Electoral 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.
