Electoral systems Flashcards
Majoritarian FPTP
Type- Whoever has the most votes win
Pros
Stable government
Greater bonds with constituents Accountability
Cons
Minority groups are less likely to be represented - This is because it encourages the creation of ethnic or clan based parties in countries where ethnic groups are regionally concentrated
Examples - Reynolds, Reilly, and Ellis 2005 found that in African countries helped produce countries that are “divided into geographically separate party strongholds, with little incentive for parties to make appeals outside their home region and cultural-political base
Strategic voting - Gibbard 1973, whilst scholars have shown that all electoral systems do promote strategic voting, Majoritarian FPTP systems create the strongest incentive for strategic voting
E.g - Carey & Shugart (1995) (Info on another card)
Majoritarian - Two Round System
Candidates or parties are automatically elected in the first round if they obtain a specified level of votes, nearly always an absolute major- ity. If no candidate or party wins this level of votes, then a second round of elections takes place
Pros:
Gives Voters more choice - individuals who vote for a candidate who “loses” in the first round get a second opportunity to influence who gets elected in the second round. TRSs also allow voters to change their mind and switch their votes even if the candidate they supported in the first round actually makes it into the second round
Stable government - it creates incentives for candidates who make it to the 2nd round to look for beyond their electoral base and reach compromises with he leaders of parties who are already eliminated in an attempt to win over their supporters.
Greater bonds with voters - Accountability
Cons:
Minority groups are less likely to be represented
Reduces Strategic voting - Voters need to think about whether their decision to vote sincerely in the first round positively affects the likelihood that a candidate whom they do not like will win either the first or the second round
Example - 2002 French presidential election no left wing candidate as the left wing electorate had split its vote so no left wing canddate had made it to the 2nd round
Sometimes a reduced turnout for round 2, so it could be argued that the left-wing electorate would have benefited from strategic voting
Costly - The electoral administration has to conduct two sets of elections instead of one. Indeed, these additional costs have led some countries, such as Sri Lanka, that were initially interested in the TRS to adopt a different electoral system
Reduction in voter turnout -empirical evidence suggests that there is a considerable drop-off in the level of turnout between the two rounds of elections.
E.g. Georgia senate seat (Werneck v Walker) however, this runoff election saw a drop in voter turnout possible due to Werneck easily being able to mobilise voters from urban areas
Majoritiarn- Alternative Vote (AV)
- A method to helping FPTP systems overcome the issue of candidates winning without a majority
- It is used in single-member districts, it is an electoral system in which voters mark their preferences by rank ordering the candidates. A candidate who receives an absolute majority is elected. If no candidate wins an absolute majority, then the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and her votes are reallocated until one candidate has an absolute majority of the valid votes remaining.
Pros:
- Only one representative for each constituencie so easy for voters to identify who is responsible which would lead to higher levels of constituency service
- Voters have a greater opportunity to convey information about their preferences than they have under an SMDP system, because they get to rank order the candidates rather than simply vote yes and no for one (or more) of them.
Cons:
- Strategic voting does not disapper entirley within AV systems as voters may decide not to rank the candidates according to their sincere preferences in an attempt to influence the order in which candidates are eliminated and, hence, who ultimately wins in a district.
- Critics claim that the winning candidate does not necessarily obtain a “genuine” majority. as it is possible for a majority of the voters in a district to prefer some other candidate to the one who actually wins. The reason why this possibility exists is that a candidate who is preferred to all the other candidates in a series of head-to-head races can be eliminated early on in an AV system because he or she receives an insufficient num- ber of first-place votes
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PR- proportional representation
the goal of proportional representation (PR) systems is to produce proportional outcomes
Pros
Minority groups can be represented - As small parties are able to win representation in proportion to their size. As a result, minorities are likely to be better represented in a PR system than in a majoritarian, which makes it easier for social groups to organize into ethnic and religious parties that can obtain legislative representation in proportion to their size. This, in turn, produces legislatures that reflect all the significant segments of society and leads to coalition governments based on power-sharing arrangements
Produce a more accurate translation of votes - As PR systems avoid the possibility that a party wins a large percentage of the vote but few legislative seats
Increased Voter turnout - because they know that their votes are less likely to be wasted (Blais and Carty)
Cons
Harder to form a single party gov - they tend to form co-alition governments which makes it difficult to hold political parties accountable because it is hard to identify who is responsible for policy and, hence, whom to hold accountable at election time.
Allow small extremist parties to gain representation - this is frequently seen as problematic. For example, some have argued that the existence of extremist parties, such as the Nazi Party in the Weimar Republic, under- mines democracy.
Weak links between voters and candidates - because no single representative is responsible for policy in a given district. Voters might also wonder which of the elected representatives from their districts actually represent them
Open PR
Several MPs elected in each constituency (multi-member)
Each party presents a list of candidates in each constituency
Citizen’s vote (X) either for a party (a ‘party vote’) or for an individual candidate (a ‘personal vote’)
Seats are allocated to parties in proportion to the total votes they receive in a constituency (party votes + personal votes)
Seats are allocated to candidates within parties according to the number of personal votes each candidate receives
Closed PR
Several MPs elected in each constituency (multi-member’)
Each party presents a list of candidates in each constituency
Citizen’s vote (X) for one of the party lists in the constituency
Seats are allocated to parties in each constituency in proportion to the votes they received in that constituency
Most countries have local or regional multi-member constituencies, while a few have only one single national constituency (e.g. Israel)
Proportional: Single-Transferable Vote
[same as Alternative Vote, but in a multi-member constituency]
Several MPs elected in each constituency (multi-member’)
Each party presents several candidates in each constituency, citizens rank the candidates (1,2,3,4,5 etc.)
If any candidate reaches a ‘quota’ of votes, he/she is elected
If not enough candidates reach the quota, the bottom candidate is eliminated and his/her 2nd
candidates, and so on, until all the seats have been allocated
Mixed Member System
The electoral system has two ‘tiers’:
- some MPs are elected in single-member constituencies
- some MPs are elected in multi-member constituencies
Each party presents 1 candidate in a single-member constituency and a list of candidates in a multi-member (regional or national) constituency
Citizens usually have 2 votes: (1) for a candidate in a single-member constituency; and (2) for a party on a regional/national party list
In each single-member constituency the candidate with the most votes is elected AND …
Example - Germany – 299 single member constituency and there are 2 ballots one for party list, and another for constituency seats
- In Mixed-Member Proportional systems; the party list seats are allocated to compensate those parties who have not won enough single-member seats given their overall score
- In Mixed-Member Majoritarian systems; the party lists seats are allocated separately, in proportion to the voters received by the parties in the multi-member party list constituencies
Political Effects of Electoral Systems: Two Trade off
- Parliamentary Representation vs. Government Accountability
- Should there be stable single-party government, or should the make-up of
parliament fairly reflect the vote choices of citizens? - Cohesive Parties vs. Accountable Politicians
- Should parties be highly centralised and cohesive, or should citizens be able to
choose between politicians from the same political party (which increases individual
accountability)?
Duverger’s Law (1954)- party systems
Majoritarian party systems - two party systems dominance
Proportional systems - multi party systems dominance
This is due to ….
Mechanical: majoritarian system favours big parties to win proportionally more seats than vote shares, while smaller parties win proportionally less seats than vote shares. So as a result, majoritarian systems tend to benefit big parties as those are the parties for which people move to the centre
Psychological: people vote strategically for bigger parties, as they have more chances of winning even if it’s not the most preferred party
Gary Cox’s (1987), Correction of Duverger
– argues that Duverger’s law only works on the constituency level, as if voters are strategic, then they should co-ordinate around only those candidates that have a realistic chance of being elected
Cox predicts that in each constituency the number of competitive candidates should equal the number of seats to be elected (district magnitude) plus one.
Looking at heterogenous societies (UK, Canada, India), we find multi-party politics because of the regional grouping of the types of competative candidates in certain areas
Cohesive Parties v Accountable Politicians
- Closed-List PR systems lead to the most cohesive parties, as if candidates get out of line, the parties has the power to ensure that they are removed from the party list next election
- Whereas in open-list PR systems, are not very cohesive, as candidates compete with other members of their party’s however it does lead to them producing accountable politicians
- As the district magnitude increases, it becomes more candidate based as there is a greater incentive to campaign for votes
How to stop corruption in Electoral systems and is it a better trade-off than securing cohesive parties
Torsten Perrson – in order to get rid off corrupt politicians we need to remove Closed-List systems and use Open-List PR and FPTP systems
However, parties are stronger in Closed-List system, and politicians have fewer incentives to engage in corruption in Closed-Lists systems
And majoritarian systems lead to high stake elections, which create incentives to use corruption as a means to win – FPTP being the worst
Chang & Golden (2006) – looked at how corruption varies in the type of systems and the district magnitude, had found that in the low district magnitude systems Perrson is correct, but when in high district magnitude systems the worries of high election start to kick in we see more electoral corruption in Open-List PR system
In very high district magnitude system public spending is lower than in low district magnitude systems
Electoral Systems: A Primer for Decision Makers - Donald Horowitz - What are the 6 goals for electoral systems
(READING)
- Proportionality of Seats to Votes – parties should only get as much seats as they do votes (PR systems to do a good job at this with its 2 main variants, national and contingency lists)
- Accountability to Constituents – electoral systems which limit the power of central party leaders to choose candidates produce more responsive representatives, because when central party leaders have this power voters, vote for parties and not amongst the candidates which weakens the accountability of these candidates (which makes first-past-the-post systems and constituency-list PR systems more favourable)
- Durable Government – durable governments are desirable as they promote policy consistency and responsibility and avoid the instability that can result from interregna, or coalitions
- Victory of the Condorcet Winner – the Condorcet winner is the candidate who would receive the majority of the votes in a paired or head-to-head contests (the alternative vote and the Coombs rules are the best systems for this goals)
- Inter-ethnic and Inter-religious Conciliation – governments ability to provide politicians with the electoral incentives for moderate behaviour e.g. compromises with minority groups for the sake of success (some systems such as one devised in Lebanon, with ethnically reserved seats, multi-seat constituencies and common-roll elections giving politicians an incentive to compromise across group lines
- Minority Officeholding – group proportionality should be a goal for political systems, as many electoral systems produce results that underrepresent members of a minority group e.g. in the US the Voting Rights Acts has been interpreted as the redrawing of constituency boundaries in the direction of greater homogeneity in order to facilitate the election of minority representatives where minorities hold majority of an electorate. However, advocates have urged consideration of the cumulative vote, which would allow voters in a multi-member constituency to cast some or all of their votes for a single-candidates which maximise the chance of a minority candidate winning
Parliamentary Representation v Government Accountability
Proportional systems – aims to maximise representation as vote shares map fairly into seat-shares, with parliament being microcosm of society. But after elections governments form coalitions which creates a low clarity of responsibility
Majoritarian systems – maximise governments accountability as people know who to blame, which creates more responsive politics as small vote shifts lead to big seat shifts. But produces a disproportionate outcome
