Electoral 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:
- What does the society look like?
- How is it divided?
- Do ethnic or communal divides dovetail with voting behavior?
- Do different groups live geographically inter-mixed or segregated?
- What is the country's political history?
- Are they an established democracy, a transitional democracy, or a re-democratising state?
- What are the broader constitutional arrangements that the legislature is working within?
When assessing the appropriateness of any given electoral system for a divided society, three variables become particularly salient:
- Knowledge of the nature of societal division is paramount - the nature of group identity, the intensity of conflict, the nature of the dispute, and the spatial distribution of conflictual groups.
- The nature of the political system, i.e., the nature of the state, the party system, and the overall constitutional framework.
- The process which led to the adoption of the electoral system, i.e. was the system inherited from a colonial power, was it consciously designed, was it externally imposed, or did it emerge through a process of evolution and unintended consequences? - see The Process of Choice.
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:
- one deals with foundations - is the society divided along racial, ethnic, ethno-nationalistic, religious, regional, linguistic, lines?
- while the second deals with how rigid and entrenched such divisions are.
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:
- a directly elected president;
- a bi-cameral parliament with a balance of power between the two houses;
- a degree of federalism and/or regional asymmetrical arrangements.
