December 2005

Proportional Representation: Path to Democracy?

Many international organizations and prominent political scientists support proportional representation (PR) as the fairest and most viable electoral system for nations undergoing a transition to democracy. But is proportional representation truly more democratic than an American-style system? How do the perceived advantages of PR match up against the challenges nations in transition face--especially emerging democracies and ethnically divided societies? Does PR enhance institutional stability and effective governance, or does it sow the seeds for future discord? These and other questions were the focus of a December 6 AEI panel discussion.

Panel I: Proportional Representation--Theory Astray?

Donald Horowitz
Duke University Law School

There is no perfect system to measure the raw preferences of the electorate. Every electoral system constrains voter choices. Each country should choose an electoral system tailored to the local conditions. Too often, the electoral system chosen by newly democratic countries reflects the experiences of conspicuously successful (or unsuccessful) democracies or the biases of international political players. The question of electoral systems should not be “which is best?” but “what problem do you want to solve?” or, put more sharply, “which biases do you prefer?” The “market” of available electoral systems holds something suited for every situation.

Six considerations to keep in mind when considering an electoral system are:

1. Proportionality--The ratio of votes to seats is only one consideration, but it is an important consideration. However, tight proportionality can grant “black veil” power to small parties.
2. Accountability--Electoral system designs should aim for accountability to voters, rather than to party leaders (as can be the case in some forms of party list systems).
3. Durability--First-past-the-post (FPTP) can lead to more enduring and stable democratic politics as it aggregates individual and group interests into larger parties before elections. Such pre-election aggregation alleviates bargaining and stalemate problems that sometimes occur in PR systems.
4. Condorcet Winner--The Condorcet winner is the person who would win in a head-to-head winner against any other opponent. The selection of electoral system should favor the Condorcet preference, as the Condorcet is the “favorite” of the plurality of voters. Often, the Condorcet winner has votes siphoned off by more extreme candidates and can actually lose to “less favored” candidates in some situations. Alternative votes can help to achieve the Condorcet preference.
5. Interethnic Conciliation--The choice of an electoral system should address pre-election and post-election incentives to moderate ethnic divisiveness.
6. Minority office holding--Minority representation is not synonymous with interethnic conciliation; electoral systems should strive for a majoritarian mix.

Gerard Alexander
University of Virginia Law School

There seems to be a false consensus among many “experts” that PR is the “best,” that it lowers the stakes of politics, and that it adds stability to immature democracies. These premises are related to the assumption that seats at the table are the most important (and therefore riskiest) facets of new democracies. By this line of thinking, FPTP is a luxury for already stable democracies. However, the data on electoral system performance are very messy, and some of the conventional wisdom seems shaky.

Matters other than proportional seats at the table affect the stability of (and support for) democracy. Indeed, it could be argued that precarious democracies need the ability to make hard political decisions most of all and that FPTP party majority blocs afford them that ability. Conversely, PR may reduce the decision-making capacity of fledgling democracies; it turns out that PR may be the luxury system for stable democracies.

More importantly, though, electoral format is one piece of the complete democratic governance system. The net effect of the bundle of institutions should be taken into account when a format is chosen in a particular place. Other institutions may mitigate or exacerbate the biases of each electoral type and vice versa. Finally, there are exogenous factors in each locale that should be considered in the determination. No electoral system will provide all good things at once, and there are some things that we can affect and some that we cannot in each situation.

Andrew Reynolds
University of North Carolina

The various institutions of the government all dovetail with the form of election. The choice of system must take a holistic view of the nation (structures, institutions, culture, etc.). Too often, people on the ground compartmentalize these interconnected pieces.

PR offers some significant benefits to new democracies. If its seats-at-the-table proportionality is criticized for begetting coalition stalemates (a criticism that may be overblown), it should be lauded for providing windows into influence and governance for inexperienced democrats and for stimulating emotional investment in the political process. The inchoate individualism of fragile democracies can also be stabilized in the formation of smaller, more nuanced parties.

Against this, one must balance a tendency for PR to detach the representative from the voter. National list PR has no natural localism to tether the representative to anyone other than party leaders.

However, a comparison/contrast of PR and FPTP would be facile. The great variety between these two poles allows myriad ways to mix and match mechanisms with situations. Moreover, these decisions should not be thought of as necessarily permanent. Each country should look to change its system over time, tailoring the format to what works and what doesn’t. Just as much, there should be no rush to hold elections. A hasty, poorly conceived election may be worse than delaying an election to get it right.

Panel II: Proportional Representation--Case Studies

Andrew Shearer
Embassy of Australia

Australia, like the United States, has a federal system and a popularly elected lower house and an upper house to represent the interests of the states. Our lower House of Representatives is elected from single-member constituencies, each with an equal population. In some ways, though, our system functions more like the Westminster system in Britain than like the American system. We have an elected prime minister, and all our ministers are elected members of parliament.

We have proportional voting in our Senate--parties and candidates are given seats in proportion to the number of votes they win. The type of proportional voting we use is the single transferable vote--each voter numbers the candidates in order of preference. The ballots used for this system are unfortunately complicated and daunting for the voter.

By having different voting systems in each of our houses, we try to strike a balance. The benefit of having proportional representation (PR) in our upper house is that it serves to counterbalance the majoritarian process in our lower house, and this is a check that the Australian population seems to like, according to its voting patterns. Australians tend to support opposition parties in the Senate. One downside of this balance is that government legislation is easily stalled.

The PR system is complicated for many Australians. As a result, instead of voting for candidates one through one hundred, they choose to list a party. This brings into play all the sorts of disadvantages that a proportional system is seeking to address.

Jeffrey Anderson
Georgetown University

In Germany, each voter casts two ballots. The first is a direct mandate for a constituency candidate. Direct mandates make up half the lower house (Bundestag), and each of them is contested on a first-past-the-post basis. The second ballot is for a list of candidates put forward by the parties in that particular state, or land. This ballot is the decisive one which determines the overall composition of the lower house so, thought the German system is a “hybrid,” it is dominated by the PR system.

There are barriers to entry for the parties that Germany deemed a necessity after the collapse of the Weimar Republic, which was blamed in part on the lack of barriers to entry (although there were many other contributing factors). In short, the hybrid system was seen as an antidote to the clash of faceless party doctrines and ideologies that had typified the 1920s and the early 1930s. And, arguably, it worked. It did what it was intended to do.

But the system is not perfect. There is a real potential for manipulation on the part of particularly the smaller parties. It is quite common to hear leaders of smaller parties advising voters to go ahead and cast the first ballot for preferred parties but give the second vote to the smaller parties. The greatest criticism, though, is that PR pre-programs coalition government. It may even pre-program gridlock and stasis.

In the end, even if you were to have an opportunity to change the electoral law, my guess is that we would not see reform suddenly flowing out of the Bundestag. There is a lot more going on to the problem of German deadlock than just the electoral law.

Meyrav Wurmser
Hudson Institute

Israel has an electoral system based on nationwide proportional representation. And Israel’s form of PR is extreme in that the qualifying threshold for parties is very low--currently at 2 percent of the votes (considered a huge improvement from the 1 percent it was in 1992).

PR proponents argue that PR allows the Israeli system to be as democratic as possible--it ensures minority representation. And minority populations--such as the Arab or the ultra-orthodox Jewish minorities--strongly define the Israeli population. Proponents also argue that PR, which most often results in a coalition government, breeds compromise, which serves to put a check on extreme political parties. Lastly, Israel’s PR system forces the government to stay in very close touch with the national sentiment (more so than in the American system). The government can fall at any moment with a vote of “no confidence.”

But, still, I argue that the Israeli system is less democratic than, say, the U.S. system, first because a proportional system leads to a disproportionate magnification of power of the small parties.  Also, the government is frequently held captive by parties who use the system to extort the government and get their agenda implemented. If the government will not respond to them, they will choose to defect and leave the coalition and bring the whole government down by making it lose the majority. In addition, coalitions can lead to incoherent politics and government inaction because so many contrasting ideologies are brought to the table.

Robert Dahl
International Republican Institute

The elections that were conducted last year in Indonesia were among the most complicated, the most complex elections ever held. One reason for this: they had elections for the national, provincial, and regency levels. Formerly, these elections would have used the entire political unit as the electoral district for proportional representation, but in recent years, civil society organizations, academics, and governments encouraged the Indonesians to change their system. This resulted in the hybrid system that currently exists. The system attempts to bring the districts down to a smaller size, to make them more numerous, and to elect fewer members in each district.

There is no threshold for gaining seats in Indonesia. Therefore, the number of parties that did obtain seats, while less than in 1999, was not substantially reduced. Nevertheless, because of the party qualification requirements of showing breadth of support, or organization, and membership across at least twenty of the thirty-two provinces, this system does not particularly generate regional or ethnic-based parties.

In general, I think the system in Indonesia is a pretty good one. I think it fits the culture and gives the Indonesians the kind of access to diversity representation that they like.

AEI research assistant Will Wilson prepared the summary for the first panel, and AEI research assistant Suzanne Gershowitz prepared the summary for the second panel.