What Should the Best Electoral System Look Like - Essay Example

160732 What desirable features should constitutional designers look for in an electoral system? Is there a trade-off between electoral proportionality and strong government? To what extent do mixed-member electoral systems combine the advantages of proportional and plurality systems while avoiding the disadvantages of each? Harvard Style Outlined below is a critical evaluation of what factors constitute desirable features for an electoral system for constitutional designers. Various electoral systems have been designed, developed and used for the purposes of selecting governments and individual MPs. These various electoral systems offer differing levels of proportionality and arguments as to which system differs the strongest, or the fairest choices of government. As will be discussed some electoral systems offer no proportionality at all as purposely designed feature whilst other forms claim to be strictly proportional in the way that they allocate parliamentary seats or determine which party or parties win electoral victories. There are advocates of non-proportional plurality and proportional electoral systems alike, the merits of all these differing electoral systems to constitutional designers will be assessed, comparing the advantages and disadvantages of each electoral system in turn. Constitutional designers would have to consider the merits of each electoral system depending on what their objectives were, for instance whether proportionality was considered to be more important than strong government or vice versa. If the sole political objective of any group of constitutional designers was to help establish a strong government they could look to introduce a non-proportional plurality electoral system. The electoral system that would provide the best example for constitutional designers is the simple plurality system. The simple plurality system is better known as the first past the post system. Britain is the best example of a country that actually uses the first past the post system to elect MPs to the House of Commons, which its advocates claim produces strong government, and it also creates a strong line between MPs and their parliamentary constituencies.1 Under the first past the post system the candidate with the most number of votes win the parliamentary seat, it does matter about the size of their majority, all they need is one more vote than their nearest rival. The way in which the first past the post system operates has favoured two main parties, originally the Conservatives and Liberal parties, with the Labour party replacing the liberals from the 1930s.2 The period between 1945 and 1974 was the heyday of the two party systems in Britain with the Liberals only having MPs due to electoral arrangements with the Conservatives. The first past the post system has except for rare occasions produced governments with a workable parliamentary majority. The exceptions were in 1924 and 1964 both elections of 1974, as well as in 1992. There are critics of the first past the post system who claim that it is non-proportional, unfair and allows governments to pursue policies that the majority of the electorate have voted against at the polls. Although the party that wins the most popular votes usually wins the election that has not always been the case, most notably in 1951 and February 1974.3 The first past the post system does offer stronger government than proportional electoral systems, yet it does not always mean that Britain’s government is any more or less effective than any other countries’ governments. The first past the post system does however make it harder to remove sitting British governments at general elections especially if the governing party won the previous general election by a large majority. If a party wins a landslide general election victory it can take three or four subsequent general elections before there is a change in government. It is perhaps no wonder that the late Lord Hailsham commented about the first past the post system leading to an elected dictatorship in Britain.4 The first past the post system gives power to the least unpopular political party in the country rather than the most popular, and that party is free to pursue radical and unpopular policies for as long as it can win elections. Criticism of the first past the post system increased from the 1980s as a result of the radical political, social, and economic policies of the Thatcher governments, and due to the blatant bias of the system against third parties. For instance, the Liberal – SDP Alliance share of the vote in 1983 should have given it many more seats than it actually gained under first past the post. New Labour has not introduced proportional electoral systems for Westminster general elections, as it did not want to share power, although proportional representation systems are used for elections to the devolved assemblies in Scotland and Wales. Another variant of the simple plurality system is the electoral college system used to decide the outcome of the United States presidential elections. Instead of been a straight electoral contest between two or more presidential candidates in a single national vote, it is a contest in every single state of the United States. With each state having a set number of votes in the electoral college, the candidate with the most number of electoral college votes becomes President of the United States. There is an element of proportionality within the electoral college system, the number of college votes each state is worth depends upon the population size of that state. For instance, California, New York, and Florida are the most keenly contested states as they have the most electoral college votes. In the vast majority of presidential elections held under the electoral college system the winner would have been same if there had been a direct popular vote to elect the president. The most notable example of the presidential candidate with less of the popular vote winning due to the electoral college was George W Bush’s controversial victory in 2001.5 The first proportional representation form of electoral system that constitutional designers could consider is the party list system. The party list system is probably the purest form of proportional representation. This s works by allocating political parties seats strictly on the basis of their share of the popular vote. The advantage of party list system is that it is completely proportional and therefore completely fair to all the political parties that take part in electoral contests using the system. The party list system was originally designed to be the electoral system of the ill-fated Weimar Republic in Germany between 1919 and 1933. Supporters of the party list system point to the inherent fairness and proportionality of the system itself. It is not a disadvantage to have an electoral system that leads to the formation of coalition governments. Coalition government is not a sign of weakness, just the ability to reach a sensible compromise to achieve a government that the majority of the voters actually support. In fact the formation of coalitions is healthy for the forming of moderate and effective national governments.6 Detractors of the party list system point to the system contributing to Adolf Hitler’s rise to power and his eventual overthrow of the Weimar Republic. However people that admire the party list system have argued that it was the unique political, economic, and social conditions of inter-war Germany that allowed the Nazi party to take power. Proportional representation in effect did not make the collapse of the Weimar Republic inevitable, and was only of minor importance to Hitler on his way to power. It the polarisation of German society that made it difficult for long lasting coalitions to be formed, especially in the wake of the depression that decimated the economy after 1929. A more valid critism of the party list system is that it does not provide a link between MPs and a specific constituency area. In the majority of countries the party list system has not been adopted as the electoral, with other mixed electoral systems being preferred. In fact the only modern state to use a pure form of party list system is Israel.7 An electoral system that should be considered by constitutional designers is the Additional Member System. The Additional Member System combines some of the advantages of the first past the post system and the party list system. The main country that operates the Additional Member System as its electoral system is the Federal Republic of Germany. The electoral system was later adopted in the former East Germany upon the country’s reunification in 1990. The Additional Member System in some respects operates in a similar way to first past the post, with each constituency having a multiple number of MPs elected to represent it. The majority of MPs are elected upon the same basis of the first past the post system, with the main difference that seats are allocated to the candidates that received the highest number of votes. The remaining MPs are chosen from each party’s candidate lists on the ratio of the votes that each party received. That selection of additional MPs is what makes the Additional Member System more proportional than the first past the post system.8 The Additional Member System seems to have successfully achieved a sound balance between strong government and proportionality.9 Another electoral system that should be considered by constitutional designers is the Single Transferable Vote. Just like the Additional Member System, advocates of the Single Transferable Vote system contend that it combines some of the advantages of the first past the post system with some of the advantages of the party list system. The Single Transferable Vote allows all voters to vote for more than one candidate. In theory they can vote for all the candidates, as they list the candidates by ranking their votes for them. For instance the voters put a 1 beside the name of their favourite candidate, a 2 beside the name of their second favourite candidate. Again each constituency is a multi-member constituency, first preferences are counted from each ballot paper until the first member is elected. Secondary preference votes are counted from those people that voted for each MP that is elected until the MPs have been selected. The main advantages of the Single Transferable Vote system is that it maintains the MP – constituency link, it is proportional, and no votes are ever wasted. Critics have argued that the main disadvantage of the Single Transferable Vote is that is a complicated system for voters to understand.10 To conclude the best electoral system for strong government is the first past the post system, and the most proportional is the party list system. Most countries do not use either type of electoral system, with hybrid systems such as the Additional Member System, and the Single Transferable Vote. The Additional Member System is simpler to use, whilst the Single Transferable Vote allows people to vote for as many candidates as they want to. Bibliography Chandler, ‘The Plurality Vote: A Reappraisal’, Political Studies 30 (1982): pp. 87-94. 2) D. Farrell, Electoral Systems: a comparative introduction (2001), Chapters 2, 4, 5, 9. 3) R. Taagepera and M. S. Shugart, Seats and Votes: The Effects and Determinants of Electoral Systems (1989), Chapters 2-3. 4) M. Shugart and M. Wattenberg (eds), Mixed-Member Electoral Systems: The Best of Both Worlds? (2000), Chapters 1, 2, 4, 14, 25. Read More