eventually lend support to government-led initiatives in the legislature. The adoption of a two round system of presidential election and its modified threshold or the overrepresenting of larger parties through a modified PR formula were meant to give both legitimacy as well as ample party support for presidential candidates when taking office. Opposed to the logic of 'majority building', different social and ethnic groups, as well as entrepreneurial politicians claimed that the electoral system privileged party interests over citizens´ demands and sought to relax electoral restrictions to political participation and promoted the candidacies of 'independent'politicians. In turn, the proliferation of independent candidates in the mid and late 90´s made coalition formation in Congress unpredictible. The constitutional battle over the requisites to maintain party registry well illustrates the tension between governability and representation. The 1979 Law of Political Parties established that parties that did not obtain 5% of effective votes in two consecutive elections would lose their electoral registry. This prohibition was declared unconstitutional in 1983, reinstated in 1994 as 4%, abolished in 1996 and reinstated in 1998 as 5% again. While the advocates of governability argued that smaller parties contributed to legislative fragmentation and unpredictable coalition building in Congress, defenders of representation argued that Ecuadorian minorities deserved to be represented by those parties. In the meantime, small and usually personalistic parties were able to survive for several years. Ecuador has not found a power sharing formula to promote democratic governance. One open issue for debate is the adoption of a mixed-member system for the legislature. In principle, this could reconcile the need for direct provincial representation of the heterogeneous Ecuadorian population with the election of nationally oriented politicians. Another issue is the introduction of some parliamentary features like cabinet sharing would make potential coalition partners (parties) more accountable to their electorate and responsible to the government. In any case, an effective electoral system would need to mature over time (without being subject to sudden changes) and would have to take into consideration other political institutions and historical traditions of the country.
Finland: Candidate Choice and Party ProportionalityThe Finnish electoral system was introduced in 1906. Elections were held the following year, which were the first free proportional elections for both men and women. In 1917 Finland became independent from Russia, and the founding Constitution of the new Republic was put into force in 1919; later a variant of parliamentarism known as semi-presidentialism was developed. Since 1906, all women and men have been eligible to vote and to be nominated in elections. The age of eligibility has been successively lowered from 24 in 1906 to 21 in 1944, to 20 in 1969 and to 18 in 1972. One distinctive feature of Finnish elections is the exceptionally high numbers of ballots cast in absentia by post. At the 1995 election, 43.4 percent of the valid votes were so cast. The Finnish parliament consists of 200 MPs elected from 15 districts. In all districts, except on the Swedish-speaking Åland Islands, the allocation of seats to parties (including electoral alliances) is proportional to the votes following a d'Hondt system of party list Proportional Representation, see Mixed Member Proportional. Before 1954, voters had to choose between candidate lists (a list included a maximum of two candidates and one alternate); later changes to the system mean that it is now possible to vote for one individual candidate only. This change transformed the Finnish electoral system into a rare type of list system, which obliges voting for individual candidates. The election of candidates from the party list is not predetermined, but depends entirely on the number of individual votes cast for each candidate. The voter picks the allotted number of his or her candidate (the list of candidates, each with an identifying number, hangs in front of the voter) and writes it down on the ballot. As a result, the election is not exclusively a competition between parties; it is also a competition between single candidates on the party list. Neither is the electorate given the option to vote for a party per se; but only for individual candidates nominated, but not ranked by a party or a non-party list. While the Åland Islands district elects a single member, the other 14 districts are all multi-member. The district magnitude is determined by the population size, which favours the constituencies in the rural north and east. Proportionality is still high in overall parliamentary results, although variation between constituencies in this respect is large. In general, urbanised constituencies are more proportional, and more rural areas produce more disproportional results. As the d'Hondt formula of allocating seats favours large parties, in Finland small parties usually take the opportunity of joining an electoral alliance with one or more parties. Electoral alliances are made at the district level, which means that one party can join different alliances in all 14 districts; the alliances therefore have varying degrees of success. In addition, according to the electoral law of 1969, a candidate can only be nominated in one constituency. Before that a candidate could be nominated in all districts, the optimal electoral strategy for a charismatic small-party leader. Most small parties join electoral alliances, and without this option proportionality between votes and seats would, to some degree, be weakened. Ireland: The Archetypal Single Transferable Vote SystemEver since independence in 1922, the Republic of Ireland has used proportional representation by means of the Single Transferable Vote (STV). When the new Irish state adopted an electoral system, the indigenous political elite favoured some version of Proportional Representation (PR) because they believed it intrinsically fair. The departing British also preferred it to First Past the Post (FPTP) to protect the representation of Protestants, who constituted about five percent of the population. The STV electoral system was specified in the current (1937) Constitution, and consequently cannot be amended without a referendum. Members of parliament are elected from districts returning either three, four, or five representatives. The system has consistently delivered a high degree of proportionality, and all parties, large and small, have been accurately represented in relation to their size, with the larger parties only slightly over-represented. For example, Fianna Fail, the largest party at every election for over 60 years, has won on average 45 percent of the votes at post-war elections, and 48 percent of the seats, while the third party, Labour, has won an average of 12 percent of the votes and 11 percent of the seats. As in most other countries, members of parliament are predominantly professional people, with very few working-class MPs. Women are also under-represented, although the figure as of early 1997, 14 percent, was the highest in the history of the state. The Republic of Ireland cannot be said to be ethnically divided, so the question of representation of ethnic groups does not arise. Moreover, contrary to initial expectations, Protestants have not sought separate political representation but have voted for the mainstream parties. Voting is straightforward: electors merely indicate their favoured candidate by writing '1' beside that candidate's name on the ballot paper, and can go on to indicate their second, third, etc., choices in the same way. About two-thirds of voters see their first choice candidate elected, and on average around 20 percent of votes do not contribute to the final result. The House of Parliament is elected by the people by means of STV, the Dail, is of critical importance in Ireland's parliamentary system. To gain office, a government needs the support of a majority of members of the Dail, and a government can be ejected from office if it fails to maintain that support. Ireland has not experienced problems in the area of stable and effective governments. For many years, single-party government by the largest party, Fianna Fail, was the norm, interrupted only occasionally by coalitions formed by the other two main parties. More recently, a decline in Fianna Fail's strength and the emergence of a number of smaller parties has led to coalition governments becoming the norm. Since 1989 each of the largest five parties, i.e. every party winning more than 2 percent of the votes at elections, has spent at least two years in government. Governments, once formed, tend to be reasonably durable, lasting on average for about three years. The Dail's procedures are based on the Westminster model, which enables governments to enact their legislation with little real chance for the opposition to influence legislation. In terms of accountability, it is relatively easy to throw governments out; at every election from 1973 to 1997 the outgoing government did not manage to be re-elected. Voters do have local representatives: the ratio of members of parliament to population is high, about one for every 20,000 people, and district magnitude is small (at most five representatives for each constituency). Members of Parliament are usually well known to their constituents and are active representatives in their area. There is no provision for recall of elected members. One criticism aimed at STV is that it helps promote intra-party fragmentation, but the Irish parties tend to be relatively cohesive despite the electoral competition among candidates of the same party. In Parliament, it is very rare for party representatives to break ranks from the party line on any issue. The political culture of Ireland is strongly influenced by that of Britain, and the 'winner-take-all' attitude that characterizes Westminster-based governmental systems remains strong in Ireland. The absence of ethnic cleavages, or any other deep divisions, in Irish society means that the incentives for parties to reach out beyond their own group cannot be tested. It is worth noting, though, that in Northern Ireland, which has deep divisions along ethnic, national, and religious dimensions between Protestants and Catholics, and which also uses STV for many elections. Most of the main parties draw support entirely from one or other of the two communities and do not see any incentive to try to win support from the other community. Indeed, parties aiming to draw support from both communities generally fare poorly. The STV electoral system is supported because it is seen as fair since it delivers proportional representation, and because of the power it gives voters to choose their parliamentary representatives by ranking all candidates in order of their choice, both between parties and within parties. Although most voters vote along party lines, it is not necessary to do so, and a significant number of voters vote along geographical lines; that is, they give their highest preferences to those candidates, regardless of party, from their own local area. Two referendums have been held, both instigated by the then-governing Fianna Fail party, to replace STV with the British FPTP system. On both occasions the electorate voted to keep STV; the margin of victory was narrow in 1959, but wide in 1968. Nevertheless, STV is criticised because of the intense competition that it generates between candidates, especially candidates of the same party. More members of parliament of Fianna Fail, the largest party, are defeated by other Fianna Fail candidates than by candidates of other parties. Thus, a number of members of parliament argue that STV compels them to spend too much time responding to individual and community grievances from their constituents, which is necessary for electoral survival, but prevents them from spending enough time on national political and parliamentary matters. It is also argued that an electoral system that weakens the close link between members of parliament and their constituents, and thus removes the electoral incentive to respond to demands for constituency work, might attract higher calibre people into politics. Electoral Reform in IsraelOn March 18, 1992, on its last day before disbanding, the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, changed the electoral law in Israel. This momentous institutional change was implemented in the fourteenth general election on May 29, 1996. The initiative to reform the electoral law emanated from widespread dissatisfaction over government performance. A grass-roots movement led by prominent law professors and Knesset members attributed the stalemate in Israeli politics during the 1980s primarily to coalition politics. Small parties, particularly the religious ones, gained disproportionate influence in the coalition formation process, thus weakening the discretionary authority of the Prime Minister over the formation of national public policies, and bestowing them with larger than deserved shares of public resources and symbolic commitments. The institutional change was supposed to remedy this situation. In a recent paper, Nachmias and Sened (1998) show that the institutional reform in the electoral law significantly decreased the electoral strength of the big parties and inevitably augmented the bargaining power of the religious and other small parties. From the reformers' perspective, the outcome of the electoral change was counter-intuitive. However, from a theoretical perspective, the consequences were to be expected. In the first section, I examine the electoral rule used in Israel between 1951-1992, and discuss the political reasons for the widespread dissatisfaction with this institutional arrangement. In the second section, the major attributes of the new law are described along with the unrealizable expectations that it would constitute a significant improvement over the previous law. The problems inherent in the new law are discussed from a conceptual perspective in the third section. In the last section, the general implications of the reform are addressed in the context of the search for pluralistic, democratic institutional designs. The Electoral System in Israel Before 1996 The electoral law practiced in Israel from 1951 to 1992 was one of the purest forms of proportional rule. The entire Israeli electorate was treated as a single district. The number of seats that each party in the Knesset gained was almost exactly proportional to the number of votes the party obtained in the general elections. The minimum number of votes needed to enter the parliament was one percent of the votes (since 1992, 1.5 percent), a very low threshold of entry compared to similar electoral systems. One notable effect of this pure form of proportional electoral rule was that the Israeli Knesset was always composed of a multitude of parties. In the thirteen elections held between 1949-1992, no party ever obtained a majority of the seats in the Knesset. This required the largest party in the Knesset to enter a bargaining process of coalition formation after every electoral campaign in order to form a new government. Coalition formation in multi-party systems involves a tedious bargaining process over two types of payoffs: office-related side payments and policy agreements (Laver and Schofield 1990; Sened 1996). In multi-party systems, the coalition forming party must strike a balance between office-related side payments and policy-related payoffs. Any government can pursue only one policy that rarely satisfies all the partners in the ruling coalition. The coalition forming party must win the support of its smaller partners. Side-payment are allocated to them to compensate their dissatisfaction with policies that the government as a whole decides to pursue. This dissatisfaction often leads to the breakdown of coalition governments, when the office-related side payments no longer compensate for the policy compromises of the different coalition partners (Mershon 1996; Sened 1996). The New Electoral Law Towards the end of the 1980s a grass-roots movement, the Public Committee for a Constitution for Israel was formed to advocate political and electoral reforms. The group's leadership submitted a detailed proposal for reforms, including specific recommendations pertaining to issues of individual rights; a formalized structure of checks and balances between the legislative and the executive branches of government, and a new electoral law. Despite of the publicized objection of most political scientists in Israel and a sizable number of legislators representing different parties, the Knesset, after considerable political pondering, maneuvering and delay tactics modified the original movement's proposal and changed the electoral law. The success of the movement has been attributed to its outstanding public campaign in terms of scope, resources, and visibility, reinforced by the endorsement of leaders of the two major parties. The new electoral law includes two major provisions that are supposed to strengthen the Prime Minister in the process of forming a coalition following a general election. First and foremost, the Prime Minister is elected directly by the eligible voters. Voters enter two ballots in the poll. On the first ballot, they vote for the party of their choice and on the second they vote for their most preferred candidate for Prime Minister. Under the old electoral law, following the election, the President of Israel called all the newly elected Knesset members and consulted with them before asking one of them to try to form a coalition. In practice (with a single exception), the president asked the head of the largest party to attempt forming a coalition government. Under the new law, the Prime Ministerial candidate receiving more then fifty percent of the votes is popularly and directly elected. If no candidate receives more than fifty percent of the votes, a second round is held. Blank and invalid ballots are not counted. Consequently, one of the two contenders is assured of obtaining more then fifty percent of the votes. Under this procedure, the Prime Minister may not be the head of the largest party in the Knesset. In fact, in the 1996 election Netanyahu won the election for Prime Minister while his Likud party gained 32 seats in the Knesset. Two seats less than Labor, which gained 34 seats while its head and Netanyahu's contender for the Prime Ministerial election, Shimon Peres, lost in the election for Prime Minister. To further strengthen the power of the Prime Minister and ensure the stability of coalition governments, the new law diminished considerably the potency of the long-standing parliamentary institution of vote of no confidence. Under the new law an absolute majority of Knesset members (61 members) is required to approve a vote of no confidence, compared to the old rule where a simple majority of the members present in the plenary was sufficient to pass such a vote. Most significantly, however, under the new law, if an absolute majority supports a vote of no confidence, not only is the government ruled out of power, but the Knesset is dissolved as well. This change constitutes a strong disincentive to legislators to support a vote of no confidence. To bring down a coalition government without dissolving the Knesset, a vote of no confidence must be supported by at least 80 Knesset members. Legislated Rule was not to serve the Purpose There are three reasons to expect that the institutional change will fail the major purpose for which it was legislated. The first is well- known and has been pointed out by scholars and a few prominent elected officials prior to the change. The new electoral law enables small parties to pressure the big parties to accommodate their policy preferences in three rounds: preceding the first-round of the election, again before the second-round of the election, and still again during the bargaining process for the formation of the coalition government. Under the old law, the small parties could pressure the big ones only during the coalition formation process, and solely if they were genuinely pivotal. Under the new rule, the small parties in general and the religious parties in particular, are virtually guaranteed the pivotal status in the second round. Preclusion of a second round would make them pivotal in the first round. This institutional change increases considerably the likelihood of small parties, in particular the religious, to become genuinely pivotal thus augmenting their bargaining power. The second reason to expect the new law to defeat its purpose is directly related to another well-anticipated outcome: big parties are bound to lose Knessset seats to small parties. Since the Labor Party lost its dominance status, the Israeli party system has turned into a bi-polar system in which two major parties compete, with the support of their satellite parties, over the control of parliament and hence the coalition government. Typically, the head of the largest party was given the first opportunity to form a governing coalition. The voters, fully aware of this institutional practice often voted strategically to increase the chances of the head of the big party of the Knesset block they preferred to get the first opportunity to form a coalition. Voters could be closer in their ideological persuasion or policy preferences to one of the small parties in the Knesset-block and yet cast their ballot to the biggest party in the block to increase its chances to get the first opportunity to form a governing coalition. The new electoral law eliminated the incentive to vote for the biggest party in the block. Under the new law, voters can cast a ballot for the head of the party that leads the parliamentary block they prefer, and then vote sincerely for the party of their choice. Inevitably this leads to added fragmentation in parliament inasmuch as it steers voters to cast their vote to small parties instead of one of the biggest parties. This added fragmentation intensifies the governability problems inherent in coalition governments in different ways:
In sum, there are three theoretically grounded reasons to expect the institutional change to accomplish the opposite of what it was intended to do. Instead of reducing the fragmentation in government and decreasing the bargaining power of small parties, the new electoral law is expected to increase fragmentation as well as the power of small parties, particularly the religious parties. First, the new law institutionalizes more opportunities for small parties to bargain with Prime Ministerial candidates, and then with the Prime Minister-elect. To raise their chances of wining the election, candidates will promise a variety of payoffs to small parties in return for their support in the first and the second round and during the coalition formation process. Second, the new rule reverses the incentive of voters to vote strategically for the big party in the Knesset block. Inevitably the big parties would lose Knesset seats, considerably reducing the likelihood that a major, central party would capture the parliamentary core and pursue relatively consistent policies. Moreover, the coalition forming parties would have to rely on more partners to form and maintain governing coalitions. This would increase both fragmentation in government and coalition payoffs to small parties. Finally, by jeopardizing the role of the confidence vote procedure the new law would impair both the governance capability of coalitions and the effectiveness of parliamentary oppositions.
India - First Past the Post on a Grand ScaleIndia remains by far the largest democracy in the world, with almost 600 million voters. India's parliamentary government and First Past the Post (FPTP) electoral system, see First Past the Post (FPTP), is a legacy of British colonialism, which ended in 1947. The British introduced self-government to India in stages, but it was not until the end of colonial rule and the adoption of the Indian Constitution in 1950 by a Constituent Assembly that universal suffrage were achieved. The Constituent Assembly, which comprised a number of eminent jurists, lawyers, constitutional experts and political thinkers and laboured for almost three years, debated the issue of which electoral system should be adopted at great length before finally choosing a FPTP electoral system. Various systems of proportional representation were considered and attracted many advocates, given India's extremely diverse and multi-ethnic society, but FPTP was chosen mainly to avoid fragmented legislatures and to help the formation of stable governments - stability being a major consideration in a developing country with widespread poverty and illiteracy. The Indian Constitution provides that all adult citizens who are 18 years or more of age, and who are not otherwise debarred from voting, can exercise their right to the franchise. Voters elect a 544-member Lok Sabha, or lower house, from single-member constituencies, and each of India's 25 states have adopted a similar system. By contrast, the upper house of parliament, the Rajya Sabha or Council of States, as well as the corresponding upper houses of the states, are indirectly elected by members of the state legislative assemblies. There is also a (non-executive) President and Vice-President elected by the members of parliament and state legislative assemblies. General elections are held once every five years, but the President may dissolve the Lok Sabha on the advice of the Prime Minister before its term is over, as in 1971 and in 1997, or if he or she is convinced that no stable government can be formed, as in 1991. The Prime Minister holds office for as long as he or she can command a majority in the Lok Sabha. All the successive governments of the Congress party, which ruled India continuously until 1977, served a full term in office. Since 1977, governments have been less stable, and a number of Prime Ministers have had to resign as a result of party splits or no-confidence votes before completing their full term. While the electoral process is widely regarded as free and fair, and the Electoral Commission is highly independent and has wide powers, serious problems remain. This is especially the case in certain pockets of rural northern India where landed elites do not allow the rural poor to vote; polling stations are regularly captured by hired gangs; voters are influenced by offers of free transport, and candidate spending limits are widely flouted. Sectarian appeals at election time can, and have, fuelled violence: Hindus make up 85 percent of the population, but India also has over 120 million Muslims, and the fragmenting of the party system has been characterized by a rise in popularity for extremist parties. The major effect of the electoral system, at least until 1977, was to guarantee majority governments based on a minority of voter support. The FPTP electoral system resulted in the ruling Congress party securing stable majorities in the Lok Sabha, usually against a fragmented opposition. But since 1977, when the opposition parties combined to form coalitions and started putting up common candidates against the Congress candidates (as was the case in the 1977 and 1989 general elections), the Congress majorities have vanished. Moreover, the nature of the system meant that small changes in vote share often had a dramatic impact upon the shape of the resulting parliament. For example, the Congress party's share of parliamentary seats fell dramatically with only a slight decrease in votes, as can be seen in the table below. The overall results of elections to the Lok Sabha have never been proportional. Because the candidate who obtains the most votes, but not necessarily a majority of votes polled, is declared elected, support can often be divided by setting candidates of the same caste, religion, or region against each other. But despite the divided nature of India's multi-ethnic democracy, the electoral system has retained a considerable degree of support, due in part to the practice of reserving seats for socially underprivileged groups, see Minority Provisions. The Indian Constitution reserves 22 percent of all seats for historically disadvantaged groups known as Scheduled Castes (79 reserved seats) and Scheduled Tribes (41 reserved seats). In these constituencies, only a member of the Scheduled Castes or Tribes may contest the polls, although all electors have voting rights. This has ensured that their parliamentary representation is in line with their proportion of the population. A constitutional amendment, which seeks to reserve 33 percent of seats for women representatives, is currently being considered. The depth of popular support for the integrity of the electoral system became evident in 1977. When the election of the incumbent Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, was set aside by a court after Congress had won a two-thirds legislative majority in 1971, she responded by setting aside fundamental constitutional rights for two years (1975 - 1977), an authoritarian interlude in India's otherwise continuous history of competitive democracy. In the 1977 elections, her government lost power through a fair poll, signaling the unwillingness of India's voters to accept undemocratic practices. But the elections of 1977 also ushered in a new era of instability in Indian politics. Since 1977, the Congress Party has been able to complete terms in office only under Indira Gandhi (1980 - 1984), Rajiv Gandhi (1984 - 1989) and PV Narasimha Rao (1991 - 1996). The strength of the electoral system has not been mirrored by the emergence of a viable non-Congress alternative at the national level. The non-Congress opposition parties, except the Communists, won government in 1977 by uniting into a composite entity, the Janata party. It split within two years. In December 1989, a successor party, the Janata Dal, came to power, supported by the Communist parties and the Hindu revivalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP); this government lasted ten months. At the Indian General Elections of 1996, no party was able to form a stable government. The BJP won 161 seats and the Congress won 140. Two unprecedented things happened as a result of these elections. First, the main opposition party, the BJP, a right wing, pro-Hindu political party, was asked by the President of India to form a government for the first time. But most of the other political parties, with the avowed objective of preventing BJP from coming to power, combined together so that the BJP could not muster even a bare majority on the floor of the Lok Sabha, and subsequently a coalition of 13 parties, with diametrically opposing ideologies, under the banner of United Front, formed the Government. In other words, neither the largest nor the second-largest party could form a government. The FPTP general elections of 1996, under the very same electoral system that had brought stability until 1977, thus ushered in an era of political instability and uncertainty.
Japan - Electoral Reform
From 1947 through 1993 Japan used what they called the 'medium-sized district system' to elect the more powerful lower house of the Diet. This system can be best explained as a system of multi-member-districts (MMD), the simplest extension of single-member districts (SMD). Each voter gets a single vote and the top M candidates are declared elected, where M is the number of seats allocated to the district. In precisely the same sense that SMD is a first-past-the-post system, MMD is an Mth-past-the-post system. M ranged from one through six, with most districts between three and five. The Japanese system produced campaign styles similar to that of the single transferable vote (STV) in Ireland and is also called the single non-transferable vote (SNTV). Complaints about MMD focused first on the fact that strategic errors often produced anomalous outcomes. MMD was one of the rare electoral systems in which a party could lose a seat because of a particularly popular candidate: a party with enough votes to win two seats in a three-member district might finish first by a large margin but leave only enough votes for the second candidate to finish fourth, thus winning only one seat. More importantly, parties could lose seats by running too many candidates: if the party in the previous example ran three candidates, splitting the vote evenly among them, they could easily finish third, fourth, and fifth, winning only one seat. Such anomalous outcomes, however, were never common, declined over time, and occurred primarily when a party's support rose or fell drastically at a single election. The primary problem with MMD was that it forced candidates from the same party or the same camp to compete for votes. The dominant party throughout this period, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), ran multiple candidates in most districts. An LDP candidate who needed a few more votes to gain a seat found it easier to attract voters from other LDP candidates than from one of the opposition parties. Intra-party competition fostered factionalism inside the LDP. While the factions of the LDP were held together by power, the opposition parties fragmented as the competed for the progressive vote. The Japan Socialist Party (JSP), the largest opposition party, found it increasingly difficult to field multiple candidates. MMD tended to mute political competition between ideological camps over policies and to promote competition within camps over constituency service. Since the party in power possesses the advantage in any competition to perform every greater constituency service, MMD facilitated one-party dominance. Constituency service also contributed to serious corruption problems which, in turn, finally led to the defeat of the LDP in the 1993 election and an electoral reform, which changed the electoral system. Both the process and the result resemble those in Italy. The new system is the simplest of the parallel PR/SMD systems, which have proven so popular recently. 300 seats are elected from SMDs and 200 from PR in eleven blocs ranging in district magnitude from seven to 33. There is no mixing of SMD and PR votes. The only connection between the two parts of the system is the double candidacy provision, that a candidate may run both in an SMD and be included on a PR list. Parties may also rank several candidates equally on their lists, allowing the tie to be broken by the SMD results. The double candidacy provision became the focus of criticism after the first election under the new system in 1996. The original complaint was that candidates defeated in an SMD were 'revived' by PR and making them 'zombie Dietmen.' A more serious problem is that some districts now have one representative while others have two, the winner of the SMD and the loser who won in PR. A few districts even have three with two SMD losers winning PR seats. The process leading to political reform involved defections from the LDP, the decline of old parties, the birth of new ones, and a rapid succession of unlikely coalition governments. It is still difficult, after only one election, to distinguish between the effects of the new electoral system and the effects of this political turmoil. The clearest difference is that political parties now have only one candidate per district. This marks a major change for the LDP. In the past, when more than one candidate sought the LDP nomination, the decision was often left to the voters: let all the candidates run as independents and whoever wins will join the LDP. This option is now much more dangerous. Candidates will be tempted to accept the support of other parties and the winner might not join the LDP. This tendency has long been visible in gubernatorial elections and was clear in several districts in the 1996 general election. The LDP is making rapid progress toward appointing a single person as the head of the local branch, and thus the prospective nominee for the next election, in every district. There are also indications that the factions have been weakened. The political turmoil surrounding political reform shook the factions badly and now that candidates no longer need electoral support against their internal rivals, there is one less incentive to reform them. Theoretically, the system should produce incentives for the opposition to coalesce around a single candidate capable of defeating the LDP but so far we have witnessed further fragmentation of the opposition parties. Either the incentives toward a two-party competition are weakened by the 200 PR seats or the incentives are masked by the effects of political turmoil and will become more visible over time. Finally, will the new system reduce corruption? On the one hand, incentives for creating a personal vote based on constituency service have been weakened but little if at all. On the other hand, the potential for policy competition among parties has increased. We will have to wait to see how these competing incentives interact but so far the major changes relating to corruption have not been due to the new electoral system but to the new law that electoral violations may be used to declare an election invalid even if the candidate was not directly involved in the violations. Sri Lanka: Changes to Accommodate Diversity
Like other former British colonies, Sri Lanka inherited a Westminster model of parliamentary government, with universal suffrage established in 1931 and full general elections in 1947, but over time found that First Past the Post (FPTP) elections were incapable of representing minority interests, see First Past the Post (FPTP). In 1978, the decision was taken to transform Sri Lankan government from a parliamentary system into a French-style executive presidency, and a Select Committee was appointed to consider the necessary wide-ranging constitutional changes. Sri Lanka is a nation with a long history of bitter ethnic conflict between the majority Sinhalese and minority Tamil communities. It was for this reason that the constitutional drafters were very conscious of the need to ensure that the new office of executive president would be filled by a national figure representative of all groups in society, and capable of encouraging consensual politics between those groups. The new president would have to represent all groups in Sri Lankan society and be seen as a figure capable of moderating between opposing interests. These objectives focussed attention on the method of election to the new office, and particularly on the means by which ethnic minorities could be included in the selection process. While the method of election for such a figure would be crucial to the fate of the office, and would require at least a majority of voters supporting the successful candidate, only once in 50 years had any political party secured a majority of the vote at a national election; indeed, most governments had been elected with considerably less than that. The party system in Sri Lanka was fragmented between two dominant Sinhalese parties and a number of small minority parties. Because much of the 1978 constitution had its philosophic origins in the French Fifth Republic model of a strong executive presidency combined with an elected legislature, the initial plans provided for a Two-Round System (TRS) of presidential elections, see Two-Round System. However, the extra cost and security issues associated with holding two separate elections within a two-week period was seen as being a major defect, particularly since Sri Lanka was in the midst of a violent civil war at the time. These considerations prompted an innovative solution to the problem: to combine the initial and run-off rounds of voting into one election via the expression of preferences. Under this system, which continues to be used, if no candidate has a majority of first preferences, all candidates other than the two leaders are eliminated, and the second preferences distributed to one or the other of the top two to ensure a majority winner; voters can number up to three preferences, which will then be distributed to one or the other of the top two candidates in the event of no candidate having an absolute majority. The system thus achieves in one election what a Two-Round System achieves in two, see Alternative Vote. In addition to ensuring that the president would be elected, whether outright or via preferences, by an absolute majority of all voters, the system has the additional feature of encouraging candidates to look beyond their own party or ethnic group for second-preference support from other groups. Sri Lanka has now conducted three national presidential elections under the supplementary vote system, in 1982, 1988, and 1994. Contrary to expectations, at each of these elections the winning candidate has achieved an absolute majority in the first round, and thus no preferences have been counted. The possibility that preferences may one day decide the result, however, does appear to have influenced the campaign strategies of Sri Lankan parties, and there is considerably more attention paid to minority groups in election campaigning for presidential elections than was formerly the case. Mali: A Two-Round System in AfricaThe former French colony of Mali in West Africa made a successful transition to multi-party politics in 1991, after three decades of authoritarian rule. Principal among the new democratic institutions established at the time was a 129-seat National Assembly, with 116 seats elected by the domestic electorate and 13 by Malians residing overseas. The 116 domestic seats are allocated on the basis of population (one seat per 60,000 people) among 55 constituencies (circonscriptions) corresponding to the country's 49 administrative divisions (cercles) and the six communes in Bamako, the capital. Because of population disparities, the district magnitudes range from one to six seats per constituency. While independent candidates are permitted, political parties are required to submit closed-party lists with the same number of candidates as available seats, see List PR. Voters exercise their choice through categorical ballots, so they can vote for only one independent or party list of candidates. A Two-Round majority-runoff system is used whereby, in the absence of an independent candidate or party list winning an absolute majority in the first round, only the top two finishers in the first round compete in the second round, with the winner decided by an absolute majority, see Two-Round System. In the case of the multi-member districts, the two highest party lists from the first round compete in the second, with the winning list gaining every seat in the district. A similar Two-Round majority formula is used in the presidential election. A proportional representation formula based on the largest remainder - the Hare quota - is used in municipal elections, see Additional Resources. As in most of francophone Africa, the new democratic institutions in Mali were debated and selected in a broadly-based National Conference, which included three representatives of each of the officially-registered political parties, see National Conventions - Constitutional Assemblies. The electoral system that emerged out of this process was a compromise aimed both at preserving the political power of the five major parties while creating electoral opportunities for numerous smaller ones, and at balancing the contradictory imperatives of securing broad political representation and producing stable governing majorities. Thus the initial proposal for using the Two-Round System (TRS) in single-member districts was rejected, in order to diminish the influence of local notables and strengthen party control over candidates. Also rejected was a proposal from smaller parties for a PR system, because of its anticipated potential for political instability. However, the adoption of the PR formula for municipal elections accommodated the smaller parties, most of which lacked national support and was regionally or locally based. Conversely, it was thought that a Two-Round majority-runoff system for legislative elections would encourage coalitions in the second round between smaller and larger parties. The adoption of the Two-Round majority-runoff formula for presidential elections reflects the consensus in most African countries that the head of the state must be supported by a majority of the electorate.
The new Malian electoral system produced a relatively fair and competitive electoral process in 1992. The first round was contested by 23 officially registered parties, including three with national political bases, Alliance pour la democratie au Mali (ADEMA), Congres national d'Initiative démocratique (CNID), and Union soudanaise-Rassemblement démocratique africaine (USRDA), and two with a limited national base but with the potential of becoming national parties, Rassemblement pour la democratie et le progres (RDP) and Parti progressiste soudanaise (PSP). The rest had regional and local bases and no prospect of entering the national government without forming a coalition with the other five. The competitiveness of the system was illustrated by the fact that only 11 out of 44 constituencies were decided in the first round, with 15 seats won by the five parties. Of the ten contending parties in the second round, six had led in at least one constituency, but the leading party list was defeated in seven of the 44 constituencies. Indeed, each of the five major parties lost second-round district elections after leading in the first round. Combined with the entry of large numbers of small parties with limited electoral support, a phenomenon that is typical of new democracies established after an extended period of authoritarian rule, Mali's new system produced the expected political impact on vote-seat disproportionality and multi-partism. Thus, the Two-Round majority formula produced a high level of disproportionality (between seats and votes), a moderate degree of electoral multi-partism (3.3 effective electoral parties), and a moderately low legislative multi-partism (2.2 effective legislative parties). The Malian electoral system has effectively balanced representation and governance, but at the same time fostered a viable parliamentary opposition. The use of closed party lists in multi-member districts, moreover, has encouraged ethnic and regional alliances among otherwise socially fragmented and politically weak groups. However, several problems remain. First, the very use of party lists weakens the constituency linkages of elected representatives. Confronted with strong pressures for constituency work, many MPs have informally divided up their constituencies into individual bailiwicks for that purpose. Second, the National Assembly possesses only a limited capacity to check executive authority, since institutionally its powers remain weak relative to the strong executive presidency. And finally, this problem is compounded by the disproportionately large percentage (66 percent) of seats won by ADEMA, the incumbent ruling party, due in part to the electoral formula and in part to population disparities among the constituencies, and especially in rural constituencies. These problems prompted opposition demands for electoral reform. This led to political negotiations between the opposition parties and ADEMA which produced agreements on three issues prior to the April 1997 legislative elections: the use of PR formulae for allocating some National Assembly seats, which was subsequently declared unconstitutional by the judiciary, a 27 percent increase in the size of the National Assembly from 116 to 147, with a reduction in single-member and a corresponding increase in multi-member constituencies, potentially giving the opposition parties a degree of electoral advantage, and the creation of a broadly representative Electoral Commission. However, the quickly created Commission was unprepared to take on the complex task of election management. The ensuing logistical and administrative problems provoked opposition demands for the annulment of the 1997 legislative elections, to which ADEMA agreed, even though early returns confirmed predictions about its victory. The fact that these changes in the electoral system were negotiated attests to the success of Mali's new democracy in managing political conflicts peacefully. It also indicates that the choice and reform of new democratic institutions are not pre-determined, but are negotiated outcomes of which future political consequences are often obscure. To what extent the recent reforms of Mali's electoral system will have the desired effect when they are implemented remains to be seen. Malta: STV With Some Twists
Single-Transferable Vote (STV) has been in use in Maltese elections since 1921, long before this small Mediterranean Island nation achieved independence from Britain in 1964. Although Malta subsequently became a republic and replaced the office of Governor-General (representative of the Queen) with a President, it retained the Westminster model of parliamentary democracy. The constitution mandates election of the members of the House of Representatives, Malta's unicameral parliament, 'upon the principle of proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote.' The maximum length of a parliamentary term is five years, but the legislature may be dissolved earlier. There are no other elective offices except for local councils introduced by the 1993 Local Councils Act, whose members are elected by STV as well. For purposes of parliamentary election the country is currently divided into 13 divisions, all of which is of roughly the same population size. In contrast to Ireland, each district elects the same number of MPs (five), for a total size of parliament of 65 (ignoring any bonus seats). Each seat corresponds to approximately 4,200 registered voters. In 1996 the quota needed to secure a seat ranged from 3,245 to 3,519 votes. Candidates may simultaneously stand in two divisions. If they win seats in both, they must resign one, which is then filled through a so-called 'casual election'. This is not a by-election in the conventional sense; instead the winner is determined by applying STV procedures to the ballot papers credited to the vacating candidate in the general election. On the ballot, candidates are listed alphabetically within party blocs. Voters express their preferences by placing sequential numbers next to the candidates' names. There is no obligation to rank-order all of them or to stick to candidates of a single party. Indeed only a single preference (indicated by the number 1) is required for a vote to be valid. Unlike their Australian counterparts, Maltese voters do not have a whole-ticket option. Nor do the parties prepare a recommended rank-order of candidates. There are three noteworthy characteristics of Malta's experience with STV:
In 1981 the MLP won a majority of seats in parliament even though Nationalist Party candidates had received a majority of first-preference votes nation-wide. Allegedly this had occurred as a result of deliberate gerrymandering by the MLP government, although such charges are hard to prove. More importantly, however, this seemingly 'perverse' result led to a major constitutional crisis when the Nationalist refused to accept the outcome of the election and walked out of Parliament, thus putting the legitimacy of the entire system in doubt. The Nationalist boycott ended when the MLP agreed to discuss constitutional reforms to prevent a recurrence of the scenario of victors being turned into losers. In 1987 the constitution was changed accordingly. Article 52, as amended, assures that the party with a majority of first-preference votes will receive as many additional seats as necessary to give it a majority in parliament, thus allowing it to form the next government. A second amendment, adopted more recently, provides for a similar adjustment for the party with the most votes (but not a majority) where more than two parties compete for votes but only two parties win seats in Parliament. In 1987 and 1996 additional seats were thus allocated to the Nationalist Party and the MLP, respectively. Because of these constitutional amendments the voters' first preference on the ballot is now not only an ordinal vote for the most-favored candidate, but also a categorical vote for a party. In addition, at least as long as the two-party system perseveres, it is an expression of a preference on which party shall form the government. A general election can thus be said to provide a clear judgment on the record of the incumbent government and a clear mandate for the victorious party. What lessons might be derived from Malta's experience with STV? Malta can be said to provide a cautionary tale. While useful generalizations can be made about the effects of electoral systems, there are sometimes unique circumstances that lead to unexpected results. As seen here, a highly proportional electoral system is also subject to failure under certain conditions. At the same time, however, Malta's handling of the ensuing crisis is cause for optimism, for it provides an apt illustration of how constitutional engineering solutions can be found to redress institutional failures when they occur, and how they can be implemented through bargaining and compromise. Leaving aside the disproportionality issue that came to a head in 1981, we must note that Malta has had a series of single-party governments and a fair amount of alternation in partisan control. The intense intra-party competition engendered by STV combined with over-nomination has not had the effect of rendering the parties ineffective as political organizations either in government or in opposition. Malta's experience in administering the allegedly complex single transferable vote system is also encouraging. Although the determination of winners is more cumbersome and time-consuming than is the case with other systems, the process is manageable. The number of counts necessary to fill all seats in a district is not a function of the number of voters/ballots, but of the number of candidates in that district, although a larger electorate (and thus larger number of ballots) will of course increase the workload. Nor do Maltese voters appear to be overly perplexed by their system. Voter participation is almost universal (more than 95 percent in recent elections) and the percentage of invalid ballots is low (rarely more than one percent). Like the Republic of Ireland, Malta is not an ethnically or religiously diverse country, and thus provides no opportunity to assess the performance of STV in terms of minority representation. It is clear, however, that under Malta's version of STV, minorities would be assured of their ability to elect candidates of their choice irrespective of the preferences of the majority as long as their members make up 17 percent of the voters in any district [Quota = votes/(5+1) +1]. Increasing the number of seats per district could lower this threshold further, although there are obvious practical limitations in terms of ballot length and complexity. It is also clear that women are in a position to elect at least two MPs in each district (or 40 percent of the seats) regardless of the voting preferences of men, although this potential voting power does not currently translate into the election of large numbers of female candidates in Malta. STV has many favorable characteristics in theory and has worked well in Ireland, Malta, and Australia in practice. What is lacking is a broader experiential base to learn from since the actual use of the system is limited to the Anglo-American world (with very few exceptions). We do not know for sure how it would perform in a variety of other settings. One thing is hardly in doubt, however: STV hands voters the most sophisticated instrument to express their preferences; it meticulously aggregates these diverse preferences and translates them into parliamentary representation. Even where parties are as strong and predominant in politics as in Malta, STV still assures that the voting public will determine the identity of all the politicians that take up seats in parliament to collectively represent the will of the people. Where such grass-roots democratic control is deemed desirable, STV would seem to be the system of choice. The flip side is that the ability of the party leadership to determine the composition of its parliamentary group is limited correspondingly. Namibia - National List PR in Southern Africa
For much of the twentieth century Namibia was the 'forgotten colony' of southern Africa, first occupied by the Germans in 1884, then liberated by South African and allied forces in 1915, only to be effectively recolonized by South Africa who were given trusteeship of the region by the League of Nations in 1920. Apartheid South Africa effectively superimposed her ethnically divisive and exclusionary legal structures upon Namibia (or South-West Africa as it was then known) in the post-war period right up until full independence in 1990. 1989 proved to be a year of rapid change after seventy years of internal struggle and international ambivalence, and years of foot dragging by the South African government who, ten years before in 1978 had agreed to a United Nations (UN) plan for a military withdrawal and transition to independence. For her 'liberation' election of November 1989 and her second parliamentary general election held in December 1994 Namibia used the most basic form of national list Proportional Representation (PR) with the whole country constituting a single district returning 72 members of parliament, see List PR. The allotment of seats was done by the Hare method which, along with the Droop quota, is a largest remainder method but uses a slightly different quota which on average gives more proportional results. No threshold for representation was imposed so the quota became 1.39 percent of the national valid vote but with the largest remainder method the Namibia National Front (NNF) managed to win a single seat with 0.8 percent of the vote in 1989, and the Democratic Coalition of Namibia (DCN) and Monitor Action Group (MAG) won seats with 0.82 percent and 0.83 percent respectively in 1994. The adoption of list PR came primarily at the instigation of the United Nations who urged as early as 1982 that any future non-racial electoral system ensure that political parties managing to gain substantial support in the election be rewarded with 'fair representation.' Indeed the Namibians had their new constitution largely imposed upon them. The option of discarding the first past the post electoral system (the whites-only system operating in what was the colony of South-West Africa) and moving to a rigid list PR system was originally proposed by Pik Botha, the then South African Foreign Minister. Although the South Africans had previously, but unsuccessfully, pressed for separate voter rolls ( la Zimbabwe 1980-1985) which would have ensured that whites gain seats in the new Assembly. Botha's subsequent PR proposal was accepted in principle by the UN Secretary-General who then handed over the specific details to the South African Administrator-General and UN Special Representative. The PR system dovetailed nicely with the UN's earlier pronouncements, which stressed the need for as wide as possible representation in the forthcoming Namibian Constituent Assembly. For the first elections in 1989 the South West African People's Organization (SWAPO) had expressed a preference for keeping the single member district system, no doubt reasonably expecting (as the dominant party) to be advantaged by such winner-take-all constituencies. However, when the Constituent Assembly met for the first time in November 1989, and each parliamentary party presented their draft constitution, SWAPO readily gave in on the issue of PR apparently as a concession to the minority parties for which they hoped to gain reciprocal concessions on matters of more importance. 1989 Election Results Precursing the subsequent South African general election of 1994 the first multiparty Namibian election of 1989 produced a what many international observers felt to be a 'dream result' with the liberation movement (SWAPO) winning handsomely, with 57 percent of the national vote, but not winning enough seats (48) to write the new constitution alone. The opposition, led by the DTA, were in the eyes of many, suitably rejected for their tainted pasts and explicitly ethnic appeals, but they still commanded enough votes and seats to mount a serious opposition within parliament and balance out the possible excesses of SWAPO majority rule. This 'positive power configuration in the Constituent Assembly conducive to real compromise' led to a new constitution, adopted in March 1990 which was widely acclaimed as one if the most democratic and enlightened constitutions to be found anywhere in the world. While SWAPO proved to be the only party capable of winning an absolute majority in the 1989 Namibian elections the wildly inconsistent distribution of their vote led some African political scientists to argue that they had dramatically failed to live up to their promise of being the 'sole and authentic representative of the people of Namibia.' SWAPO gained over 90 percent of the votes in the large northern electoral district (ED) of Ovamboland, which contributed nearly 60 percent of their national total. Furthermore, while country wide they did manage to out poll all other parties combined SWAPO actually won a majority in only seven, of the 23, electoral districts, with the DTA winning majorities in 15 districts. Similar regional concentrations of party support existed for the minority parties. Besides the DTA, which gleaned most of their votes from the south of the country and other farming areas in Koakoland and Hereroland, the UDF and ACN (the only other parties to win more than one parliamentary seat) drew their support from clearly defined geographical areas and ethnic groups. The UDF was strongly identified with the Damara ethnic group and as expected polled an absolute majority of the votes in Damaraland. While the ACN, a predominantly white grouping, polled nearly half its entire national vote in the EDs of Karasburg (the southern border area where many South African whites voted), and Windhoek (the capital which again played host to a disproportionate number of white voters). 1994 Election Results The 1994 elections illustrated a consolidation of SWAPO support juxtaposed against severe erosion of the opposition vote. SWAPO actually polled 23,000 votes less in 1994 than they had gained in the first parliamentary elections of 1989 but the much lower turnout (down from 682,000 to 497,000) meant that their share of the vote was pushed up nearly 20 percent, giving them 12 extra seats and more than the two-thirds parliamentary majority needed to change the constitution unilaterally. The stayaway of voters who had cast ballots in 1989 came primarily at the expense of the DTA. Their 101,000 national votes were only just over half the 191,000 they had received in 1989 and translated into a loss of six parliamentary seats. Similarly the UDF lost two of its four seats (retaining only 35 percent of its 1989 vote) while Moses Katjiongua's NPF, now renamed the Democratic Coalition of Namibia (DCN), could do no more than retain its single seat. SWAPO's overwhelming victory prompted the DTA leader and presidential candidate, Mushake Muyongo, to claim that the election had shown the country to be divided along ethnic lines, and that it had become an ethnic democracy. For the 1994 elections, the Namibian boundary commission discarded the old, uneven SouthWest African electoral districts in favor of 13 new regional districts broken down into 95 smaller counting areas. SWAPO managed to make more inroads into the votes of non-Ovambo communities in 1994 than they had done in the first multiparty elections. In 1994, the DTA won absolute majorities in only two regions (Hardap and Omaheke) and pluralities in only three others (Caprivi, Otjozondjupa, and Kunene), compared with 15 of the 23 electoral districts in 1989. SWAPO's share of the vote rose substantially in Karas (from 30 to 45 percent), Okavango (50 to 80 percent), and Khomas (45 to 60 percent). The UDF failed to hold onto the predominantly Damara district of Kunene, but did score two out of their three victories in the Kunene sub-districts of Sesfontein and Khorikas. Despite the SWAPO percentage advance, and the failures of the minority parties in 1989, it seems clear that most of the changes can be attributed to DTA absenteeism rather than SWAPO winning the votes of former minority party supporters. The NetherlandsSince 1830 the Parliament of The Netherlands has consisted of two chambers. The First Chamber has never been elected directly and is therefore not considered here. In the earliest period for which one can speak of a constitutional electoral system (1848-1887), the number of members in the Second Chamber was set at one per 45,000 inhabitants. The country was divided into districts and usually two members per district were chosen by limited suffrage. Half of the Chamber was elected every two years, so that in most districts representatives were chosen at each two-year interval. An absolute majority was necessary for election; if no candidate achieved this figure, a relative majority sufficed in the second round. In 1888 several changes in the electoral system were made. The size of the Second Chamber was set at 100. Single member districts were introduced, although multi-member districts remained in the cities. The last multi-member districts were eliminated in 1897. From that date, only the top two candidates from the first round were allowed to participate in the second round. One of the two great political questions of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century in The Netherlands was the struggle for universal suffrage, the other question being the governmental support for religious schools. Both problems were resolved in the so called 'Pacification of 1917', as a kind of package deal. The religious political parties obtained a constitutional guarantee of governmental financial support for religious schools. Universal suffrage, one of the main political goals of the Social Democratic Party, first only for males, female suffrage followed in 1919. Proportional representation was introduced, which primarily helped the Liberal parties, who could no longer expect to gain seats under the district system with universal suffrage. Furthermore, compulsory voting was introduced, to insure proportionality. The electoral system as introduced in 1917 has remained in effect since that time, although some details have been altered. The Netherlands still elects the Second Chamber according to the multi-member candidate list system of proportional representation. Lists of candidates are presented on the ballot. Since 1956 the name of the party or list is placed above the list. The order of the lists is according to the size of the party delegation in the Second Chamber. (For the parties having no parliamentary representation, the ordering is determined by lot). On a list a party may list up to 30 names on the ballot, or twice the number of its incumbent representatives in Parliament, with a maximum of 80. There are 19 electoral districts, but these exist more out of practical reasons and most parties will submit the lists in each of the districts (although the names on the list may vary, and there is no requirement that candidates live in the district or have any relationship with the district).
All votes cast for a candidate on a party list accrue to the total for the party. For the determination of the number of seats to be appointed to a party, the electoral districts play no role; seats are apportioned proportional according to the national vote. On the ballot a black square with a white circle is placed next to each candidate on the list. The voter must fill in the circle next to one of the candidates with a red pencil (for machine ballots there is a lever for each candidate). In 1956 the number of seats in the Second Chamber was expanded from 100 to 150. The only threshold for obtaining representation in the Second Chamber is the number of valid votes cast, divided by 150, which also determines the electoral quotient (recently about 60,000 votes). Each multiple of the electoral quotient entitles a party to an additional seat. When each party has received the seats to which it is entitled in this manner, it is generally found that not all seats have been allotted. The seats that remain are distributed by the method of largest average (the so called d'Hondt method). This replaced the largest remainder system in 1933, as the largest average was felt to provide a more precise proportionality. The use of the d'Hondt method does provide an advantage to larger parties. As a partial compensation for smaller parties since 1973 it has been possible to combine lists, both within and across districts, for the determination of the number of seats received. Once the total number of seats for each party has been determined, the first name on the list is declared elected. The procedure next moves to the second name on the list, and continues until all seats have been filled. The only exception is that a candidate who receives a quarter of the electoral quotient is declared elected automatically (presuming of course that his or her party is entitled to at least one representative). The lists remain in effect between elections and are used to fill seats that have fallen empty. No by-elections are held. Roughly the same system as explained above is used for municipal, provincial and European elections. Only the First Chamber is chosen in a different way; its members are chosen by the provincial legislatures. Though commitment to proportionality is extremely strong in The Netherlands, compulsory voting was abolished in 1970. Further proposals to change the system have come as the result of criticism that there is a growing gap between voters and politicians. Committees were appointed to propose changes and the government eventually proposed a mixed system in which half of the seats would be allocated according to proportional representation and the other half according to a five district system. After considerable criticism that this would disturb proportionality and would not necessarily provide a better relationship with the electorate, the government was forced to withdraw its proposal.
New Zealand: A Westminster Democracy Switches to PRNew Zealand recently changed its electoral system. In 1993, the country voted to discard the First Past the Post (FPTP) voting system it had used for over a century in favour of proportional representation. Two things stand out from this move. In the first place, some 20 years ago, it was thought highly unlikely that New Zealand, of all countries, would change its electoral system. Second, the change can be regarded as a good example of how to move from one voting system to another. It was done only after a great deal of research, debate, and public consultation. Most experts on electoral reform would agree that major electoral reforms should not be undertaken lightly, and the move to Proportional Representation (PR) in New Zealand was certainly not undertaken lightly. New Zealand has long been accorded something of a special status among the world's democracies as one of the 'purest' examples of the Westminster model of government, a model of virtually unrestrained executive authority with an electoral system, which in some ways was 'more British than Britain'. For many years it produced quintessential Westminster parliaments, with single-party governments and a relatively stable party system. Nevertheless, public disquiet about the effects of FPTP surfaced in New Zealand after the 1978 and the 1981 parliamentary elections. On both occasions, the opposition Labour Party won more votes throughout the country as a whole than the incumbent National Party government, but in both elections the National Party won a majority of seats in Parliament and thus stayed in power. Furthermore, in both 1978 and 1981, the then third party in New Zealand politics, Social Credit, won a fairly large share of the popular vote - 16 percent in 1978, and more than 20 percent in 1981, but - not unusual for FPTP systems - it won very few seats in the New Zealand Parliament, one and two seats respectively, in a House of Representatives of more than 90 members. When it gained office in 1984, the Labour Party established a Royal Commission on the Electoral System to consider 'whether all or a specified number or proportion of Members of Parliament should be elected under an alternative system ... such as proportional representation or preferential voting'. The Royal Commission on the Electoral System sat for most of 1985 and 1986 before releasing a long and detailed report in which it defined ten criteria for testing both FPTP and other voting systems. These were:
At the same time, however, the Royal Commission stressed that 'no voting system can fully meet the ideal standards set by the criteria', and pointed out that the criteria were not all of equal weight. The Royal Commission proposed that New Zealand adopt a system of proportional representation similar to that used in Germany, see Germany: The Original Mixed Member Proportional System; the Mixed Member Proportional system (MMP), see Mixed Member Proportional. Electors have two votes, one for a political party, and one for a local candidate elected by FPTP in single-member districts. As in Germany, but contrary to the situation in Japan and Russia, see Japan - Electoral Reform and Russia - An Evolving Parallel System, the party vote is paramount in the New Zealand system, because the party vote determines the overall number of seats parties are entitled to in Parliament. For example, if a political party wins 25 percent of the party votes in an election, it will qualify for 30 (25 percent) of the 120 seats in Parliament. If the party has already won 23 local district (or constituency) seats, then its complement of seats in the House of Representatives is topped up by giving it seven additional seats, and those seven seats will be allocated to the first seven eligible people on the party's rank-ordered list of nominated candidates. Likewise, a party with 25 percent of the party votes but only two district MPs will be awarded an additional 28 seats from its party-list to bring its total number of seats in Parliament up to 30 as well. In view of the fact that New Zealand had used an FPTP voting system for more than 100 years, the Royal Commission on the Electoral System rejected the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system of proportional representation, both because MMP 'retains single-member constituencies' and because the results of an MMP election were 'likely to be more closely proportional' than those under STV, see Single Transferable Vote. The Commission also recommended that a referendum should be held on the adoption of the MMP system, and despite the fact that a select committee of the New Zealand Parliament disagreed with the Royal Commission's recommendations, political pressure eventually led to two referendums on electoral reform. The first referendum, held in September 1992, was not binding, but an indicative plebiscite. However, voters so overwhelmingly favoured both changing the electoral system and MMP that a second - and binding - poll was held 14 months later. The second referendum was a straight choice between the FPTP and the MMP electoral systems, and MMP won 53.9 percent of the referendum votes. To ensure that the official publicity campaigns for the electoral reform referendums were conducted with 'political impartiality, ... balance, and neutrality', the Minister of Justice went so far as to appoint an independent Electoral Referendum Panel, at arm's length from politicians and public servants, in both 1992 and 1993. On each occasion, the panel was headed by the country's Chief Ombudsman and had a substantial budget for the task of informing voters about the mechanics - and, in effect, the advantages and the disadvantages - of the different options under consideration in each of the referendums. New Zealand's last FPTP election was held on 6 November 1993, on the same day as the referendum in which voters adopted MMP as the country's new electoral system. Just under three years later, New Zealand held its first MMP election, on 12 October 1996. The results of the 1996 election demonstrate that MMP has lived up to many of the expectations of the Royal Commission, which recommended it. Six parties are represented in the new Parliament, each in close accord with the share of the votes it won throughout the country as a whole; the system is highly proportional. There are now 15 Maori in the House of Representatives, and Maori are represented in the New Zealand Parliament in rough proportion to their numbers in the population as a whole. The same is true of Pacific Islanders, and the country's first PR election also saw the election of the country's first Asian MP. In addition, the overall proportion of women in Parliament rose from 21 percent in 1993 to 29 percent in 1996. There is also clear evidence that voters grasped how to use the new voting system in their own best interests. A pre-election survey found that 38 percent of electors intended to differentiate between their party and their local constituency or district votes; by way of comparison, only about 15 percent of German voters split their tickets. Furthermore, voter turnout in New Zealand was even higher in 1996 than it had been in either 1990 or 1993. In 1986, the Report of the Royal Commission on the Electoral System had stressed that an 'electoral system should allow Governments ... to meet their responsibilities. Governments should have the ability to act decisively when that is appropriate, and there should be reasonable continuity and stability both within and between Governments'. Time alone will tell whether New Zealand's new electoral system fulfils the demands of this criterion. There was some criticism that it took two months after the 1996 general election for a new government to be sworn in. The new government is a coalition of two parties - National and New Zealand First - that control a bare majority (61 seats) in the 120-member House of Representatives. Nevertheless, New Zealand voters would not have been too surprised by this. For example, the 1992 Electoral Referendum Panel pointed out that under MMP 'minor parties are likely to be represented in Parliament', and that as a result 'coalitions or agreements between parties may be needed to form governments'. The following year the Electoral Referendum Panel reiterated that 'coalition governments are more likely under MMP. This is because the MMP system results in a Parliament that reflects each party's share of the nationwide party vote. Having several parties in Parliament makes it more likely that there will be no one party with a majority of seats in Parliament.' This is precisely what happened in New Zealand in 1996. Papua New GuineaElectoral Incentives for Inter-Ethnic Accommodation The South Pacific country of Papua New Guinea (PNG) has utilised two different electoral systems - the Alternative Vote (AV) from 1964-1975 when it was an Australian territory, and First Past the Post (FPTP) from 1975 onwards, when it attained independence, see Alternative Vote and First Past the Post (FPTP). Its experience is interesting for a number of reasons. First, Papua New Guinea is one of the few developing countries with an unbroken record of continuous competitive elections and numerous peaceful changes of government. Second, the change from one election system to another resulted in a series of unexpected consequences which illustrate the different effects apparently similar electoral systems can have. Papua New Guinea inherited the AV system from Australia, and used it for three elections in 1964, 1968, and 1972. But, unlike Australia, PNG is a highly ethnically-fragmented state, and its experience of the three elections held under AV rules lends support to the claims that AV can promote inter-ethnic accommodation and moderation in deeply divided societies. This was because of the preferential nature of AV, under which voters express not just their first choice of candidate, but also their second and later choices. Because of the clan-based nature of PNG society, under AV most voters invariably gave their first preference to their own clan or 'home' candidate. But, in many seats, this was not enough for any single candidate to gain a majority of votes; they needed the second preferences of other groups as well. In order to do this, candidates had to sell themselves as a good 'second-best' choice to other clan groups - which meant, in general, someone who would be attentive to the interests of all groups, not just their own. It also meant that those candidates who formed alliances and co-operated with each other would often be more successful than candidates who attempted to win the seat from their own voter base alone. This gave many candidates an incentive to act in an accommodative manner to other clans. The mechanics of the system also ensured that the winning candidate would have the support of an absolute majority of voters. In a substantial number of cases, the winning candidate was not the one who had the biggest 'bloc' of supporters, but rather the one who could successfully build support across several groups. Thinking that First Past the Post would be simpler system which would have similar effects to AV, Papua New Guinea changed to a FPTP electoral system at independence in 1975. However, the different incentives provided by the new FPTP system led to quite different results than were expected. Because candidates no longer needed an absolute majority of votes cast in order to be successful, but just more than any other group, the candidate from the largest clan would often win the seat outright. There was no incentive to co-operate with anyone else. Electoral violence increased, because it was in some candidates' interests to stop opponents' supporters from voting, rather than to campaign for their second preferences as they had under AV. Also, because there are so many clans all trying to win the seat, candidates learned that they could be successful with very limited support. At the 1992 elections, almost half the PNG parliament was elected with less than 20% of the vote - one successful candidate gained only 6.3%. It is now common for candidates to be encouraged to stand in order to 'split' a dominant clan's voter base. This has led to a number of observers and politicians to call for the reintroduction of AV. The Papua New Guinea case illustrates just how dependent much of the accepted wisdom regarding electoral systems is on the structure of the society concerned. Despite having a FPTP electoral system, PNG has a very fluid party system, based on individuals rather than ideologies, and all governments so far have been weak coalitions, which have changed on the floor of parliament as well as at elections. The single-member system of representation has resulted in high levels of turnover of politicians from one election to the next and in a strong sense of accountability on the part of most local members to their electorate. However, under the AV system this sense of accountability tended to be spread across a number of groups, whereas under FPTP a member's clan base is sometimes his or her sole focus. Poland: Between Fragmentation and PolarisationThe June 1989 elections in Poland played pivotal role in the collapse of communist regimes across Central and Eastern Europe. These elections came about as a result of negotiations between Polish Communists and the Solidarity-led opposition, finalised by the so-called Roundtable Accord in April 1989. The Accord set up a unique (and designed for a singular use only) system of 'compartmentalised' elections, with 65 percent of the 460 seats in the Sejm allocated in advance to the Communists and their allies, and the remaining 35 percent subjected to an open contest. In addition, the upper chamber of parliament, the Senate, was re-established, with 100 seats to be filled in a free, unrestricted election - the first fully free and fair election in Eastern Europe in more than 40 years. In the elections, held on June 4 and June 18, 1989, Solidarity won all but one of the seats it contested. The communists acquired their allocated seats in the Sejm, but none in the Senate. The outcome of this election reflected the high level of political polarisation in Poland throughout the 1980's. The Sejm The parliament, elected in 1989 to a four-year term, as early as 1990 became obsolete. Being still dominated by the people of the old regime, with apparently slim chances for reelection, it did not go without hesitation, but eventually the date of new elections was set for October 27, 1991. After a long debate, the new electoral law for the elections to the Sejm was adopted by that House on June 28, 1991. Participants of this debate had their overt and covert agendas, and often changed their positions. In general, the post-communist majority in the Sejm, together with some post-Solidarity groupings was in favour of proportional representation, while others (President Walesa and the major post-Solidarity parties) advocated various mixed electoral systems. The rule of the thumb was the stronger the party and the more popular its leaders, the less likely it was to opt for a pure Proportional Representation (PR). Eventually, the considerations stemming from the uncertainty of the election outcome prevailed in deputies' minds, and for the Sejm election a PR system was adopted. In the system adopted in 1991, the country was divided to 37 districts, with from seven to 17 seats in each, determined according to population. To register its list in a district, a party had to collect at least 5,000 signatures of voters resident in the given district. Seats in the districts were allocated to the parties through the Hare-Niemeyer method, with no threshold. Out of the total 460 seats, 69 were awarded (through the modified Sainte-Lagu method) on a nation-wide base to each of those parties, which: (a) registered a national list (for which a party had to register its list in at least five districts by collecting 5,000 voters' signatures in each), and (b) surpassed the threshold of five percent nationally and/or managed to have their candidates elected in at least five districts. These thresholds were waived as far as the representation of ethnic minorities was concerned. Voters in each district were to show their preference by selecting one party list and placing a check beside the name of the candidate for whom they wished to vote. The political dichotomy of the 1989 election (Solidarity vs. the old regime), in 1991 was replaced by a highly fragmented polity, with more than 100 parties and quasi-parties contesting both the Senate and the Sejm elections. The elections resulted in a highly fragmented parliament, with the strongest party in the Sejm controlling a mere 13.5 percent of the seats, and no majority coalition of fewer than five parties possible. Altogether, 18 parties and groupings mustered at least two seats each, and additional 11 one seat each. The actual number of actors in the Sejm was in fact lower, due to mergers and coalitions. This parliament in two years managed to generate three Prime Ministers, two governments, and its own early departure, after accepting a motion of non-confidence in Hanna Suchocka government in May 1993. President Walesa, having a choice between dismissing the government or dissolving the parliament chose the latter. Among the last bills approved by the departing Sejm were amendments to the electoral law. The amendments adopted by the outgoing parliament were designed to limit fragmentation by eliminating weaker parties from the Sejm. Specifically, three devices were put in place: (1) a threshold of five percent for parties and eight percent for coalitions, nation-wide (also the threshold for national list was raised from five percent to seven percent); (2) an increase in the number of districts, from 37 to 52, expanding district magnitude to three to 17 seats; (3) implementation of the D'Hondt formula, advantageous to stronger parties, for allocation of all seats. Support for these amendments among the parties correlated in an obvious (positive) manner with their strength in the outgoing Sejm. For some of the parties that supported the amendments this decision was self-destructive, as only one coalition and five parties surpassed in the Sejm elections the prescribed thresholds. Thus the electoral reform gave the expected results: the stronger parties were awarded additional seats, the weakest were altogether eliminated from the Sejm. While the fragmentation of the parliament has been overcome, it has been achieved on the expense of serious distortions of proportionality. The ruling leftist coalition that emerged after the election received together only 36 percent of the votes but commanded a majority of 66 percent of the seats. With 34 percent of the votes 'wasted' for the parties not represented in the Sejm (mostly from the right side of the political spectrum), the parliament elected in 1993 was perceived as not fully legitimate: it represented (since the turnout was at the 52.1 percent level) only 34 percent of the eligible voters. Thus one potential (and between 1991 and 1993 actual) dysfunction of the democratic order, unstable governments generated by a fragmented parliament, has been replaced in 1993 by another one: a stable government without sufficient legitimacy. This potential deficiency has been removed in the wake of the most recent, September 21, 1997 elections, conducted according to the same as in 1993 rules. While only five parties and coalitions cleared the thresholds this time, they represented 87.8 percent of all valid votes (with the turnout of 47.93 percent). More importantly, the political balance returned to the Sejm, since several parties of the fragmented right united this time under the Electoral Action Solidarity (AWS) umbrella and won plurality of votes, to form a right-of-centre government with the liberal-democratic Freedom Union. However, the competition of the two major coalitions, the post-communist SLD on the left, and the AWS on the right, led to the weakened support for the centrist parties, and to the re-polarisation of the polity along ideological lines. The Senate Since 1989, the voting districts in the Senate elections have been based on geography, with two senators elected in each of 47 out of the 49 Poland's provinces. Only the two most populous provinces have been given three senatorial seats each. Senators are elected by a candidate-centred bloc vote, see Block Vote. In 1989, a majority was needed to win a seat (with a run-off two weeks after the first round). For the subsequent (1991, 1993, 1997) Senate elections the run-off round was abolished (plurality vote replaced majority vote). Interestingly, the level of fragmentation, and - with only minor deviations - the political composition of the Senate have been since 1991 parallel to the party composition of the Sejm. Presidential and Local Elections Since 1990, President of the Republic of Poland is elected by a popular vote. If in the first round none of the candidates gains majority, a run-off among two top candidates takes place two weeks later. In the 1995 election, which featured a tight race between the incumbent Lech Walesa and the eventual winner Aleksander Kwasniewski, this arrangement contributed to the re-polarisation of the political spectrum. In local elections two systems are used in a parallel way: First Past The Post (FPTP) in rural communities and in cities below 40,000 inhabitants, and a party-list PR in cities with more than 40,000 inhabitants. Russia - An Evolving Parallel SystemThe legislative electoral system, which was first decreed by President Boris Yeltsin in September/October 1993, along with the presidential election system, were included within the first post-Soviet Russian constitution, which was narrowly ratified by the voters in December 1993. The Federal Assembly, the legislature of the Russian governmental system, is bicameral. The Duma (the popular assembly) is elected every four years. The Federation Council (the Upper House) consists of one executive and one legislative representative chosen from each of the 89 regions of Russia according to the laws of each region. The Russian electoral system can be characterized as a classic example of a parallel electoral system, see Parallel. Both party-list Proportional Representation (PR) and First Past the Post (FPTP) voting are used for choosing deputies in the Duma, but there is no adjustment of the party-list representatives to reflect disparities in the overall seat-vote share, as there is in Germany and New Zealand, see Germany: The Original Mixed Member Proportional System and New Zealand: A Westminster Democracy Switches to PR. The total number of deputies is 450, with exactly half selected by PR and half chosen in single-member plurality constituencies. The PR system operates in effect as one constituency, since the votes for political parties are tallied across the entire country. Nevertheless, parties compete regionally on closed lists, in accord with the June 1995 law adopted by the Federal Assembly. A nominee for a national party list of 12 members may also seek election from an FPTP single-member district in the region. Consequently, this can result in another seat for a political party, which wins on the PR ballot. Upon achieving the threshold of at least five percent of the PR votes, seats are distributed according to the largest remainder formula, see Thresholds. In theory, this is supposed to benefit smaller parties, but it does not appear to have had that effect in Russia. In the 1995 parliamentary elections, only four political parties crossed the five percent threshold, which would make them eligible to be allocated seats from the PR lists. These parties garnered only 50.5 percent of the popular vote and received double the number of seats which would have been distributed had it been a strictly proportional system. Women of Russia, one of the 18 parties which failed to gain party list seats, was a slim 2.3 percent lower in votes than the Yobloco Party, which obtained, by contrast, 31 party list seats. Anomalies also occurred in the single-member constituencies, some of which were won with percentage votes as low as 20 percent when several of the 43 parties competed. Consequently the proportion of wasted votes was very high in the 1995 parliamentary elections. The development of Russia's new electoral system was characterized by compromises among parliamentarians, the Russian president, and the legacy of past practice, see The Process of Choice. At first Boris Yeltsin decreed that one-third of the Duma would be elected by party-list PR, and the remainder elected from single-member districts as in the former Soviet Union. However, a number of pro-democracy groups in the previous parliament favoured List PR, seeing an advantage for their mostly Moscow-based organizations. After apparently being persuaded that well-organized communist parties would benefit from single-member districts, Yeltsin adopted an evenly-split plurality-PR system in October 1993. At the same time there was substantial agreement on the method of electing the President and the Federation Council, but in 1995 the election of Federation Council members was decentralised so that elections would be held according to each region's electoral laws. The five percent threshold, intended to inhibit the proliferation of parties, has not worked in Russia and has led to gross disproportionality in the second Duma, elected in 1995. A number of groups have suggested the complete removal of the threshold, as in Iceland, or a smaller minimum percentage, such as the 0.67 percent threshold in the Netherlands, or the four percent in Sweden. Another change would be a move to a fully compensatory MMP system, as is used in Germany. The seats distributed to parties would then reflect the people's PR vote within each region, thus enhancing overall proportionality and strengthening the political party system as a whole. Candidates for the presidency in 1991 were required to obtain 100,000 signatures, with only seven percent from the same region, for nomination. In 1995, this number was increased to one million signatures. The presidential system specifies that if no candidate wins an absolute majority in the first election round, a second is held between the two leading contenders, and the winner is required to win 50 percent or more votes for election. Four years is the term of office, and there is a two-term limitation. Presidential elections are held in different years from parliamentary elections. One problem with the two-round absolute majority presidential election procedure is that it discourages the formation of party coalitions, unlike one-round plurality elections in which parties tend to form in two blocs, see Presidential Elections - Two-Round System. Holding the presidential election at the same time as the Duma's would further reduce party-splintering and ensure greater accountability by the president and Duma. Ukraine - The Perils of Majoritarianism in a New DemocracyUkraine's first elections as an independent state were held under a majoritarian Two-Round System (TRS), see Two-Round System. The collapse of the Soviet system in the early 1990s had precipitated the creation of numerous new parties seeking to establish their democratic credentials and lead Ukraine through economic and political reform. But geographical variations in Ukraine's economic and ethnic structure, coupled with a history of territorial division, led to the formation of different parties in different parts of the country. The result was a situation in which there were many small parties with support bases defined either along regional and ethnic lines, or along those of economic wealth. When Ukraine held parliamentary elections in 1994, most of the parties were ill organized and had only a vague idea of how many supporters they had. One reason for this is that, although Ukrainians on the whole valued democratic politics, there was also a strong popular aversion to organized political activism, given the country's experience of one-party rule under communism. The weakness of the parties at the outset of multi-party competition meant that electoral institutions were especially important in shaping the young party system. According to the electoral law that governed the 1994 contest, one deputy was elected from each constituency, and a run-off was held between the two candidates who received the highest number of votes if no candidate gained an absolute majority in the first round. Many commentators at the time saw the Two-Round System as an ideal means of limiting the number of parties in parliament while at the same time giving small parties a greater chance of being elected than they would have under a First Past the Post system (FPTP). Another perceived advantage of the system was that it would encourage the formation of tactical agreements between like-minded parties in the second round, to maximize the overall representation of their combined interests. But the results of the elections demonstrated a number of flaws in this reasoning. Firstly, the geographical heterogeneity of partisan support led to the election of many deputies with narrow regional concerns, often associated with the interests of a specific ethnic group or economic sector. When the parliament assembled, it contained deputies from no fewer than 14 parties, a far larger number than that envisaged by the proponents of the majoritarian electoral law. Moreover, the tendency of majoritarian systems to exaggerate the seat share of large parties meant that although the re-vamped Communists gained only 13 percent of the vote, they won 23 percent of the seats and were thus considerably over-represented relative to their true electoral support. This 'seat bonus' effect did not operate for the smaller newly formed parties, who mostly received fewer seats than their popular vote may have indicated. Secondly, the elections did little to consolidate the party system; most parties were reluctant to strike second-round deals amongst themselves, because they over-estimated their electoral strength and believed that they would perform best on their own. And thirdly, the preservation of single-member districts allowed many local officials and well-known local figures to win seats without having to associate themselves with an organized party. As a consequence, half of the deputies elected were independents. The large number of parties in parliament and the relatively small proportion of party-affiliated deputies generated a considerable amount of fluidity in the structure of parliamentary factions. This has led to unpredictable outcomes. It has weakened democratic accountability, and it has lowered the parliament's esteem in the eyes of many voters. A further problem with the Ukrainian electoral law is that it included two stipulations not found in most laws of this type: electoral participation had to exceed 50 percent for the election in a given constituency to be declared valid, and the winning candidate had to receive an absolute majority of the vote. These requirements meant that deputies were not elected at all in about a quarter of the constituencies; low turnout caused many elections to be declared invalid, and in many more cases neither of the candidates in the run-off election won over 50 percent of the vote, since many people voted against both candidates as a form of protest. The process of filling the empty seats carried on for over two years, generating considerable popular disaffection. Moreover, fluctuating numbers in the legislature added to the unpredictability of results, and several regions of the country were left severely under-represented for much of this period. Following the 1994 elections, there was a general consensus that it would be desirable to move toward a more proportional electoral system so as to reduce the number of independent deputies, stabilise the party system, and promote more predictable legislative behaviour, see PR Systems. The electoral law introduced for 1998 is a semi-proportional parallel system, by which half the deputies will be elected by FPTP in single-member districts, and half from national party lists, with a three percent threshold for representation. The most important conclusion to be drawn from the Ukrainian case is that, although proportional systems can often cause a proliferation of parliamentary parties in developed democracies, majoritarian laws also allow a large number of parties to enter parliament when parties are weakly entrenched and geographically distinct, which is the case in many new democracies. Furthermore, in Central-Eastern Europe majoritarian systems do little to help consolidate new party systems, because lack of widespread party identification encourages the election of independent candidates who can blur the balance of party strength in parliament and destabilize the legislative process. Finally, majoritarian systems give a distinct advantage to those parties that do have established organizational and support bases, such as those found in the former one-party states of Africa, Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union. UK: Electoral System Experimentation in Cradle of FPTPThe classical First Past the Post (FPTP), single-member district, electoral system that is so strongly associated with Great Britain did not in fact come into widespread use for Westminster elections until 1884-1885 - a full 50 years after the First Reform Act of 1832, which marked the beginnings of representative democracy in the UK, see First Past the Post (FPTP). Up until 1867 most members of the British House of Commons were elected from two-member districts by the Block Vote who served to compound the seat bonuses given to the larger parties, see Block Vote. The Second Reform Act of 1867 introduced the Limited Vote (in which electors had one fewer vote than the number of seats to be filled) for the election of 43 members of the Commons, chosen from 13 three-member districts and one four-member seat, see Limited Vote. The Third Reform Act of 1884-1885 abolished these Limited Vote seats and FPTP became established as the dominant system. Even today, and despite Westminster's reputation as the birthplace of FPTP, the system is not used throughout the United Kingdom. The Single Transferable Vote form of PR was re-introduced in Northern Ireland, after a 50 year absence, for local government elections in 1973 in an attempt to craft incentives for accommodatory behaviour between the political representatives of the Nationalist and Unionist communities, advantage the moderate and non-sectarian middle, and ensure adequate representation of the minority Catholic community, see Single Transferable Vote. In the same year STV was used to elect the ill-fated Stormont Assembly - which had been created to give the people of Ulster a degree of self-governing power. Nearly a quarter of a century later, in May 1996, a new body charged with finding solutions to the province's troubles, the Northern Irish Peace Forum, was elected by PR in order to give rise to the most representative body possible, see List PR. Ninety Forum members were elected from 18 list PR districts of five members in size, while the top 10 parties in terms of votes won across Ulster were awarded two additional seats in the assembly. Since 1979 Northern Ireland's three members of the European parliament have been elected by STV while, at the same time, Britain's 84 English, Scottish, and Welsh MEPs have been elected by FPTP. The proliferation of different electoral systems in use in the UK has meant that electoral reform, for all tiers of British government, has become an increasingly debated issue. In July 1997 the new Labour government, led by Prime Minister Tony Blair, announced that they would present legislation to change the electoral system for British members of the European parliament to a form of regional list PR in England, Scotland, and Wales, while leaving unaltered the PR STV system in Northern Ireland. Similarly, the proposed Scottish and Welsh assemblies, which will have a degree of autonomous law-making power devolved from the Westminster parliament, are to be elected by PR methods if they are approved by the Scottish and Welsh peoples in September 1997 referenda. Both assemblies are to have Mixed Member Proportional systems which retain FPTP seats based on the current Westminster single-member districts, but include district-based PR lists which will compensate, to some extent, for any overall disproportionality, see Mixed Member Proportional. The proposed Welsh Assembly will have 40 FPTP single-member seats and 20 list PR seats, while the proposed Scottish Assembly will have 73 FPTP seats and 56 list PR seats. No set threshold for representation has been agreed upon but the Welsh Assembly will have an effective threshold of just under five per cent for a party to win a list seat while in Scotland parties will need far fewer votes to gain representation - probably closer to 1.5 per cent of the total vote. Lastly, STV has been proposed by the Fabians (an influential Labour-affiliated policy institute) for local government elections. But it is unlikely that electoral system reform will be seriously considered for local government in this parliament's lifetime - not least because the government's agenda for constitutional reform is already so over-loaded. However, the overwhelming focus of electoral reform remains the House of Commons and at the time of writing Britain appears closer to changing her FPTP system than at any time since 1917. In that year a proposal to introduce the Alternative Vote (AV) for two-thirds of the parliamentary seats, and the Single Transferable Vote (STV) for the remaining one-third of seats, was narrowly defeated after a stalemate between the House of Lords and House of Commons. A second attempt to move to AV was rejected by parliament in 1931, and it was not until the 1970s that electoral reform muscled its way back on to the British political agenda. In 1976 the Hansard Commission on Electoral Reform, chaired by the former Conservative cabinet minister Lord Blake, recommended that a Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) system be used for parliamentary elections, with three-quarters of the members being elected by FPTP and one-quarter from regional PR lists. The calculation for list seat allocations would take place at the national level and these seats would compensate for any disproportionality in the overall results of the single member district seats. After four consecutive defeats for the Labour party (1979, 1983, 1987, and 1992) the previously solid Labour support for FPTP began to fracture and in 1990 the leadership set up a commission, chaired by Professor Raymond Plant, to investigate electoral system reform options. The Plant Report (1993) recommended a switch to a sibling of the Alternative Vote which they called the Supplementary Vote - the same system used to elect the Sri Lankan president, see Sri Lanka: Changes to Accommodate Diversity. While this proposal was never officially adopted by the Labour party in opposition they did nonetheless adopt a policy that, when returned to office, they would hold a national referendum on electoral system change. This policy was given teeth in a joint agreement on constitutional reform between Labour and the Liberal Democrats (who had consistently advocated a switch to a PR) announced on the eve of the 1997 British general election.
The debate over reforming the way members of the House of Commons are elected reflects the First Past the Post versus Proportional Representation debate which has underlain much of the discussion of British constitutional practice throughout this century. The criticisms of the current FPTP electoral system have been restated many times. First, FPTP in the UK has led to some highly disproportional results where minority parties received far fewer seats than their percentage vote might have indicated and has led to situations where the 'losing' party, in terms of votes won, became the winning party in term of seats won and thus formed the government. The Liberal Party, then Liberal-Social Democratic Alliance, then Liberal Democrats, have been the most victimized on the first count - although over the last four elections the disparity between the third party's vote and seat share has been decreasing. In 1983 the Liberal-SDP Alliance won 25.4 percent of the vote but only 3.5 percent of the seats. In 1987 the Alliance won 22.6 percent and 3.4 percent of the seats. In 1992 the newly formed Liberal Democrats won 17.8 percent of the votes and 3.1 percent of the seats, but in 1997, utilising more sophisticated targeting techniques and benefiting from the tide of anti-Conservative feeling, the Lib Dems were able to win 6.5 percent of the seats with 16.7 percent of the popular vote. The uphill struggle that new parties face under FPTP was dramatically illustrated in the 1989 UK European elections when the UK Green Party won 15 percent of the vote but not a single seat. The second anomaly, of one party winning most votes but forming the opposition, has happened twice in the post-war period. In 1951 the Labour Party won more votes but the Conservatives won most seats and formed the government, while in February 1974 the indignity was reversed with Labour forming the government after the Conservatives had polled most votes. A second powerful criticism leveled at the British FPTP system has been its inability to adequately represent the nation along lines of gender and ethnicity. Up until 1997 fewer than ten percent of British MPs were women, although Labour's vigorous promotion of women parliamentary candidates and their subsequent landslide victory did nearly double the number of women MPs to 18.1 percent in the 1997 parliament. Ethnic minorities in Britain have been similarly under-represented. Most parliaments preceding the 1987 election were all white, and the four Black and Indian-English MPs elected in that year represented less than 0.5 percent of the total. While Black and Asian representation has increased over the last three elections their numbers in parliament remain substantially below their proportion of the UK population as a whole. Opponents of FPTP have also cited destabilizing swings in economic policy which arose from the alternation of Conservative and Labour governments between 1945-1979, but the Conservatives 18 unbroken years in office (1979-1997) and Labour's drift toward the fiscally moderate centre has tended to weaken this argument. Finally, some PR advocates have disputed the fact that FPTP creates a strong geographical link between elector and representative in the UK, arguing that many safe Conservative and Labour seats are effectively 'rotten boroughs' where MPs have little incentive to make themselves accessible, and that the urban centres of the UK are now so totally dominated by Labour MPs that all other party supporters are effectively disenfranchised. In contrast FPTP in Britain is defended particular because of its single-member districts and encouragement of a 'dominant two-party system'. Supporters of the status quo find the single constituency member sacrosanct and argue that this relationship of accountability between a voter and their MP is the bedrock of British democracy. Opponents of PR also point to the fact that all, bar one, UK governments in the post-war period have been single party governments and predict that the coalition governments, which would most likely result from a PR system, would be destabilizing to the country as a whole. Related to the previous point is the argument that FPTP provides a barrier against the fragmentation of the party system, which might involve the break up of the major parties (for example, a split in the Conservative Party between 'pro-' and 'anti-' European wings). Finally, FPTP is praised for denying a platform to extremist parties such as the National Front and British National Party. The prospects for reform of Britain's FPTP system for parliamentary elections remain uncertain. While it now seems increasingly likely that a referendum will be held it is unclear whether the British electorate would support a switch to PR. Opinion polls between 1992 and 1997 have been inconsistent. At times they have shown great support for change while at other times a majority of voters have expressed the desire to keep FPTP. If a referendum is held the stance taken by the Labour government is likely to be key. A vigorous campaign against change (joined by the Conservatives) would probably condemn the PR alternative to failure, while a strong Labour campaign for change (in harness with the Liberal Democrats) might ensure that electoral reform carried the day. If Britain does change its electoral system, and goes through with the establishment of the Scottish and Welsh assemblies, then there could be up to six different electoral systems operating at the national, local, and European parliamentary levels come the end of this century. US: Ethnic Minorities and Single-Member DistrictsSingle-member districts (SMDs) are deeply rooted in American political tradition. From the founding of the United States in the eighteenth century to the present, electoral representation has been grounded on the concept of territorial units and subunits. Americans have always thought of popular sovereignty in spatial terms, beginning with the original conception of the U.S. Constitution as a compact among sovereign states and continuing within the states to the valorization of county and municipal government autonomy or 'home rule.' The Constitution does not specify how popular elections should be structured, and the states have experimented with a variety of single-member-district, multimember-district and at-large forms. But SMDs frequently, if episodically, have been the method of choice for elections at all levels, federal, state, and local, because they enable smaller, geographically situated communities to send their own representatives to larger legislative assemblies. Conversely, multimember districts and at-large elections have been employed when ruling majorities wanted to emphasize the corporate identity of particular jurisdictions and to suppress partisan or ethnic 'factionalism.' At-large voting rules such as majority-vote requirements, anti-single-shot laws and numbered places were used to maximize the power of ethnic majorities to control all the seats in their legislative bodies. Historically blacks have been the primary targets of vote-submergence devices in the U.S. The United States is the only modern democracy founded on the institution of slavery, and blacks are entrenched in its Constitution and political institutions as an internal national 'other.' Slaves were non-persons, and even free blacks were non-citizens. After the Civil War and Reconstruction, blacks in the South were systematically terrorized during elections and, around the turn of the century, disfranchised altogether. The all-white Democratic Party primary became the only election that mattered, and it turned the 'solid South' into a region of one-party states. International pressures of the Cold War and the NAACP's litigation campaign against legalized racial segregation eventually succeeded in striking down laws which denied blacks the vote and barred them from primary elections. Thereafter, many majority-white jurisdictions, in and out of the South, resorted to at-large and multimember election schemes to minimize black electoral influence. The U.S. Supreme Court responded to the post-World War II reexamination of American nationality by elevating the constitutional importance of the individual. In 1963 and 1964 the Court reversed its longstanding refusal to get involved in redistricting controversies and granted relief to white urban voters complaining about the refusal of state legislatures, dominated by underpopulated rural districts, to redistrict themselves. The Supreme Court relied on the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to announce the rule of one person, one vote, defining the individual citizen as the basic unit of electoral politics. However, by making the under-weighting of a person's vote justifiable, the Court opened the door to claims that voting strength could be diluted by non-mathematical means, in particular by electoral structures which allowed a bloc-voting white majority to deny a black citizen any opportunity to choose a representative in the state or local legislature. The Supreme Court responded by instructing lower courts to prefer SMDs when they ordered redistricting of malapportioned legislative bodies, and in 1973 it declared unconstitutional Texas' use of multimember legislative districts, specifically because they denied black and Latino voters an equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice. All these electoral reforms were wrought by judicial reinterpretation of the Constitution. Meanwhile, in 1965, prodded by the confrontational mass politics of the Civil Rights Movement, Congress passed and President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, which enabled most blacks in the South to vote for the first time. The conditions that would warrant judicial relief from minority vote dilution became the subject of intense and increasingly complicated litigation, both with respect to at-large or multimember-district elections and with respect to allegedly gerrymandered SMDs. In 1980 the Supreme Court held that racial minorities must prove that a challenged election structure was designed or maintained intentionally to dilute their voting strength. Congress responded with the Voting Rights Act of 1982, which created a statutory entitlement to judicial relief from election structures which had the effect or 'result' of diluting the voting strength of protected minorities, defined as racial groups and 'persons who are American Indian, Asian American, Alaskan Natives or of Spanish heritage.' The 1982 Voting Rights Act, helped along by a 1986 Supreme Court decision which streamlined the proof it required, sparked widespread changes from at-large elections to SMDs, through both litigation and legislation. By the time the 1990 census rolled around, nearly every state and local redistricting authority was preoccupied with the task of drawing 'minority-majority' SMDs that would comply with both the constitutional rule of population equality and the anti-vote dilution mandate of the Voting Rights Act. The new SMDs produced remarkable gains in office holding for both African Americans and Latinos. The number of black elected officials nationwide grew from 300 in 1964 to approximately 8,000 in 1993, although this figure still constituted less than two percent of all elected officials in a country where blacks account for twelve percent of the population. Since passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the number of African-American members of Congress had increased from nine to thirty-eight, and majority-black SMDs were responsible for all seventeen of the African Americans elected to Congress from the eleven Southern states of the old Confederacy. After the 1994 elections, under a new redistricting plan negotiated by black political leaders, Alabama became the first and only Southern State ever to achieve black proportional representation in both houses of its Legislature. The nationalist backlash provoked by this surge in majority-black and majority-Hispanic SMDs probably was inevitable. The way SMDs are drawn necessarily defines the constituencies that are deemed to be relevant for purposes of representation in legislative assemblies, and it does so in strictly geographic terms. Seldom are redistricting choices politically irrelevant, mere administrative devices for cumulating individual voter preferences. Rather, they declare who the operative national subcommunities shall be and how much power they will enjoy in the lawmaking process. In the United States, counties, municipalities, and recognizable neighborhoods have been the traditional building blocks for redistricting, except when it was expedient to ignore their boundaries for the sake of submerging the electoral influence of African Americans and other ethnic minorities. Now it has become necessary to split up traditional political subdivisions to create districts with African-American or Latino majorities, because in the U.S. people of color have no clearly discernible 'homelands.' Although they frequently are clustered in ethnically identifiable neighborhoods, these residential enclaves are dispersed among more populous, predominantly white neighborhoods. The result in some cases has been very irregularly shaped, noncompact majority-black or majority-Latino districts which, although they were no more bizarre than some majority-white districts, unmistakably signaled racial or ethnic designs. The most contorted black and Latino districts quickly drew court challenges from white voters, who contended they violated a radically 'colorblind' interpretation of the Constitution. In 1993, the Supreme Court issued the first of a series of decisions which established 'an analytically distinct' constitutional cause of action that could be used by individual citizens who wished to challenge 'racially gerrymandered' SMDs. Plaintiffs would not have to bear the heavy burden of proving that because of the challenged districts their votes were denied or abridged or that their voting strength was diluted. Instead, the Court recognized a presumptively stigmatic harm ensuing from districts which were drawn for the 'predominant' purpose of race and which could not be justified as a 'narrowly tailored' effort to serve a 'compelling state interest.' Such districts are unconstitutional, said the Court, because they presume that all members of the ethnic minority think and vote alike and share the same political interests, a message the Court fears will encourage racial 'balkanization' of the electorate. This new gerrymander jurisprudence, which aims to address perceived harms to national unity rather than to the individual plaintiff, has produced court orders striking down several majority-black and majority-Latino SMDs at the Congressional, state, and local levels. The new constitutional districting rules have been created and reaffirmed by the same narrow, five-justice Court majority over the vigorous dissents of four justices, who contend that they offend both substantive justice and the proper limits of judicial review. Justice Felix Frankfurter warned about the perils of the judiciary entering the 'political thicket' in his dissent from the first one-person, one-vote case in 1963. He may be vindicated by the incoherence of the Supreme Court's current gerrymandering principles. Surely nothing could be less appropriate for resolution by judges than questions about how the sovereign people should define themselves in a multi-ethnic democratic republic. In its rush to prevent state legislatures from assuming that all African Americans think alike, the Court has yet to confront the converse proposition: What if African-American or Mexican-American or Asian-American or Native-American citizens in a particular state or locale actually do share the same political interests and freely associate to assert them through their elected representatives, through their community institutions or through political organizations - perhaps political parties? To suggest that citizens of color are constitutionally prohibited from negotiating for their own SMDs would contravene historical, constitutionally protected notions of political freedom in the U.S. This is an entirely different question from whether members of an ethnic minority can demand that such districts be created as a matter of legal or constitutional right. But these are serious questions, which advocates of 'majority-minority' SMDs themselves are only now being forced to address. There was never a consensus among them about the political limits or normative endpoint of the voting rights they pressed into remarkably successful service. Today, most advocates of SMDs designed to produce voter majorities of a particular ethnic group defend them as necessary responses to the 'unfortunate' reality of ethnic divisions in the national fabric. They share with the opponents of majority-minority districts an underlying commitment to the vision of the United States as an immigrant nation, one in which newcomers and their descendants voluntarily assimilate in the established institutions of public political and social life while retaining the right to preserve their ethnic distinctiveness in strictly private institutional ways. Even private (white) ethnic associations were under pressure to disappear during the 'melting pot' era of Anglo ascendancy, which extended at least through World War I. A distinct change in American identity was wrought by World War II, however, when the descendants of other European nationalities placed their stamp of ownership on the American nation and the Anglo-American political traditions they had adopted. The full implications of this national redefinition were largely submerged, as they were throughout the world, in the empires created by competing statist ideologies during the Cold War. That has all changed now, and the U.S. is not immune from the winds of ethnic nationalism that are sweeping the globe. Today, Americans of German and Irish ancestry outnumber those of English descent. They now sit in the front benches, along with Southern-European and Eastern-European Americans, including secular American Jews, where together they have become the most passionate defenders of their adopted English language and Anglo-American Constitution. Ethnically identifiable SMDs are an embarrassment to these Americans and a threat to their national vision. The right wing of the immigrant nation supports the current regime of suppressing and delegitimising SMDs that have all too obvious racial or ethnic designs, while the left wing either defends majority-minority districts as temporary integration tools or urges that they be replaced with multimember-district schemes using semi-proportional or single-transferrable-vote rules. The growing number of PR proponents also criticize SMDs because they can make it easier for incumbents to get re-elected, engendering a lack of accountability which hurts ethnic majorities and minorities alike. But PR systems are not invulnerable to the same charges often leveled at majority-minority SMDs, that they encourage ethnic polarization and threaten destabilization. Left out of this immigrant debate and its common objectives of national uniformity, however, are Americans of color, especially the descendants of African slaves. Some scholars now acknowledge that white supremacy has always been a more powerful defining characteristic of American citizenship than any of the more openly debated versions of liberal pluralism and civic republicanism. Many white Americans are simply disturbed or even frightened by black control of the political units in which they reside. For African Americans, a more inclusive immigrant nation may be neither realistic nor an acceptable remedy for centuries of caste exclusion. They may favour renegotiations of American nationhood on terms that at last acknowledge their distinctiveness and accord them full dignity and free agency. The periodic redrawing of SMDs may be one of the best ways of forcing their national demands onto the table, which could explain why a hostile Supreme Court majority has constitutionalized the issue in hopes of squelching the debate. Proportional representation systems may afford African Americans equal participation in legislative bodies, but by sidestepping the constitutive inter-ethnic dialogue redrawing SMDs requires they may actually impede the historical quest of descendants of slaves for complete freedom. Recent PR proposals by some members of the Congressional Black Caucus have not resonated strongly in the black community. On the other hand, it is easy to imagine how the descendants of conquered indigenous peoples and of non-white immigrants might have entirely different views of which election structures best suit their personal and collective agendas in an increasingly diverse U.S. A just resolution of these conflicting, often incommensurable ethnic positions on electoral structures and their underlying national visions can be achieved only through mutual consent to compromises, which must be incomplete and provisional so long as we value the liberal ideal of individual freedom to shape and reshape one's own cultural and political identity. The negotiations required to reach agreement on such formative questions are particularly difficult to start and to sustain in the United States, because for so many Americans their national identity is invested in a sacred, written Constitution, which for all practical purposes can only be reinterpreted, not renegotiated. Not surprisingly, the greatest progress toward national consensus usually has been achieved through democratically negotiated compromises outside the constitutional context, as with the Voting Rights Act, for example. Now, with considerable encouragement from 'colorblind' conservatives, some members of the Supreme Court are suggesting that what they consider to be overzealous implementation by the democratic branches of federal and state governments may call into question the constitutional validity of the Act itself. And the occasion for this constitutional confrontation will be the battle over legislative redistricting. Thus, if the American experience with SMDs as an instrument of political empowerment for ethnic minorities holds any lessons for other democracies, they would include the importance of the particular national context, of respect for its political traditions and the particular situations of subnational groups within them, of the opportunities for gaining the widest possible consensus in making decisions about election structures, and, most of all, of humility when it comes to expectations of lasting solutions. South Africa: Election Systems and Conflict ManagementThe National Assembly parliamentary and provincial elections held in South Africa in 1994 marked the high point of a period of tumultuous change from authoritarian rule to multi-party democracy in Southern Africa as a whole. At midnight on 27 April 1994 the last and perhaps most despised, colonial flag was lowered in Africa, heralding the end of 300 years of colonialism and four decades of apartheid. These first multi-party democratic elections opened the stage to those political movements, which had been driven underground by the Pretoria regime's policy of racial divide and rule. Nelson Mandela's African National Congress (ANC) was poised on the threshold of power; the Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) was challenging it within the same community, while Mangosotho Buthelezi's Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) hoped to build on their hegemony in the north of the Province of KwaZulu-Natal. These new parties joined De Klerk's National Party (NP), the liberal Democratic Party (DP), and the new Freedom Front (FF) - a descendent of the 'white right' parties of the old constitutional dispensation - in battling for the votes of 35 million newly-enfranchised people. Elections were conducted under a form of national List Proportional Representation (PR) with half the National Assembly (200 members) being chosen from nine provincial lists and the other half being elected from a single national list, see List PR. In effect, the country used one nationwide constituency (with of 400 members) for the conversion of votes into seats, and no threshold for representation was imposed. The Droop quota was used to apportion seats, and surplus seats were awarded by an adaptation of the largest-remainder method. Early drafts of the electoral law put the threshold for parliamentary representation at five percent of the national vote but in a concession to the smaller parties, the African National Congress and the National Party agreed in early 1994 to drop any 'mandatory' threshold. However, only those parties with 20 or more MPs, five percent of the Assembly, were guaranteed portfolios in the first government's cabinet of national unity. The fact that the 'Mandela liberation-movement juggernaut' would have won the National Assembly elections under almost any electoral system cannot deny the importance of South Africa's choice of a List PR system for these first elections. Many observers claimed that a PR system, as an integral part of other power-sharing mechanisms in the new constitution, was crucial to creating the atmosphere of inclusiveness and reconciliation which has so far encouraged the decline of the worst political violence, and made post-apartheid South Africa a beacon of hope and stability to the rest of troubled Africa. Nevertheless, in 1990, upon Nelson Mandela's release from prison, there was no particular reason to believe that South Africa would adopt PR. The 'whites-only' parliament had always been elected by a First Past the Post (FPTP) system, while the ANC, now in a powerful bargaining position, expected to be clearly advantaged if FPTP were maintained. As only five districts, out of over 700 in South Africa, had white majorities, due to the vagaries of FPTP voting the ANC, with 50 percent to 60 percent of the popular vote, expected they would easily win 70 percent or 80 percent of the parliamentary seats. But the ANC did not opt for this course because they realised that the disparities of a 'winner-take-all' electoral system would be fundamentally destabilizing in the long run for minority and majority interests, see Negotiations. List PR also avoided the politically charged controversy of having to draw constituency boundaries and, furthermore, it fitted in with the executive power-sharing ethos which both the ANC and Nationalists saw as a key tenet of the interim constitution. Today, all major political parties support the use of PR, although there are differences over which specific variant to use. It is probable that even with their geographic pockets of electoral support the Freedom Front (nine seats in the National Assembly), Democratic Party (seven seats), Pan-Africanist Congress (five seats), and African Christian Democratic Party (two seats) would have failed to win a single parliamentary seat if the elections had been held under a single-member district FPTP electoral system. While these parties together only represent six percent of the new Assembly, their importance inside the structures of government far outweigh their numerical strength. A reading of the detailed results reveals, somewhat surprisingly, that List PR may not have particularly advantaged the mid-sized National Party (NP) and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) over and above the number of seats they would have expected to win under a FPTP system. This was primarily due to the 'national referendum' nature of the campaign, which led to a two-party battle between the old and the new; the ANC versus the IFP in the KwaZulu-Natal province, and the ANC versus the NP in the rest of the country. Furthermore, the ethnically homogeneous nature of constituencies and the strong geographical concentrations of support in South Africa meant that the NP and IFP would have won only slightly fewer seats under a constituency system. However, FPTP would in all likelihood have given the ANC a small 'seat bonus', increasing their share of parliament beyond their share of the popular vote (which was 62 percent) and beyond the two-thirds majority needed to draft the new constitution without reference to other parties. The practice of having one ballot for the National Assembly and one for the provincial parliament also proved to be an important innovation in the electoral system design. Up until a few months before the election, the ANC were still insisting on a single ballot which would be counted for both the national and provincial elections. This was quite clearly a manoeuvre to advantage the larger, nationally-based parties and was only changed through the pressure of an alliance of business leaders, the Democratic Party, and international advisers. The eventual results did show that large numbers of voters had split their national and provincial ballots between two parties, and it appears as though the major beneficiaries of the double ballot were the small Democratic Party and the Freedom Front. Both parties polled more than 200,000 votes in the provincial elections, over and above their national result, which went a long way to explain the 490,000 drop between the NP's national and provincial totals.
The choice of electoral system also had an impact upon the composition of parliament along the lines of ethnicity and gender. The South African National Assembly, invested in May 1994, contained over 80 former members of the whites-only parliament, but that was where the similarities between the old and the new ended. In direct contrast to South Africa's troubled history, black sat with white, communist with conservative, Zulu with Xhosa, and Muslim with Christian. To a significant extent the diversity of the new National Assembly was a product of the use of List PR. The national, and unalterable, candidate lists allowed parties to present ethnically heterogeneous groups of candidates which, it was hoped, would have cross-cutting appeal. The resulting National Assembly was 52 percent black (including Xhosa, Zulu, Sotho, Venda, Tswana, Pedi, Swazi, Shangaan, and Ndebele speaking), 32 percent white (English and Afrikaans speaking), eight percent Indian, and seven percent coloured. This compared to an electorate, which was estimated to be 73 percent black, 15 percent white, nine percent coloured, and three percent Indian. Women made up 25 percent of the total parliamentary membership. There was a widespread belief in South Africa that if FPTP had been used there would have been far fewer women, Indians and whites, with more black and male MPs. Finally, we would have expected more polarized forms of representation under FPTP, with whites (of different parties) representing majority white constituencies, Xhosas representing Xhosas, Zulus representing Zulus, etc. While there are problems with constituency accountability and remoteness under the present South African List PR system, it has meant that citizens have a variety of MPs to approach when the need arises. Nevertheless, there is a continuing debate in South Africa about how to increase democratic accountability and the representativeness of the members of parliament. It was widely accepted that the first non-racial election was more of a referendum about which parties should draw up the new constitution. But subsequent elections will be about constituting a representative parliament, and many political actors agree that the electoral system needs to be altered to take this into account. Without greatly increasing the difficulty of the ballot, voters can be allowed to choose between candidates as well as parties, without the PR character of parliament being affected in any way. One option is to elect MPs in smaller multi-member constituencies in order to maintain some sort of geographical tie between electors and their representatives. At the moment the regional lists represent areas so large that any form of local advocacy is entirely lost. A second option is to adopt the MMP system, where half the members are selected in single-member districts while the other half come from compensatory PR lists. Finally, and as a consequence of the administrative chaos that characterized the April 1994 elections, voter rolls are also being called for, to enable the authorities to delimit constituencies properly and ensure that large numbers of voters cannot be moved across boundaries to manipulate election results.
Electoral Systems End Notes
The Alternative Vote in Australia
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