The decision whether to delimit electoral districts and by what method should depend, in large part, on the prevailing social and political norms in the country.
Should Districts Be Delimited?
The delimitation of single-member districts has several advantages. The three most often cited are simplicity, stability and strong links between elected representatives and their constituents. Each of these advantages may be important ones, depending on the social and political context in which the districts are adopted.
Elections held in single-member districts tend to be quite easy for voters to understand, especially in conjunction with plurality or majority voting rules. Simplicity may be a significant advantage for countries with low literacy rates.
Single-member districts promote stability by facilitating strong, single-party government. This is because single-member districts tend to produce election outcomes in which the majority party is over-represented. This may be an important advantage in countries that have reason to fear or have actually experienced a proliferation of small extremist parties or coalition governments that have frequently fallen.
Single-member districts provide voters with strong constituency representation. Voters have a single, easily identifiable district representative to whom they can appeal for constituency service. Voters also have a single district representative whom they can hold accountable for protecting constituency interests. This may have a positive affect on voters' feelings of political efficacy, which may, in turn, increase voter turnout. Political efficacy and turnout are both important ingredients for system legitimacy, which may be important to newly emerging democracies.
Single-member districts, however, have one very serious drawback. They tend to over-represent the majority political party at the expense of the other political parties. Countries that delimit single-member districts must be willing and able to accept disproportional election outcomes. Although it is possible to devise a fair and non-partisan redistricting process, it is not possible to guarantee an unbiased election outcome with single-member districts unless there are provisions for a second, party vote (as is the case with a mixed electoral system).
Disproportional election results may be difficult to accept in a country with many political parties representing widely disparate interests. The results will be virtually impossible to accept if deep divisions exist in the society. For example, if there is a relatively large, politically cohesive ethnic, racial, or religious minority group that has consistently been denied what it perceives as fair representation, elections could lead to conflict, possibly even violence and instability.
Can the Redistricting Process Be Reformed?
Once the decision to delimit electoral districts has been made, a procedure for redistricting must be established. Traditionally, legislatures have been responsible for drawing their own districts. Electoral abuses such as malapportioned districts (districts that vary substantially in population) or 'gerrymandered' districts (districts intentionally drawn to advantage one political party at the expense of the others) were not uncommon. These abuses led a number of countries to adopt reforms designed to remove politics from the redistricting process. In these countries, non-partisan commissions draw district boundaries following a set of neutral redistricting criteria. The public is encouraged to participate through a public inquiry process. And the legislature is permitted only a limited role, if any role at all, in the redistricting process.
These reforms have been adopted by many Commonwealth countries, where the reforms appear to have been quite successful. Redistricting is rarely viewed as partisan, even when the outcome of an election clearly favours one party at the expense of the other parties. Despite their success in the countries that have adopted them, reforms of the redistricting process have not been embraced everywhere. For example, legislatures still draw congressional districts in most states in the United States.
In the United States, the political system and political institutions were designed on the Madisonian premise of competing factions, or interests. Pluralism continues to flourish. With a decentralised legislative system and weak political parties, special interests and parochial concerns often prevail in the legislature. Americans tend to be cynical, believing that politics and the pursuit of political self-interest are inevitable. Reforms of the redistricting process are unlikely to be adopted any time in the near future, because many Americans believe it is as impossible to divorce politics from the redistricting process as it is to divorce politics from the legislative process in general.
Only countries that are less pluralistic, more politically ideological and more sensitive to the public accept the proposition that politics can be removed from the redistricting process. Furthermore, strong party organisations and centralised legislative authority are needed to enforce sanctions against legislators who attempt to influence the redistricting process. While these conditions appear to be met in most Commonwealth countries, they are not present everywhere.
Conclusion
The adoption of independent commissions and neutral redistricting criteria can only prevent partisan interests from controlling the process. These reforms can do little to alleviate disproportional election results. If political fairness is defined by outcome, rather than by process--and specifically by a proportional outcome for political parties and/or minority groups--then single-member systems will fail the fairness test more often than not, no matter who draws the districts. Countries that value proportionality over all else--perhaps because of the need to ensure equitable representation to deeply divided groups within the society--are wise to choose some form of proportional representation, which may or may not include provisions for single-member districts. If stability in the form of strong, single party government is more important, however, delimiting single-member districts is a good choice.
