Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters Gianfranco Baldini and Adriano Pappalardo

Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

Also by Gianfranco Baldini LA FRANCIA DI SARKOZY (co-editor with M. Lazar) QUALE EUROPA? L’UNIONE EUROPEA OLTRE LA CRISI (editor) SISTEMI ELETTORALI E PARTITI NELLE DEMOCRAZIE CONTEMPORANEE (co-author with A. Pappalardo) CITTA’ AL VOTO (co-author with G. Legnante) LA SCONFITTA INATTESA (co-author with P. Corbetta and S. Vassallo)

Also by Adriano Pappalardo PARTITI E GOVERNI DI COALIZIONE IN EUROPA IL GOVERNO DEL SALARIO NELLE DEMOCRAZIE INDUSTRIALI I SINDACATI PREFASCISTI: Una Ricostruzione Critica DEMOCRAZIE E DECISIONI, 4th edition (co-author with L. Mattina) SISTEMI ELETTORALI E PARTITI NELLE DEMOCRAZIE CONTEMPORANEE (co-author with G. Baldini)

Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters Gianfranco Baldini Associate Professor of Political Science University of Salerno, Italy

and Adriano Pappalardo Professor of Political Science University of Salerno, Italy

© Gianfranco Baldini and Adriano Pappalardo 2009 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN-13: 978 0 230 57448 9 ISBN-10: 0 230 57448 3

hardback hardback

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Baldini, Gianfranco. Elections, electoral systems and volatile voters / Gianfranco Baldini and Adriano Pappalardo. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978–0–230–57448–9 (alk. paper) 1. Elections. 2. Comparative government. I. Pappalardo, Adriano, 1948– II. Title. JF1001.B34 2008 324.6—dc22 2008030084 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

Contents Acknowledgements

ix

List of Figures

x

List of Tables

xi

Part I

1

1

What Democratic Elections Are, and What They Are Not 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Conceptual issues 1.3 Participation and competition in poor countries 1.4 Systemic structuring 1.5 Volatility trends in consolidated democracies

2

Electoral Systems in Contemporary Advanced Democracies: Basic Principles and Their Mechanics 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Electoral systems and representation 2.3 The historical origins of electoral systems 2.4 Dimensions of analysis 2.5 Formulae 2.6 Ballot structure 2.7 Assembly size, district magnitude and levels of seat allocation 2.8 Electoral thresholds 2.9 Disproportionality, number of parties and volatility 2.10 Setting the rules of the game

3

Majoritarian Systems 3.1 Introduction 3.2 The plurality system: the majoritarian principle in its simplest version 3.3 The mother country of plurality: the United Kingdom 3.4 SMP in North America 3.5 Majority systems 3.6 The two-round system in France v

3 3 4 7 9 11

16 16 17 19 23 26 27 29 32 33 35 38 38 39 41 45 49 49

vi

4

5

Contents

3.7 The alternative vote: the Australian experience 3.8 A comparative approach to majoritarian systems

53 55

Proportional Systems 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Proportional electoral formulae 4.3 PR no longer untouchable? Challenges and changes in Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands 4.4 Proportional only in name? The Spanish electoral system 4.5 Italy: back and forth from PR, and the majority bonus 4.6 Non-list PR: the single transferable vote in Ireland 4.7 EP elections and the varieties of proportionality 4.8 Conclusion

60 60 61

Mixed-member Systems 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Classification and analysis of a growing ‘family’ 5.3 The German MMP system: two formulae and proportional effects 5.4 When reforms really matter: New Zealand and the farewell to the Westminster model 5.5 MMM systems: Japan . . . 5.6 . . . and Italy (1994–2001) 5.7 Conclusion: ‘best of both worlds’ or ‘worlds apart’?

80 80 81

Part II

64 67 69 72 73 77

83 86 87 89 92

95

6

Electoral Rules: How Effective and Why 6.1 The problem of endogeneity 6.2 Institutionalists vs. sociologists 6.3 Duverger and his critics 6.4 Conditions for strategic voting 6.5 Mechanical effects 6.6 In defence of Sartori’s projection argument

97 97 100 102 104 108 111

7

The French 2RS: Suited for Comparative Research? 7.1 A manipulated threshold 7.2 From Duverger, to Sartori, to Cox 7.3 The Fifth Republic party format 7.4 Anti-system parties

116 116 118 123 127

Contents

8

9

10

Redesigning Cases and Indicators 8.1 Electoral systems between stability and change 8.2 Comparable and non-comparable cases 8.3 Volatility as an independent variable 8.4 Dependent variables: the effective number of parties and its alternative From Theory to Evidence: Updating and Retesting Lijphart 9.1 Some preliminary findings 9.2 The strength of the psychological effect 9.3 Declining data fit and the impact of volatility Systemic Consequences, Past and Future 10.1 The threshold: a constrained continuity 10.2 Accountability, responsiveness, representativeness: the classic debate 10.3 Volatility, electoral engineering and political entrepreneurship

vii

130 130 136 137 141

150 150 154 158 169 169 171 177

Notes

183

Bibliography

205

Index

218

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Acknowledgements Parts of this book were previously published in Italian and in English. We wish to thank Editori Laterza who published our Sistemi Elettorali e Partiti nelle Democrazie Contemporanee in 2004, and Sage Publications who published the article ‘Electoral Systems, Party Systems: Lijphart and Beyond’ in Party Politics (Sage Publications, 2007). Gianfranco Baldini is the author of Chapters 2, 3, 4 and 5, Adriano Pappalardo of Chapters 1, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10.

ix

List of Figures 2.1 Electoral system classification and case study 6.1 Effects of electoral systems: an overview 6.2 Electoral systems and party systems: a typology 10.1 Electoral support for single-party parliamentary majorities, SMP/AV systems, 1945–2007 10.2 Electoral support for single-party parliamentary majorities, SMP/AV systems excluding US, 1945–2007

x

37 98 113 178 178

List of Tables 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 3.1

3.2

3.3

3.4 3.5 4.1

4.2

4.3 4.4

Total net volatility by electoral year and its deviation from the 1945–2007 mean Total net volatility by sub-periods, 1945–2007 Total net volatility by electoral formula and sub-periods, 1945–2007 Total net volatility by formula and ‘electoral system’, 1945–2007 Electoral systems in contemporary advanced democracies: 1815–present Analytical dimensions of electoral systems A typology of non-list electoral systems Main features of electoral systems in 21 countries The UK: main effects of SMP on representation and government formation (1945–2005). MPs elected with a plurality of votes and comparison between seats and votes to main parties (values expressed in percentage points) SMP in Canada and the USA: institutional factors affecting the application of the system and some overall data France: 2RS effects on representation and government majorities (1958–2007). MPs elected at first round. Comparison between seats and votes to main parties (values expressed in percentage points) How the alternative vote works A comparison between the three majoritarian systems Hypothetical seat distribution according to the highest average formulae (using divisors) with information on the countries currently using them Hypothetical seat distribution according to the largest remainders (using quotas) with information on the countries currently using them Almost perfect proportionality: results of the last three elections in the Netherlands Seats, districts and thresholds in the Spanish system (2004 election data) xi

13 14 14 15 21 24 29 36

42

46

51 56 57

62

63 66 68

xii

List of Tables

4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 5.1 5.2 5.3 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 8.7 8.8 8.9 8.10 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5

Majoritarian effects of the Spanish electoral system: votes and seats for the main parties (1977–2008) How STV works EP electoral systems in the 14 European countries PR systems in the main West European countries (2008) Linkage between tiers: Shugart and Wattenberg’s typology of mixed-member systems (Second) votes and seats in German elections (1949–2005) Italy: MMM electoral systems for the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate compared (1994–2001) Number of parties by time period, French 2RS, 1958–2007 Number of parties by electoral formula, 1945–2007 Effective number of parliamentary parties by threshold, PR systems, 1945–2007 Under-representation of an extremist party in the Italian SMP arena, 1994–2001 Majoritarian systems: independent variables, continuity and changes, 1945–2007 Mixed-member and PR systems: independent variables, continuity and changes, 1945–2007 All parties by time period, 1945–2007 Main parties by time period, 1945–2007 Majoritarian systems: dependent variables, 1945–2007 Mixed-member systems: dependent variables, 1945–2007 PR systems: dependent variables, 1945–2007 Main parties minus effective number of electoral parties by countries and electoral formulae Main parties minus effective number of electoral parties by electoral systems and countries Main parties minus effective number of electoral parties by electoral systems and time periods Parties and majorities by formulae, 1945–2007 means Parties and majorities by thresholds, 1945–2007 means Threshold, assembly size and the party system, 1945–1990 (N 41) and 1945–2007 (N 51) Assembly size, formula and the party system, 1945–2007 (N 51) Assembly size, PR formulae and threshold, 1945–2007 (N 42)

68 74 75 78 82 85 91 118 119 119 129 131 132 139 139 141 141 142 145 146 147 151 152 155 157 158

List of Tables xiii

9.6 9.7

Number of parties, % change Threshold, volatility and the number of parties, correlations by time periods 9.8 Threshold, assembly, volatility and the party system, 1945–2007 (N 47) 9.9 Threshold, assembly, volatility and the party system, 1945–1989 (N 37) 9.10 Threshold, assembly, volatility and the party system, 1990–2007 (N 30) 9.11 Main parties by highest/lowest threshold and volatility

160 161 163 164 165 166

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Part I

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1 What Democratic Elections Are, and What They Are Not

1.1 Introduction In a recent review on the topic of this book, an influential scholar proposes the following account: In the span of less than twenty years, the field of comparative electoral systems research has gone from being ‘underdeveloped’… to being a mature field of study. This does not mean that all of our questions have been answered – or even asked yet. What it means is that we now have a large number of scholars who make the study of electoral systems one of their principal areas of work, and many more who include electoral system variables as an element in research on broader topics. It also means that we have largely settled some of the core questions of the field – notably the relation between various electoral system variables and the number of parties and proportionality – and that these findings have been, to a significant degree, incorporated into mainstream political science. In fact, I will go so far as to say that the agenda of proportionality and number of parties is largely closed … Presumably there will continue to be fine-tuning, and the possibility of a theoretical breakthrough that we cannot now anticipate always remains. However, I would urge scholars of electoral systems to pursue new agendas. In fact, it is even possible that by pursuing these other agendas we will indeed uncover new relations on the interparty dimension that we had not noticed before. (Shugart, 2005: 50–1) This passage starts with a reasonable premise, as it is certainly true that the study of electoral systems is nowadays ‘mature’, and we ourselves will extensively make use of the literature that has promoted the maturation.

3

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Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

At the same time, however, our re-reading of that literature will suggest that maturity does not necessarily mean that the ‘core questions of the field’ have been ‘settled’ and, least of all, that their agenda is ‘largely closed’. The core questions, indeed, are synthesized by the famous Duverger’s propositions, and our view is that his own, and later, key works (including Lijphart’s, Cox’s, Sartori’s, and others) deserve significant probing, specifications and amendments, on both theoretical-methodological and empirical grounds. Whether the revisions detailed through the book amount to ‘fine-tuning’, or to more decisive ‘breakthroughs’, will of course be decided by somebody else; but the very fact that they are put forward shows the persistent vitality of the agenda that Shugart considers outdated. On these grounds, the book takes a cautious stance: before entering new research directions and fields, it is useful, indeed necessary, to make sure that older research is truly exempt from confusion, omissions and/or plain mistakes. Caution, moreover, should be observed over the very first step of any scientific analysis, i.e. the stipulation of the ambit of validity, and hence the appropriate objects, of the study of electoral systems. Accordingly, this chapter will deal with these preliminary, and usually ignored, questions. Within the stipulated theoretical and empirical boundaries, we will then systematically reformulate and reorder the morphological and functional properties of electoral systems through Chapters 2–5. Lastly, the Duvergerian and post-Duvergerian agenda will be discussed, amended and tested in Part II, i.e. Chapters 6–10.

1.2 Conceptual issues According to the last available report of Freedom House (Puddington, 2008: 2–3), through 2007 121 countries (of a total of 193) had democratically chosen their governments through this or that type of electoral system. In this book, we will present and discuss the systems of just 21 countries, including the historical pioneers of the democratic regime and those that successfully established, or restored it, in the aftermath of the Second World War.1 Why such a huge difference? If it is true that a worldwide ‘third wave’ of democratizations (Huntington, 1991) has been underway since the mid-1970s, why not to subscribe to the ‘triumph’ of this political regime, and why not launch a larger, if not planetary, inquiry? Answering this kind of question requires conceptual, theoretical and methodological specifications that are usually overlooked, or only barely provided, through the standard professional literature. By avoiding any

What Democratic Elections Are and Are Not

5

specification, however, this literature effectively underwrites the assumption backing the reports of Freedom House and similar agencies, namely, that terms like ‘election’, ‘elector’, ‘competition’, ‘party’, ‘electoral system’, have the same, or at any rate comparable, meanings and functions from Sweden to India, from Germany to Madagascar, from the USA to Thailand.2 This assumption, in turn, rests on some measurement scale that purports to show that all those concerned are, or at this or that election were, ‘free’ countries; but scales are poor, and more often than not deceiving, scientific tools if whatever label one uses is not previously rigorously defined on conceptual and theoretical grounds; and when this is done, differences overwhelm by far any resemblances. The basic problem is that the word ‘election’ evokes democracy, but the overlapping of the two concepts is always partial and often ambiguous, if not altogether misleading. Elections without democracy, indeed, have become more and more usual through the post-war period and this, of course, is well known to the most inattentive observer. Even if one excludes from the start the patently ‘unfree elections’ (Hermet, 2000), however, the term might still be unduly stretched if it is not precisely bounded within the context of the relevant historical experience. This experience, i.e. the path followed by the pioneering countries and/or the most enduring and stable democratic regimes, is uncontroversial: as synthesized by Robert Dahl (1971, 1992), ‘free and fair’ elections are the point of arrival, not the point of departure, of the democratization process. The points of departure were civil freedoms, whose early establishment gave way to the first forms of competition and opposition between elites supported by limited suffrage (Rose, 1995, 2000b). Later on, suffrage expanded gradually, and finally attained full inclusiveness, hand in hand with mass mobilization and capitalist modernization, that jointly created the conditions for effective popular participation in political life: i.e. urbanization, literacy and the diffusion of information media; income growth, with the related improvement of the lower classes’ material living standards; and the substitution of local traditional attachments with collective national identities represented by large mass parties.3 In the Western world, these conditions attained maturity around the First World War and generated the ‘first wave’ of democratic transitions and instaurations (Huntington, 1991); but soon after the wave proved ephemeral, as the instaurations were not followed by consolidations in many of the concerned countries. And consolidations did not follow because key social and political actors chose to invest their electoral resources into alternative, authoritarian and totalitarian projects and were able to impose them. These countries, then, lived just a short

6

Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

‘electoral illusion’, and the subsequent breakdown suggests that even the most favourable structural conditions may fail if they are not complemented by the establishment of a host of specific democratic ‘arenas’: a pluralist, active, and fully open civil society; a competitive and inclusive political society; a market economy under public regulation; an independent judiciary; legal-rational administrative structures; and a military under firm political control.4 Last, but not least, a process of ‘habituation’ (Rustow, 1970) is indispensable: if both the elites and the masses do not adhere to the persuasion that democracy is the only possible and desirable form of political organization, the ‘only game in town’, its arenas and the norms that rule them will be potentially challengeable and effectively challenged. Vice versa, ‘it is the deep, unquestioned, routinized, commitment to democracy and its procedures … that produces a crucial element of consolidation … Democracy is genuinely, organically stable, hence consolidated, when all political actors capable of mobilizing any significant power of popular following not only obey the rules and norms of democracy but trust that their adversaries (real and potential) will do so as well’ (Diamond, 2002: 214; Linz and Stepan, 1996: chapter 1). In order to be established, this overarching consensus needs time: democracy, in other words, must be learned, internalized, and the safest proof of successful learning is its very duration. We come back, thus, to Dahl, to the elections as the point of arrival: whatever the symbolic importance of a ‘founding’ election, or even a string of elections, democratic consolidation is a much more complex, and time-consuming, process. To take account of this, one could adopt the rule of thumb suggested by Huntington himself: the ‘two-turnover’ test, i.e. the regular holding of a series of elections whereby (a) the winner of the first election loses a later one (though not necessarily the next) and, as a consequence, relinquishes power; and (b) the party that dislodged the winner of the first election is defeated later on and in turn goes into opposition. By this token, however, only one of all African and Asian countries (India) would qualify for comparison with consolidated democracies.5 The literature that puts the two categories together, then, patently violates the rule and its divorce from democratic theory is, in our view, untenable. Upon closer inspection, indeed, the distortions introduced by the lack of consolidation in the workings of elections and electoral systems become readily apparent; and through the inspection we will show that even India falls short of the requirements for genuine comparability.

What Democratic Elections Are and Are Not

7

1.3 Participation and competition in poor countries The bulk of the third wave involves poor African and Asian countries, and some of the least developed Latin American democracies (Barkan, 2000). Besides being of recent origin, these regimes are almost everywhere very unstable: Freedom House, and other international agencies as well, report repeated entries and exits from their main classes (free, partly free, unfree) and a general worsening through 2007 and 2008;6 if one adds the even more frequent reclassifications within the same category, the data unambiguously point to the lack of institutionalization, if not the permanently critical state and the recurring breakdown, of consensus on the fundamentals. Elections and democracy, in other words, are far from being the ‘only game in town’ and, more often than not, cannot be counted among the most legitimated alternative. This legitimacy deficit is all the more worrying as it rests on structural roots that severely constrain popular participation in the political process. To begin with, illiteracy stands at 40 per cent in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, in particular the sub-continent including Bangladesh, Pakistan and even the only country (India) of enduring democratic traditions. Per capita income is ‘low’, or ‘low-to-medium’, and keeps millions of families in conditions of hardship much worse than those experienced by the nineteenth-century European industrial proletariat. Finally, 60–90 per cent of the concerned populations are peasants living in small rural communities, where the lack of infrastructures, and a host of ethno-linguistic and/or religious barriers, keep people isolated from one another.7 All these conditions generate, and perpetuate, mechanisms of exclusion, or self-exclusion, that significantly restrain the universality of electoral norms and procedures even when and where they are formally proclaimed and granted.8 Indeed, norms and procedures that are culturally understandable and materially accessible to only half, or less than half, of the nominal electorate, make even the handful of free countries in the area akin to the liberal antecedents of mass democracies (Dahl’s ‘competitive oligarchies’). In turn, a de facto limited, and/or manipulated, participation keeps the regime’s legitimacy low, and provides an incentive to recurrent mobilizations against, and overthrows of, democratically elected governments; but even where the latter do not alternate with military coups and rule, or with arbitrary refusal of defeated parties to relinquish power, participation, elections and political competition remain at odds with the typical path of Western democratization processes because they lack to a large extent the latter’s national scale in

8

Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

terms of mobilization scope, parties and party systems (Rose, 2000b, 2000c). More to the point, in multicultural (or ‘plural’) peasant societies of the least developed countries, many, if not most, of the electors define their interests and aims exclusively within the borders of the community they belong to. Accordingly, voting habits and parties cannot but mirror the contours of these communities (be they ethno-linguistic, confessional, racial, tribal) and, thus, will refrain from any ideological abstraction, or rationalization (least of all, a left–right alignment) and will only, or mainly, express local needs and assert local demands: The result is a ‘multiparty’ system that functions very differently from multiparty systems in the advanced industrial democracies. What looks like a multiparty system in terms of the number of parties that can win seats in the national legislature or whose candidates compete for office is, upon closer inspection, a series of single-party or oneparty dominant areas where one party has succeeded in persuading the local electorate that it will be more effective than its rival at servicing local needs. It is not uncommon for the dominant party in an area to obtain between two-thirds and ninety percent of the vote. There is a high level of cultural homogeneity, and hence political homogeneity, as one moves from one constituency or region to another. (Barkan, 2000: 92) On this account, elections are little more than ‘ethnic censuses’, with limited exceptions in a handful of (mainly urban) areas of real competition. The lack of competition, in turn, is perhaps the most serious weakness of unconsolidated democracies, since it automatically transfers highly divisive cleavages from periphery to the centre of the system, thus emphasizing both the hegemonic temptations of the strongest communities and the radicalization of the threatened minorities. Paradoxically enough, then, in such contexts elections may foster heightened inter-ethnic tension and intensify the violations of political rights and civil liberties, i.e. they may postpone, or endanger, the very consolidation they are supposed to establish (Diamond, 1999; Karl, 2000). Be that as it may, ethnic censuses can fall short of being counterproductive and yet always give way to parties and party systems that are typically insensitive to the incentives and disincentives of the electoral rules. When cultural communities are territorially concentrated, indeed, territorially monopolistic parties inevitably follow, and even the

What Democratic Elections Are and Are Not

9

‘strongest’ (i.e. majoritarian) systems will achieve little more than reproducing the societal mosaic in the representative institutions. A case in point is India, whose plurality rule effectively imposes two-party competition within the districts, but cannot avoid federal multi-partyism as the two main parties change from state to state, and often do not present any candidates outside their strongholds (Heath et al., 2005). This is sometimes taken as a disproof of the so-called Duverger’s law, but the truth of the matter is that the case falls outside the latter’s ambit of validity. In other words, the Indian party system is too poorly structured to ‘project’ the local (two-party) format onto the national level.9 This argument – put forward by Sartori – is further explored in the next section, and will be extensively discussed and justified in Chapter 6; for the time being, it is to be stressed that we share its underlying principle: no generalization is meaningfully formulated and effectively testable on whatever population, and Duverger’s law is no exception. More to the point, the idea of maximizing indiscriminately the number of observations in order to ‘examine the effects of electoral systems under a wide variety of conditions’ (Norris, 1997: 297) is self-defeating, because if variety has little or nothing in common its very width becomes the ideal ground for theoretical ambiguity and technical unmanageability of intervening variables. This should be all the more obvious when heterogeneities involve the regime itself and the basic concepts we have been discussing here; but less heterogeneous cases may equally fall short of rigorous comparative requirements, and other exclusions are consequently in order.

1.4 Systemic structuring Not all third-wave democracies are poor countries. The post-1974 Southern European democracies, the previous Baltic and Central European satellites of the Soviet Union, a couple of Balkan and some Latin American countries, satisfy both material (income) and cultural (literacy) conditions, and their regimes’ legitimacy ranges from high to medium, or is, at the very least, growing.10 Though these cases are potentially more comparable with established democracies, however, only Greece, Portugal and Spain unambiguously qualify for inclusion in our data set. On all others, the literature takes a wide range of positions, ranging from the great caution surrounding Latin American transitions to the largely optimistic forecasts concerning the future of post-communist states;11 but whatever the democratic regime’s prospects, the common problem of both areas is a still precarious, if not altogether absent, consolidation of the party system.

10 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

This problem deserves careful scrutiny because it is largely, if not totally, overlooked in the literature. As a first step, then, let us specify that a consolidated – or structured – system is characterized by (a) large mass parties, i.e. parties which have developed a stable and extensive organization through the country as a whole; and (b) equally stable electorates, i.e. electorates both organizationally encapsulated and which identify with the abstract (ideological and/or programmatic) image provided by those parties.12 On both counts, post-communist Central European countries were found to be totally immature by one mid-1990s systematic study (Grilli di Cortona, 1997, 2003); at most, one could speak of ‘partial consolidation’ (Ágh, 1998), a phrase that leaves large room for exceptions or reversals; and ‘amorphous’, or ‘fluid’, are the ubiquitous terms used by all the authors who deal with the Latin American party systems.13 Finally, and most recently, some large-N comparative studies have employed a typical indicator of systemic (de-)structuring (to which we return below) to show that ‘Electoral volatility is on average far greater in newer competitive regimes than in older ones … the mean electoral volatility of the 16 democracies inaugurated by 1945 is 9.4 percent. The mean volatility of the 10 competitive regimes inaugurated between 1946 and 1976 is 17.0 percent, and the mean for the 21 regimes inaugurated after 1977 is 36.6 percent.’14 How relevant is this information for the study of electoral systems and their effects? As we have just said, the standard literature usually does not deal at all with systemic structuring or, when it does, its conclusions are questionable, if not altogether wrong. A case in point is the idea that ‘the choice of electoral system has far more potential to make a decisive difference to the outlines of the party system … when a competitive democratic regime is being brought into existence’. In other words, the more fluid, or less structured, the party system, the ‘greater the scope for shaping it’, thanks to the fact that ‘at this stage it is still pliable’ (Gallagher, 2005b: 552). By implication, one is inclined to think that pliability, and the accompanying processes of formation/transition, set the ideal context within which to formulate, test and, that being the case, put to work our generalizations, or laws, on electoral systems. As a matter of fact, however, the opposite is true: to start with, systemic destructuring and fluidity feed uncertainty, and uncertainty hinders, or at least obstructs, the rational calculations on which the strategic behaviours that are the conceptual cornerstone of Duvergerian and post-Duvergerian generalizations rest. Moreover, these generalizations predict, and cannot but predict, ‘equilibrium’ (i.e. stable) party systems, which are by definition ruled out under any formative/transitional

What Democratic Elections Are and Are Not

11

process. Last but not least, predicted equilibria are macro-equilibria, that is, they refer to national parties and party systems or, more precisely, to the large mass parties, and their encapsulated and identified electors, that are the very core of structural consolidation. All the previous arguments have been put forward by authors such as Cox and Sartori, and will be fully discussed, justified and integrated in Chapter 6. For the time being, it suffices to recognize their conclusion and to point out what may be of interest for the purposes at hand here: since destructuring cannot but weaken, distort or even nullify the effects of electoral rules, putting together structured and unstructured party systems risks predetermining either an underestimation of those effects, or inconclusive results, and, at any rate, is more confusing than clarifying.15 Thus, though for less fundamental reasons than those concerning the poor countries, a distinction has to be made between the post-communist and Latin American cases, at least until their parties have reduced their structural consolidation gap to more acceptable levels.16 In other words, a theoretically conscious and methodologically rigorous choice brings us back once again to our 21 Western democracies, where mass parties were born and prospered and where ‘frozen’ party systems have been the rule since the 1920s (Lipset and Rokkan, 1967; Bartolini and Mair, 1990; Mair, 1993); and yet we must not neglect the qualifications that are spelled out in the next section and that will prove of crucial import for both the framework and the results of the research later presented in this book.

1.5 Volatility trends in consolidated democracies Our database is updated to the French legislative elections of 10–17 June 2007, and allows us to detect an unprecedented decrease of party systems’ structuration levels through consolidated democracies. Declining levels, to be sure, were noticed quite a long time ago, and have been accompanied since their early symptoms by a growing literature that has provided plenty of information on, and indicators of, ‘de-freezing’ electorates, crisis of historical mass parties, and the rise of new challengers.17 More than was the case with third-wave unstructured democracies, this information has been neglected by electoral research, with the exception of the theoretical insights of Cox and Sartori already mentioned; obviously enough, however, some weakening, and/or distortion, of electoral systems effects is to be expected, if those insights are right. Since we will argue that this is so in Chapters 6 and 9, the pace and scope of the destructuring process have now to be singled out in some detail.

12 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

Systemic destructuring may be detected through multiple indicators, but the most relevant, and the least controversial and most widely available as well, is the already mentioned total net electoral volatility measure. In Chapters 2 and 8, we will present and discuss both the measure itself, the theoretical issues it raises and its role within our research design; for the time being, however, all the reading of the tables requires us to know is that the indicator quantifies the inter-party movements of votes from one election to the next in our 21 democracies. In order to evaluate these movements as systematically as possible, several criteria of aggregation have been adopted, the first one being the yearly averages shown in Table 1.1. Through the means columns, the data display the jump of volatility from one- to two-digit figures, and the especially steeper change taking place from the 1950s, that is, from the inception of ‘normal times’ elections after the exceptionally unstable, but equally ephemeral, 1945–9 years. Accordingly, the correlation with time is 0.358 from 1945, but climbs to 0.625 if calculated from 1950.18 And while the column 2 test ends up with no average deviation from the 1945– 2007 mean (-0.001) through the whole period, disaggregated outcomes point to a drastic polarization; indeed, the 1945–89 deviation is -0.94, as against an average +2.33 in 1990–2007: a difference, that is, of more than three percentage points, resulting from a prolonged decreasing trend followed by almost 20 years of strongly accelerating rise. For reasons that will be explained later on, this polarization is extremely important, and deserves further probing. To begin with, Table 1.2 breaks down the pre-1990 period into more finely tuned sub-periods, three of which share an underlying remarkable homogeneity: through 45 years or so, a moderate growth of volatility occurs between 1976 and 1989, following a previous decrease that obviously downgrades its scope to a marginal adjustment; vice versa, we had already seen the shift to two-digits growth since 1990, and the shift is now quantifiable in a huge +35.67 per cent increment over the previous figure. The upward change, moreover, is not merely quantitative, it also incorporates a shifting composition: Table 1.3, indeed, breaks down volatility by electoral systems, taking the formula as the criterion for reclassification, and brings two new results. First, majoritarian systems remain remarkably stable until the late 1980s, and whatever in-between volatility growth takes place occurs within the proportional sub-set; second, change from 1990 involves both formulae, bringing proportional (PR) systems to historical peaks, but destabilizing at an even faster pace the majoritarian subset, whose volatility jumps almost 50 percentage points.

What Democratic Elections Are and Are Not

13

Table 1.1 Total net volatility by electoral year and its deviation from the 1945–2007 mean Years

Mean

Deviation from overall mean

Years

Mean

1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976

16.25 7.5 14.3 11.33 10.56 6.97 7.51 4.0 7.5 5.95 3.47 7.04 6.68 9.14 3.4 5.04 7.46 9.26 4.34 4.37 9.8 6.6 6.97 7.03 5.98 7.8 7.7 6.24 12.06 6.52 8.38 4.8

7.44 −1.31 5.49 2.52 1.75 −1.84 −1.3 −4.81 −1.31 −2.86 −5.34 −1.77 −2.13 0.33 −5.41 −3.77 −1.35 0.45 −4.47 −4.44 0.99 −2.21 −1.84 −1.78 −2.83 −1.01 −1.11 −2.57 3.25 −2.29 −0.43 −4.01

1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 1945–2007

12.77 6.27 6.51 4.58 12.36 11.43 6.59 10.44 9.68 8.27 9.3 6.24 7.63 7.89 11.34 9.72 15.85 15.41 10.68 11.6 11.86 9.67 9.05 10.47 11.05 15.2 10.35 7.7 10.92 12.23 9.95 8.81

Deviation from overall mean 3.96 −2.54 −2.3 −4.23 3.55 2.62 −2.22 1.63 0.87 −0.54 0.49 −2.57 −1.18 −0.92 2.53 0.91 7.04 6.6 1.87 2.79 3.05 0.86 0.24 1.66 2.24 6.39 1.54 −1.11 2.11 3.42 1.14 −0.001

Note: Here and in the following tables, data are up to 10 June 2007. The 1945–2007 deviation figure is the mean of yearly deviations. Sources: Bartolini and Mair (1990); Mackie and Rose (1991, 1997); Wikipedia List of Election Results; national statistics. Own calculations.

This shift represents a new finding, since the previous literature used to emphasize the greater volatility of PR countries, and imputed it mainly, if not exclusively, to the formula or, more precisely, to the formula’s permissivity.19 Our data, vice versa, point to a relatively independent

14 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters Table 1.2 Total net volatility by sub-periods, 1945–2007 Years 1945–1960 1961–1975 1976–1989 1990–2007 1945–2007

N

Min

Max

Mean

Standard deviation

% change

85 86 95 112 378

0.50 0.50 1.20 1.00 0.50

26.70 21.20 39.20 40.50 40.50

7.73 7.25 8.41 11.41 8.88

5.74 4.19 5.84 6.52 5.93

−6.21 16.00 35.67 −22.17

Note: Here and in the following tables, change is calculated in % of the previous average. Sources: See Table 1.1.

Table 1.3 Total net volatility by electoral formula and sub-periods, 1945–2007 Years

1945–1960 1961–1975 1976–1989 1990–2007 1945–2007

Electoral system

N

Min

Max

Mean

Standard deviation

Majoritarian Proportional Majoritarian Proportional Majoritarian Proportional Majoritarian Proportional Majoritarian Proportional

30 55 34 52 26 69 35 77 125 253

0.5 1.5 0.6 0.5 1.2 1.3 1.0 2.1 0.5 0.5

26.7 23.3 19.2 21.2 18.9 39.2 40.5 36.2 40.5 39.2

6.61 8.35 6.91 7.46 6.61 9.08 9.78 12.16 7.58 9.53

5.37 5.89 4.18 4.23 4.77 6.09 7.74 5.78 5.86 5.87

% change

4.54 −10.66 −4.34 21.71 47.96 33.92 −22.49 −21.63

Note: Mixed-member systems’ data from Italy and Japan are computed separately for the SMP and PR arenas, and separately entered in the relevant class. Sources: See Table 1.1.

variable: to be sure, PR systems are consistently ahead of the competing sub-set through all periods, but their lead varies, i.e. increases or decreases, repeatedly and significantly; and in Table 1.4, the majoritarians’ growth outpaces that of the proportional sub-set to such an extent that parity is approached by 1990–2007. Quasi-parity results from a change in the unit of analysis: while the previous tables’ classification is by years of election, Table 1.4 redistributes the data by ‘electoral system’, i.e. according to the criteria put forward by Lijphart (1994a). As we will argue in Chapter 8 that the latter is the methodologically correct choice, our concluding remarks can be

What Democratic Elections Are and Are Not

15

Table 1.4 Total net volatility by formula and ‘electoral system’, 1945–2007 Years

Electoral system

N

Min

Max

Mean

Standard deviation

% change

1945–1989

Majoritarian Proportional Majoritarian Proportional Majoritarian Proportional

9 31 8 23 11 39

2.35 2.94 3.79 2.1 3.69 4.03

13.2 22.2 17.07 23.47 15.18 23.47

7.58 9.58 10.98 11.81 9.66 10.61

3.83 5.34 4.43 4.65 3.77 5.25

44.85 23.28 −12.02 −10.16

1990–2007 1945–2007

Note: On the operational definition of the ‘electoral system’, see Chapter 8.

restated here. Since the early 1990s, the once ‘frozen’ Western electorates and party systems have undergone extended and accelerated processes of destructuration. Through unprecedentedly high and sustained levels of volatility, these processes have engendered a voters’ ‘disalignment’ (i.e. the breakdown of past organizational and ideological bonds) without ‘realignments’ (i.e. no replacement of older bonds by new ones).20 The causes of this phenomenon are manifold, complex and often hotly contested, but we need not, and will not, deal with them in any detail here;21 as Chapters 8 and 9 will show, though, disalignment without realignment has modified both the party systems’ format and the parties’ relative sizes, i.e. the two main variables that electoral rules are supposed to affect. As a consequence, it is worth asking whether, and to what extent, the causative power of these rules might have been altered by the concurrence of the exogenous modifications – a question on which there are some theoretical hypotheses (by Cox and Sartori), but no previous research work. This is the main reason why we said at the start that the classic agenda has perhaps been declared closed too early. Be that as it may, it will be reopened in Part II of this book; but we have first to reorganize and to update, in a thoroughly comparative perspective, the huge descriptive literature on electoral systems.

2 Electoral Systems in Contemporary Advanced Democracies: Basic Principles and Their Mechanics

2.1 Introduction What are electoral systems? A broad definition would include the set of rules which – from the distinction between active and passive electorates to access to TV, from the rules for the presentation of lists and candidates to the regulation of campaigning (see, in comparative perspective Rose, 2000a) – are concerned with all the important legal aspects of elections. But this broad definition is more appropriate for election laws than for electoral systems. Electoral laws include all the important provisions that regulate the electoral process. As recent research has underlined, even limiting the spectrum to some 60 democracies, there are today significant differences in one or more of the rules that regulate democratic elections around the world (Massicotte et al., 2004). The six dimensions chosen in that study are the following: the right to vote, the right to be a candidate, the electoral register, the agency in charge of the election, the procedure for casting votes, and the procedure to sort out the winners and losers. Clearly, all these topics are fundamental for regulating the democratic course of an election. However, it is on the last two dimensions that the study of electoral systems focuses. How people vote and who wins or loses: these are the two crucial questions around which a growing literature has been developing over the last two decades, since Arend Lijphart lamented the scarcity of studies on this topic (Lijphart, 1985). Every electoral system is the product of different circumstances: of the political history of the country, of the will/ability of the dominating elite to modify the rules to its own advantage, of the need to mediate deep social divisions and guarantee representation to all the minorities, etc. The best known and simplest classification of electoral systems – a classic known also by the layman – is as majoritarian or proportional systems. 16

Electoral Systems: Basic Principles and Mechanics

17

Strictly speaking, the electoral system can be defined as the set of laws which regulate the transformation of preferences into votes and of the votes into seats (for similar definitions see Rae, 1971; Blais, 1988). This definition underlines the coexistence of two elements in the course of political representation: the possibility the ballot paper gives the elector to express choices and the consequences of these choices in terms of the assignation of the offices voted for. The seats at stake may be either representative offices (parliamentary), or monocratic offices (head of state or of government). In this volume we only deal with democratic legislative elections. In this chapter we aim to present the general principles that discipline the functioning of electoral systems. To this end it is necessary to begin with a brief, but detailed, analysis of the elements which make up an electoral system. In order to do this, we analyse the main principles and factors that stand behind the choice and application of electoral systems in the main contemporary advanced democracies. We will build our structure with ample reference to the latest studies (see especially Colomer 2004; Gallagher and Mitchell, 2005a), concluding with the presentation of the analytic framework which we will follow in the subsequent chapters of Part I. The first step to take concerns some specifications about the basic principles on which the two large families of electoral systems, majoritarian and proportional, are based. This can be done through a comparison of the various principles of representation which can be singled out, at a highly generalized level, in the majoritarian and proportional families.

2.2 Electoral systems and representation At a theoretical level, the majoritarian and proportional systems are based on two different ideas of representation (McLean, 1991; Sartori, 1994). In more detail, the classic difference is between plurality systems (single-member-plurality, SMP) on the one hand and proportional systems (PR) on the other. With the former, the voter, through a vote conceived of as a mandate, appoints as his delegate a representative whose link to the territory is reinforced by being elected in a single-seat constituency. For this reason the general dynamics of the system foresee the assignation of the seat to the most voted candidate. With PR the main aim is to give representation by proportion of the votes received. The two main conceptions of representation (majoritarian and proportional) were debated in Great Britain during the second half of the nineteenth century. On the one hand, the philosopher John Stuart Mill

18 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

was a strong supporter of PR, which he considered the best system to counter the excessive personalization of politics.1 On the other hand, the constitutionalist Walter Bagehot considered the plurality system an essential component of the Westminster model (for this debate see: Hart, 1992; Fisichella, 2003). We should also remember that during the twentieth century the majoritarian principle underwent an important change. Traditionally, the latter was based on the selection of the most voted representatives inside territorial communities or corporations (Reeve and Ware, 1992). It was only with the development of mass politics, over the last century, that the majoritarian principle came to be seen as a means of electing a government (Chiaramonte, 2005: 27–8). Theories of representation historically distinguish between government composition and government decisions (see Pitkin, 1967; Przeworski et al., 1999; Farrell, 2001). Advocates of SMP look at the latter. These theories are referred to in a variety of ways, such as: principal-agent, delegate-trustee, accountability-mandate, sanction-selection (see Powell, 2004). The focus of analysis is on the relationship between the individual representatives and their constituents. A representative can act as an agent or trustee of the constituency, using her/his own judgement to govern and determine which interests to pursue in parliament (McLean, 1991; Sartori, 1994). The accountability-mandate and sanction-selection theories view representation from the perspective of the voter, whereby the latter is able to reward and punish governments judging them on their past actions. Voters can also choose to cast their ballot to give the government a mandate for a specific action (Powell, 2000). Advocates of PR, on the other hand, tend to stress government composition over government decisions. According to the so-called ‘microcosm’ or ‘mirror’ theories of representation, government should look like a miniature of the society it represents. Historically, already at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the president of the United States John Adams expressed the view of representation as a reproduction, in a sort of ‘microcosm’, of the divisions – of class, religion, race and language – present in society. From this came the desire to have the best possible correspondence between the popular vote and parliamentary seats: the parliament as a ‘snapshot’ of the society, whose main aim is to give its say to every social group. In extreme synthesis, it can be said that with majoritarian systems it is the aim of governing which prevails, while with the proportional ones it is the aim of representing. The development of democracy, at the beginning of the twentieth century, was often accompanied by a general – though not homogeneous – easing of the threshold of access to power. In Stein Rokkan’s analysis

Electoral Systems: Basic Principles and Mechanics

19

of the four-step democratization process (1970), this was linked to the third and fourth thresholds. The access to representation (the third threshold), with the transition from majoritarian to proportional representation procedures eased the access of minorities to representation in the legislature. Subsequently, this process was also linked to the access to executive power (the fourth threshold), with the introduction of cabinet responsibility to parliamentary majorities. Electoral systems played an important role in shaping the development of political systems inside contemporary democracies at the beginning of the 1900s. Around this time, important theories of democracy were partially built on electoral systems as essential components of different models of democracy (Pasquino, 2007). So, the majoritarian principle was a bulwark of the Schumpeterian conception of democracy. Schumpeter was a critic of PR: ‘If acceptance of leadership is the true function of the electorate’s vote, the case for proportional representation collapses because its premises are no longer binding’ (1943: 273, quoted in Pereira, 2000). Against the Schumpeterian conception of democracy (the Austrian economist defined the democratic method as ‘the institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote’ (1943: 269)) the Austrian-American jurist Hans Kelsen supported PR, as a fundamental component of parliamentary democracy. After the inter-war experiences of Weimar Germany and pre-Mussolini Italy, proportional representation was seen as a culprit in the collapse of democracies, especially in the analysis of Hermens (1941). It was only in the late 1950s, after the seminal work of Duverger (1954) that the debate on electoral systems started to be founded on more empirical bases.

2.3 The historical origins of electoral systems In recent years there has been a substantial development in the literature on the origins and transformation of electoral systems. In one of the best-known studies, Josep M. Colomer analyses the strategy and history of electoral system choice by proposing what he calls the ‘ “micro-mega rule”, by which the large prefer the small and the small prefer the large: a few large parties tend to prefer small assemblies, small district magnitudes and rules based on small quotas of votes allocating seats, while multiple small parties tend to prefer large assemblies, large district magnitudes, and large quotas’ (2004: 3). In the same book, Colomer also analyses four basic principles that have structured the choice of electoral systems: unanimity, lottery, majority and proportionality (see also Manin, 1997).

20 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

We are not interested here in the first two principles, following which the process of selection was historically organized in the ancient and medieval periods. Rather, it is important to understand the evolution of the last two, the principle of majority and the principle of proportionality. The majority principle was initially conceived through multi-member districts, especially in the forms of cumulative, blocked and limited ballots, as well as the single non-transferable vote, which still survive today in some countries (see infra). As Colomer states, ‘singlemember districts in elections by plurality rule [were first introduced] in the British colonies in North America and . . . in England after 1707 . . . They, however, did not become the general formula in Britain until 1885’ (2004: 37). Majority rule, whereby seats are allocated only to candidates who win an absolute majority, came to be applied around the same time in both France and Australia as a variant of the plurality rule. The two countries – in the first case after quite numerous and substantial changes – are still the biggest democracies where the two-round system (henceforth 2RS) and the alternative vote (henceforth AV) are currently applied. The proportionality principle came to be implemented in the contemporary world as a means of seats distribution among the constituent states of the USA. In the late eighteenth century, statesmen such as Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson and Daniel Webster put forward some of the methods that were afterwards rediscovered by many European countries in the second half of the nineteenth century. The principle of proportionality first came to be accepted as a fairer system of representation especially in the countries that displayed a high level of social, linguistic and cultural heterogeneity (like Belgium). However, what we normally call the system of party-list proportional representation, in many European countries mainly came to be adopted via 2RS (see Table 2.1). Party-list proportional representation was first implemented to elect European legislatures in the early twentieth century. Belgium was the first country to implement it in 1899.2 Then came Finland (1906) and Sweden (1907); by 1950 (after a post-First World War first wave in this direction) most continental European countries used PR list-systems. According to the classic analysis of Stein Rokkan, ‘the rising working class wanted to gain access to the legislatures, and the most threatened of the old-established parties demanded PR to protect their position against the waves of mobilized voters created by universal suffrage’ (1970: 157, quoted in Katz, 2005: 57–8). According to the well-known analysis of Boix (1999), the shift from majoritarian rules to PR was linked to

Table 2.1 Electoral systems in contemporary advanced democracies: 1815–present 1810

1820

1830

1840

1850

1860

1870

1880

1890

1900

1910

1920

1930

1940

Absolutist regime

Belgium

Dutch rule

Curial system

2RS

2RS

Absolutist rule

Finland

1990

2000

2010

PR

PR

Plurality PR

Swedish rule (representation by estates) Three ballots

Indirect elections

Germany

2RS

Pre-unitary states’ electoral laws Turkish rule

2RS

PR PR

2RS

Nazism

MMP PR

Plurality

Indirect elections subsequent ballots

SNTV

Japan

Italy

Absolutist pre-unitary regimes

Netherlands

Indirect elections

2RS

MMM

STV

Plurality (Westminster parliament)

Ireland

Plurality

2RS

PR

Fascism

MMM PR majority bonus

PR PR

2RS

MMP

Plurality

New Zealand Norway

Indirect elections

Portugal

Indirect elections

Spain

Indirect elections

Switzerland

1980

Plurality

Denmark

Sweden

1970

PR

Canada

Greece

1960

Alternative Vote

Australia Austria

France

1950

Representation by estates Cantonal electoral laws

PR

Salazar regime

2RS 2RS

PR

Plurality

Plurality

Franco regime

PR PR

Plurality PR

Three-(two) ballots majority system

UK

Plurality

USA

Plurality

Source: adapted from Caramani (2000: 48). We have added the non-European countries.

21

22 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

the attempt, by the ruling parties, to face the challenge of the rise of the socialist parties at the turn of the century. However, more recent research by Blais et al. (2004) suggests that there were important differences between the minority of countries that switched from plurality to PR (Denmark, Norway and Sweden) and the rest of the countries that adopted 2RS. The latter, as we shall see more in detail in Chapter 7, have different strategic incentives, and tend to have rather different effects on the parties when compared to plurality systems. Be that as it may, today varieties of proportional systems have come to be used in many advanced democracies. In this respect, the main exceptions are: the former British colonies (which still use plurality), the countries in transition to democracy that use varieties of the majority system, and the growing number of countries adopting mixed systems. In the long term, electoral system change is therefore in the direction of increasingly inclusive formulae rather than away from them. Between the early nineteenth century and the end of the twentieth, 66 out of 82 changes took place in this direction (Colomer, 2004: 56). As Colomer explains, most of the unexpected changes were either due to the rise of non-democratic regimes or to the more specific needs of curbing party system fragmentation as a factor of political instability (post-war Italy being a case in point). Limiting the time span to the context of contemporary advanced democracies, one can observe 14 out of 19 changes in the expected direction of change towards more proportional rules (ibid.: 57). Besides being the best known universally, the distinction between majoritarian and proportional systems has the merit of capturing the essence of the two big families of electoral systems. It nevertheless has strong limitations in as much as it satisfies neither of the basic criteria for a correct classification: exhaustiveness (it should be possible to place each known system in a family) and exclusiveness (each system should belong to one and only one family). In particular, these limitations have become ever clearer over the last 20 years, during which several electoral systems have undergone changes, sometimes radical, to the point that they cannot be included exclusively in one of the above families. Though in many cases the systems are in countries still in transition to democracy, or with unstructured party systems (a structured party system is an essential condition, as we have seen in Chapter 1 and as we will further see in later chapters, for a comparison of the effects on the party systems of the electoral system), New Zealand, Italy and Japan are among the cases where reform has been towards what can be defined a ‘mixed’ system, where characteristics typical of both proportional and majoritarian

Electoral Systems: Basic Principles and Mechanics

23

systems are combined. According to classification criteria used by Golder (2005: 114), as many as 15.3 per cent of the democratic legislative elections in the 1990s used some kind of mixed system (as compared to 2–4 per cent in the three previous decades). We shall come back to mixed systems in Chapter 5. In order to understand how and why this surge of new systems that combine parts of PR and majoritarian systems came about, it is now time to look at the different analytical components that shape electoral systems.

2.4 Dimensions of analysis Among the first important studies of electoral systems, a pre-eminent position is held by the work of Maurice Duverger (1954), which we will look at in detail in Part II of this volume. Douglas Rae, at the end of the 1960s, brought innovations to electoral analysis, singling out three dimensions for the classification of electoral systems: type of vote, characteristics of the constituency, and the electoral formula. Over the last 30 years the principal scholars, from Giovanni Sartori to Arend Lijphart, from Rein Taagepera to Matthew S. Shugart, Gary Cox, Michael Gallagher and others, to cite only the most important, have studied and criticized Rae’s ideas, integrating and modifying them with ever more refined analyses (see Rose, 2000a; Gallagher and Mitchell, 2005a). An important outcome of these studies has been the realization of the need for more detailed criteria than those introduced by Rae. In particular, Lijphart (1994a) has demonstrated the importance of electoral thresholds, which are certainly more important than the type of vote used. The resulting classification refers therefore to the following four dimensions of analysis (see Colomer, 2004; Gallagher and Mitchell, 2005b; Shugart, 2005 for more details): (a) electoral formula, the mechanics by which votes are transformed into seats; (b) ballot structure, which indicates the way voters can cast their vote(s); (c) district magnitude, or the number of representatives to be elected for a specific territory; (d) electoral thresholds, i.e. the minimum support needed to ensure a party a seat and therefore representation in parliament. Let us look at the importance of these dimensions for the study of electoral systems, starting with the electoral formulae.

24

Table 2.2

Analytical dimensions of electoral systems

Dimension of variation

Value

Examples

BALLOT STRUCTURE

Categorical (also termed nominal or integral)

Single-member plurality (Canada, UK, USA)

Dividual: can ‘divide’ vote among different parties Ordinal: can rank-order candidates How much choice does the voter have regarding individual candidates?

No choice of candidate within party

Choice of candidate within party Choice of candidate within party and across party lines How many votes can a voter cast?

2 1

DISTRICT MAGNITUDE

1

More than 1

Two-round system (France) Virtually all PR-list systems Mixed-member system (Germany, Italy, Japan, New Zealand) PR-list with panachage (Switzerland) Alternative vote (Australia) PR-STV (Ireland) Single-member constituency systems (Australia, Canada, France, UK, USA) Mixed-member system (Germany, Italy, Japan, New Zealand) Closed-list PR systems (Spain) Preferential-list PR systems (all other PR systems except for Ireland) PR-STV (Ireland) Mixed-member systems (Germany, Italy, Japan, New Zealand) All other systems Single-member plurality (Canada, UK, USA) Alternative vote (Australia) Two-round system (France) PR-list systems (Spain, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Netherlands)

How many levels of seat allocation does electoral system have?

1

2 (higher tier and lower tier)

2 (both allocations are at same level) 3 (lowest, middle and highest levels) Measures to limit the degree of proportionality

Small district magnitude (DM)

Significant vote thresholds that parties need to cross in order to get any (or ‘fair’) representation Malapportionment

Alternative vote (Australia) Two-round system (France) Some PR-list systems (Belgium, Finland, Netherlands, Spain) PR-STV (Ireland) Compensatory mixed systems, also termed corrective or MMP (Germany, Italy 1994–2001 – partially compensatory, New Zealand) Some PR-list systems (Denmark) Parallel mixed systems, also termed MMM (Japan) Some PR-list systems (Austria) DM = 1 (Australia, Canada, France, India, UK, USA) DM = 2 (Chile), average 4 (Ireland) DM is in effect small in mixed systems when list seat allocation is separate from single-member seat outcomes (Japan) Germany, New Zealand

USA (Senate), Spain, Canada, France 25

Source: adapted from Gallagher and Mitchell (2005b: 8–9).

Mixed-member systems (Germany, Italy, Japan, New Zealand) PR-STV (Ireland) Single-member plurality (Canada, UK, USA)

26 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

2.5 Formulae From a purely technical point of view, it can be said that the electoral formula is ‘the part for the whole’ in the classification of electoral systems. It is in fact the formula, first of all, which indicates which class an electoral system belongs to: at a general level we talk of proportional or majoritarian formulae. Within each of the two main families there are then numerous variants. With reference to the electoral systems of the contemporary democracies which are the object of our study, a first distinction between majoritarian and proportional formulae is concerned with the use in the former of single-member districts (SMDs, where only one seat is at stake) and in the latter of multi-member districts. The general principle is as follows: in proportional systems there is a tendency to award, for a specific territory, a number of seats in proportion to the votes obtained by each party, while in majoritarian systems, the ‘first-past-the-post’ principle holds and the winner takes the only seat at stake. As we have just seen, this is not always the case, as there are systems such as the cumulative, block, limited and single transferable votes that use multi-member districts.3 It should also be borne in mind that the contemporary SMD systems currently adopted in France and the United Kingdom are the result of an evolution of previous systems originally based on multimember electoral districts, the disappearance of which – in terms of the process of democratization and the advent of mass democracy – is relatively recent. In PR systems, the formula is the most significant factor distinguishing the various list systems. The basic distinction is between the systems that determine seat allocation by subtraction (called also ‘largest remainder’) and those that do this by division (called ‘highest average’, see Chapter 4 for more on this). A peculiar form of PR is the single transferable vote (STV), which is a non-list system, as it allows the voters to rank-order the candidates both within and across the parties. In single-member districts, on the other hand, there can only be two kinds of formulae: plurality and majority. Plurality formulae are the most simple and straightforward. The SMP system is by far the simplest electoral method. Voters cast a single vote for a candidate, the seat is awarded to the candidate who gets just one vote more than any of the adversaries, no matter how high (or low) this is in terms of electoral percentage. In contemporary advanced democracies, majority formulae comprise two main systems: the already mentioned two-round system (2RS) and the alternative vote (AV). In the former, a candidate must win over

Electoral Systems: Basic Principles and Mechanics

27

50 per cent of the popular vote in order to win the seat. If no candidate overcomes this threshold, then there is a second round (a runoff between either the candidates whose votes have exceeded a specific threshold or the top two candidates from the first round).4 The AV, devised by W. R. Ware in the 1870s and also known as preferential voting, is the other basic type of majority formula. It is currently applied in Australia, as well as for presidential elections in Ireland.5

2.6 Ballot structure According to the seminal study by Douglas Rae (1971: 17–18) an important distinction should be made between ballot papers under which voters cast a vote for only one party, which he defined ‘categorical’ or ‘nominal’, and those under which the voter can rank-order the parties or candidates, which he called ‘ordinal’. The same author explained the difference in this way: ‘Categorical systems channel each parcel of electoral strength into the grasp of a single party, while ordinal balloting may disperse each parcel of electoral strength among a number of competing parties’ (ibid., quoted in Gallagher and Mitchell, 2005b: 7). In nominal ballot papers, ‘the voter expresses support for the sole candidate of a party (under single-member plurality), for a party list (Spain), or for one candidate (Finland, the Netherlands, and others) or perhaps several candidates (pre-1992 Italy) on one party’s list’ (ibid.). Clearly, this first category covers most of the countries analysed here (and, more generally, most electoral systems in the world). However, it is the second category that deserves some discussion. Usually, voters have one vote to cast. Historically, the struggle for universal suffrage aimed to abolish any discrimination, be it based on census, class or other factors. The principle of ‘one-man, one-vote’, had precisely this scope: to give each voter a single, personal, and secret vote. The fact that some systems (especially those that we now define as ‘mixed’) now give the voters a chance to express more than one vote does not violate this basic democratic principle, provided that everyone still has the same number of votes. Do voters have the opportunity to choose among different candidates? In majoritarian systems there is usually no choice of candidates within parties. The exception is AV, that allows a selection both within and across party lines (the same principle applies also to STV). In PR systems, on the other hand, there is a wide spectrum of possibilities. The intra-party dimension is an increasingly fundamental aspect of electoral studies (see Shugart, 2005).

28 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

As recently pointed out by Gallagher and Mitchell (2005b), the dichotomy proposed by Rae (categorical vs. ordinal) was not entirely satisfactory, as it did not allow distinguishing ‘systems permitting rankordering from those permitting simple vote-splitting. This category includes mixed systems in which voters may, if they wish, cast their constituency vote for a candidate of one party and their list vote for a different party, an option exercised by many voters in New Zealand and by rather fewer in Germany’ (2005b: 10). For this purpose, they propose the category of dividual ballot, which permits voters to divide votes among more than one party. In this category can be included those PR systems that use panachage, or other specificities such as plumping or pooling (the latter are not used in the countries covered in detail in this book, see on this Cox, 1997: 41–4). So PR-list systems differ widely on this dimension, from fully open lists to closed lists. At one end of the continuum can be found electoral systems that use the panachage, an open ballot where each voter can vote for as many candidates as seats in the district from any party or list. This system has been used in Switzerland since 1918. At the other end of the spectrum, in PR ‘closed lists’ systems, voters can only choose among parties: the order of candidates’ names is decided by the party. This determines which of them receive its seats. According to Gallagher and Mitchell (2005b: 11): It is possible to see two different concepts of representation underlying the choice to be made between preferential list and closed list systems . . . According to one concept, the purpose of elections is to enable the direct representation of the people, and consequently preferential list systems, allowing the people to choose their own representatives, are more appropriate. According to the other, representation takes place through the political parties and the purpose of elections is to enable the parties to secure their proper share of representation; consequently, closed lists are more appropriate than open ones because the parties’ candidate selectors are better judges than the voters of who is best able to realize the ideas and goals of the parties . . . In ‘principal-agent’ terms, MPs are the agents; closed list systems seem to assume that parties are the sole principals, while open list systems assume that MPs have two principals, parties and voters. To sum up the argument succinctly, one can underline that open lists allow candidates more scope to chase ‘personal’ votes. In contrast,

Electoral Systems: Basic Principles and Mechanics

29

Table 2.3 A typology of non-list electoral systems Type of vote

Magnitude (M)

Non-transferable

Transferable

M =1

Plurality Two-round majority

Alternative vote

M >1

Single non-transferable vote Limited vote Unlimited vote (block vote)

Single transferable vote

Source: Shugart (2005: 38).

closed lists maximize party control over candidates. Ultimately, as some European cases show (Italy, among others), the choice is often related to single-nation specificities, to which we will return in due course.

2.7 Assembly size, district magnitude and levels of seat allocation How many seats is a parliament made up of? All electoral systems, as we shall subsequently see, tend, despite great differences, to represent the popular vote within parliament according to a general criterion of proportionality. However, this does not mean that all systems are proportional, but that they tend to represent the electorate’s preferences by giving most seats to the most voted party, less to the second and so on until all the seats at stake have been assigned. The numerous variables making up the electoral systems, which are what we are concerned with, contribute to changing considerably, from system to system, the level of proportionality. These variables include the size of the assembly, in the sense of the number of seats in the national parliament. We refer here, more specifically, to the so-called ‘lower house’, that is the branch of parliament which, in bicameral systems, holds the greater power of control and of support of the national government.6 Some examples which we shall be looking at in the following chapters are the Assemblée Nationale in France, the Bundestag in Germany, the Camera dei Deputati in Italy and the House of Commons in the UK. The size of the assembly can be included as a criterion of analysis of electoral systems on the basis of a simple assumption: the more seats are at stake, other factors which we shall look at being equal, the

30 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

more likely an electoral system can guarantee representation of the small parties.7 This is in fact a rather abstract logical rule which does not take into consideration the fact that most electoral systems today make use of geographic subdivisions for the assignation of seats. From a terminological point of view, the international literature does not in this regard make any distinction between majoritarian and proportional systems: in both cases the two terms used are constituency and, more often, district. For this kind of geographic subdivision it is important to look at some factors which often play a crucial role in the overall effect of the electoral system. In the case of single-member districts (SMD), the fundamental variable is the way the territory is divided up. This problem arose above all with the extension of suffrage at the beginning of the twentieth century, which standardized the principle of demographic representation: only the advent of universal suffrage brought the need to eliminate differences in terms of the ‘cost of seats’, that is the number of electors represented by the elected member; hence the need, in drawing the boundaries of constituencies, to respect a criterion of demographic equality which limits the number of electors per constituency within a fairly narrow range. Multi-member districts are different. Since each district assigns more than one seat (and we can consider them all as used in systems with at least one proportional component, given that the systems mentioned in note 3 are not used in any of our countries), the subdivision of the territory is somewhat facilitated by the pre-existence of administrative subdivisions: for instance, in Spain, electoral districts coincide with the provincial territories. Therefore, apportionment (both in proportional and in majoritarian systems) is very important for its overall effects on the electoral system. This is all the more the case in countries where those in charge of this operation are aware of territorial concentrations of electors of their own party.8 There is often, in fact, the temptation to draw up constituencies or districts without respecting the general criterion of territorial homogeneity, but rather with the specific aim of including faithful electors who will be decisive in winning the seat. This practice was first noticed in the US at the beginning of the nineteenth century with a reform signed by the Governor of Massachusetts, Elbridge Gerry, in which a constituency was redrawn in a clearly partisan way – the district had a form similar to a salamander. Hence the term gerrymandering.9 Today many countries display some kind of malapportionment. That is to say they have districts having significantly unequal voters-torepresentatives ratios. Although this practice is more widespread in

Electoral Systems: Basic Principles and Mechanics

31

non-democratic countries, Spain, and also Canada and France, are among the 30 states with the highest ratio of malapportionment (Samuels and Snyder, 2001). Today, with the creation of independent electoral commissions (in the UK and in some states of the US), the phenomenon tends to appear less often, but it remains widespread (another important case is that of the Senate in the US). Finally, there are electoral systems which reserve a quota of seats for ethnic minorities which would otherwise have difficulty obtaining representation in their national parliaments (e.g. the Maoris in New Zealand). In PR systems, another aspect deserves close inspection. This is district magnitude (M), that is, the number of seats assigned, not to be confused with the geographic area covered which was mentioned previously. This is certainly an important factor, since it is at constituency level that the distribution of seats is decided in nearly all proportional systems. On this subject, the principle mentioned previously for the assembly is valid here: the bigger the constituency – that is, the higher the number of seats at stake – the greater the proportionality of the system. Not all PR systems actually operate a division of the territory into constituencies. The Netherlands have, for instance, a single-national constituency, where all the 150 seats are awarded. For this reason, the Dutch system is one of the most proportional in its outcomes (see Chapter 4). In contrast, in systems such as the Spanish or the Irish one where M is very low, the overall proportionality tends to be strongly curbed, even without considering – in the former case – the effects of the specific threshold. It should also be noted that many PR systems do allocate seats at more than one level.10 This is referred to as ‘multiple tiers’ allocation: 9 out of 14 PR systems covered in detail in this book use multiple tiers. This operation has two aims. Firstly, that of distributing the leftover seats not assigned at a constituency level: in this case it is a purely ‘technical’ device, with no precise aim of rewarding the most voted parties, indeed often with effects which favour the smaller parties. Secondly, this secondary allocation can take place (a clear example is in the Greek electoral system11 ) with the aim of rewarding the parties which have the best chance of forming a government, excluding the parties with a low percentage of votes from the higher territorial levels. Therefore, the presence of more levels may be dictated by party interests, but in general is also linked to the combination of different formulae, as occurs in the mixed systems.12 In many recent mixed systems, the use of a higher tier ‘is . . . termed compensatory or corrective, because the seats awarded at the higher tier(s) are used to compensate the parties that were underrepresented at the

32 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

lower level and to correct disproportionalities that arose there’ (Gallagher and Mitchell 2005b: 13; see also Shugart, 2000). This is the case of Germany, where the higher tier has the specific and fundamental aim of correcting the potential distortions from the proportional principle. We will come back to this point later (see Chapter 5), discussing also the terms used in the analysis of Shugart and Wattenberg (2001b).

2.8 Electoral thresholds Electoral thresholds are one of the most efficient means of influencing party representation. The priority aim of electoral thresholds is simple: to reduce the fragmentation of the party system by fixing ‘hurdles’ that the smaller parties are unable to overcome. Following Nohlen (2000), electoral thresholds can be analysed on the basis of four main criteria: 1. the level of application: by constituency as in Spain, national as in Germany, both as in Sweden; 2. the stage at which the seats are assigned: among the many systems which assign seats at various levels, a threshold may be introduced at one or more levels; 3. the percentage at which the threshold comes into effect: the most common cases go from 3 per cent (Spain) to 5 per cent (Germany), though much higher levels can also be reached (in the past Greece used a threshold of 17 per cent); 4. the object of the threshold: it may be single parties or groups of parties (that is, parties that merge at a particular territorial level). Leaving aside the fourth criterion, which we will not look at in detail, in the next two chapters we will show the centrality of these factors in the distribution of seats. The ‘discovery’ of the effects of thresholds is certainly one of the most important results of Lijphart’s research, now confirmed, indeed accentuated, by the control carried out in Chapter 9 of this book. More specifically, Lijphart proposes the use of the concept of effective threshold (to distinguish it from those we have just seen which are to all intents and purposes legal threshold effects, that is, legal thresholds), with the aim of comparing electoral systems which use different electoral formulae. In the four criteria we have just cited, we were referring to proportional systems, but some majoritarian systems also apply thresholds.

Electoral Systems: Basic Principles and Mechanics

33

In fact, in majoritarian systems, the chance of a candidate obtaining the seat can be expressed as a function of the number of competing candidates. In theory there is a double threshold: the minimum threshold which is the level necessary to have a chance of winning the seat (this is also defined as the threshold of representation); and the maximum threshold which sets the value which in any case is sufficient to win the seat (threshold of exclusion). We can use the same example as Lijphart (1994a: 25–6): in a district with five candidates the minimum threshold is 20 per cent of the vote (100/5), while the maximum is 50 per cent (should there be a clash between two candidates: 100/2). To calculate the effective threshold, a series of approximations have to be made: among these, decisive is the assumption of an average number of candidates, as it is this number which has a strong influence, in majoritarian systems, on the calculation of the minimum threshold (the maximum is constant). Following the example given above, Lijphart proposes – aware of the approximate value of this operation, but after verifying its plausibility – that the effective threshold be calculated as the median value between the maximum and minimum thresholds: 35 per cent is, therefore, the effective threshold applied to all majoritarian systems. For proportional systems, the entity of the effective threshold depends on a more complex number of factors, among which are the size of the constituency and the presence of (and level of application of) legal thresholds. The principle used is the same as for the majoritarian systems: the median value between the threshold of representation and the threshold of exclusion. The calculation (Lijphart, 1994a: 27) is the following: effective threshold =

50% 50% + where M is the magnitude.13 (M + 1) 2M

2.9 Disproportionality, number of parties and volatility Having completed the picture of the main constituent factors of the electoral systems (which we will come back to in more depth in the next three chapters), we have to deal with some problems which are decisive for their subsequent analysis in the second part of the book. In particular it has to be established which measurements, among those proposed in the principal studies, are the most efficacious in analysing the influence of the electoral systems on the parties and on the formation of governments.

34 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

Without going into the debate on this subject (fuelled particularly by Duverger’s laws: see also Chapter 6), it is now necessary to understand which are the instruments which permit us to see the effects of the systems. The first aspect to analyse is the measurement of disproportionality. Electoral studies have proposed a large number of measurements (Lijphart, 1994a: 59–62; Gallagher, 2000). The objective of all measurements is always the same: to find out how far an electoral system is from the purely hypothetical situation of perfect proportionality. In particular, the index which we shall use is the largest deviation index (calculated as the largest deviation – usually the percentage of overrepresentation of one of the largest parties – in an election result (Lijphart, 1994a: 62)). We will take this index as a benchmark in the second part of the volume. This index is almost equivalent to the so-called least square index, first devised by Michael Gallagher (1991), used also by Lijphart in his classic analysis.14 This point brings us to the next, fundamental, step: which parties should be counted as relevant? In the already quoted study by Rae (1971), he had set the threshold for counting parties as relevant very low, at 0.5 per cent. There are no universally valid rules in this field either. However, what has come to be used, and it seems appropriate to us for reasons which we will specify below, is the level of 2 per cent (Sartori, 2000), and this is the level which we shall use in the following chapters.15 The measurement which we have just introduced touches on an important aspect of the consequences of the electoral systems on the structure of party systems. On this subject, however, other studies have proposed more specific techniques for the analysis of changes in a party system from one election to the next. The first index is the one proposed at the end of the 1970s by Markku Laakso and Rein Taagepera (1979). Universally known as the ‘effective number of parties’, this index measures the number and relative strength of the parties present within a party system. The measurement can be taken both at the level of the percentage of votes obtained (‘effective number of elective parties’, Nv), and at the level of parliamentary seats consequently assigned (‘effective number of legislative parties’, Ns). The aim of the index is to show how many parties are present, not on the basis of a specific and predetermined threshold, but taking into account the relative size of each of them.16 We will come back to some criticism about this point in Chapter 8. The second index is known as volatility, widely referred to in Chapter 1 (Pedersen, 1979; Bartolini and Mair, 1990). Calculating it, compared with previous indices, is relatively simple: it is the semi-sum of the absolute values of the percentage variation of the votes obtained by parties

Electoral Systems: Basic Principles and Mechanics

35

from one election to the next.17 The aim of this index is to show the overall net movements, which can be calculated party by party (total volatility) or by blocks, i.e. taking account of shifts from left to right or vice versa.18

2.10 Setting the rules of the game The main aim of this chapter was to give a brief outline of the main dimensions of analysis of electoral systems, which will be looked at in more depth in the next three chapters. Understanding what ideas of representation lie behind the choice of and application of one system rather than another, as well as the evolution of different kinds of formula, is a fundamental step towards understanding, in addition to the technical details of the single dimensions of systems, the significance, in differing national contexts, of the system which is adopted. Consequently also what effects can be expected of its application, something which will be developed further in the second part of this volume. Hence, the reconstruction of the single dimensions of analysis, in itself certainly not an exciting topic, even for someone interested in politics, only takes on significance when the single pieces are put together again to recompose the complex jigsaw of the electoral system. As will be seen in Chapter 5, the last two decades have seen a growing use of mixed systems, or at any rate of formulae which do not fit into the classic division into majoritarian and proportional systems. Given its introductory nature, in this chapter it has only been possible to mention briefly many aspects which will, however, subsequently be studied in more detail in order to examine the role of electoral systems in various political systems. In particular, in Chapters 3–5, dedicated respectively to majoritarian, proportional and mixed systems, together with a synthetic reconstruction of the functioning of some systems, we will be examining the origins of the systems, the way voters can express their choices, the transformation of votes into seats, along with some general information on the overall satisfaction with the operation of the systems and the connected prospects for reform. There remains only to present the scheme of analysis which will be followed in the next three chapters (Figure 2.1). A final specification is necessary: regarding proportional formulae, Figure 2.1 makes no distinction between divisors and quotas, leaving these details (and also the problems linked to the preference vote) until Chapter 4, where there is a more detailed examination of the various national cases.

36 Table 2.4 Main features of electoral systems in 21 countries Country

Ballot structure

Levels of seat allocation

Choice of candidates within party

Single-member constituency systems Australia Ordinal Canada Categorical France Categorical UK Categorical USA Categorical

1 1 1 1 1

None None None None None at election stage; choice provided by primaries

Mixed-member systems Germany Dividual Japan Dividual New Zealand Dividual

2 2 2

None None None

Closed-list systems Italy Categorical Portugal Categorical Spain Categorical

1 1 1

None None None

Preferential list systems Austria Categorical Belgium Categorical Denmark Categorical Finland Categorical Greece Categorical Norway Categorical Netherlands Categorical Sweden Categorical

3 1 2 1 2 1 1 2

Within party Within party Within party Within party Within party Within party Within party Within party

Open-list systems Switzerland

Ordinal

1

Within and across parties

PR-STV Ireland

Ordinal

1

Within and across parties

Source: classification adapted to our database from Gallagher and Mitchell (2005b: 19).

(1) Does electoral system have only one formula?

NO: majoritarian and proportional formulae coexisitence Is there compensation between them?

YES: (2) Which one?

Majoritarian (3) One or two-rounds ?

Single round Plurality or Majority?

Plurality Canada, UK, USA chap. 3

NO: Single transferable Vote (STV) Ireland chap. 4

YES Mixed-member proportional system Germany, New Zealand since 1996 chap. 5

YES: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Italy 1945-1992/ 2006chap. 4

NO, or very limited: Mixed member majoritarian systems

Limited compensation Italy 1994-2001 chap. 5

Parallel system Japan since 1994 chap. 5

Majority Alternative Vote Australia chap. 3

Electoral system classification and case study

37

Figure 2.1

Two- Round Majority-Plurality France chap. 3

Proportional List system?

3 Majoritarian Systems

3.1 Introduction At the beginning of the twentieth century, practically all European states adopted majoritarian systems. Today very few advanced democracies use them: Australia, Canada, France, the United States and the United Kingdom.1 Among them, France is rather unique in being the only non-Anglo-Saxon country, as well as for adopting a two-round system, introduced exactly half a century ago by General Charles de Gaulle. As just seen in the previous chapter, there are many variants of majoritarian systems. Cumulative vote, block vote, single non-transferable vote, limited vote: these are the main variants that today are still adopted in a few cases in the world, both for selecting representatives in legislatures at the national level and for lower tiers of government. However, today (after Japan switched in 1994 from single non-transferable vote to a mixedmember majoritarian system, see Chapter 5) the three major variants adopted in the countries here analysed are the following: 1. The plurality system (also known as ‘first-past-the-post’) used in England since the fifteenth century and later in Canada and the US (as well as New Zealand until the 1993 reform; see Chapter 5); 2. The two-round system used in France for the last 50 years for the elections of the Assemblée National (as well as, in a different version, for the election of the President of the Republic); 3. The alternative vote, adopted in Australia. In this chapter we will examine the main characteristics of these three systems. For each of them, some information on their origins (and possible transformation), and on their basic functioning will be provided. We will also see some of the consequences these systems are generally 38

Majoritarian Systems 39

supposed to have on parties, parliamentary representation, government formation and stability. In other words, we shall set the mechanics of each electoral system inside the political context in which they operate. A similar operation will be conducted in the next two chapters. An important difference, however, should be underlined at this stage. While proportional and mixed systems are generally perceived to be in ‘good health’, this is not the case for majoritarian systems, often seen as under growing pressure for reforms aimed at achieving greater proportionality.

3.2 The plurality system: the majoritarian principle in its simplest version The plurality system is the simplest electoral system. The territory is subdivided into as many (single-member) districts as there are seats to be assigned. Inside each district the winner takes all, no matter how many votes more than the other competitors she/he has obtained. This means gaining a plurality – not necessarily a majority of votes. The ‘winner takes all’ means also that there is no ‘compensation’ for losers (as, on the contrary, can happen in some mixed-member systems).2 In order to get access to representation, in countries that adopt singlemember-plurality (SMP) a party needs a strong territorial concentration. The latter can give a plurality of votes, inside a district, to a candidate whose party, at the national level, does not reach 2 per cent of the votes.3 More generally, big parties tend to be favoured by the mechanics of the SMP, as Maurice Duverger already noted in the early 1950s. However, as Giovanni Sartori has shown, SMP cannot build, by itself, a two-party system: we shall come back to this discussion in due course.4 At the beginning of the 2000s (as of November 2004), 47 countries in the world elected their legislatures with this system (Reynolds et al., 2005: 30). Until two decades ago, it used to be the most popular electoral system for presidential elections, but it was recently overtaken by majority (Golder, 2005: 116). Today, its adoption for the election of the Indian parliament still makes it the system adopted by the largest electorate in the world, although in percentage terms it has now been overtaken by PR (Reynolds et al., 2005: 32). Generally speaking, as with all electoral systems, there are arguments in favour of and against plurality. Supporters of plurality argue (see Blais, 2000) that this system has – not necessarily in this order – four main advantages:5 1. It is very simple. Voters have one straight vote. The winner takes all, and this tends to increase accountability as voters have the possibility

40 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

to judge retrospectively – rewarding or punishing – the incumbent government, especially as plurality . . . 2. . . . produces one-party majority governments (‘manufactured’ majorities are very often produced by an exaggerated bias which translates a plurality of votes for the most voted party into a majority of seats). However, this can also be seen as a critical point, depending on which side one takes on the complicated trade-off between voters’ representation and government formation. 3. It favours close links between MPs and voters: the latter can hold the former accountable in their performance in parliament (Goodin, 2000). 4. It encourages parties to maintain a broad appeal, thus discouraging extremism (UK Ministry of Justice, 2008). But there are at least as many criticisms against plurality: 1. First of all, its unfairness and unrepresentativeness. Disproportionality indexes are very high. In countries that adopt plurality there are cases in which the party that has obtained most votes does not get more seats. In other cases, parties with as much as 15–20 per cent of the votes are awarded a single figure percentage of seats. 2. Many analyses have found a relationship between plurality and low turnout (see Blais and Aarts, 2006). More generally, majoritarian systems are associated with a 5 point average lower turnout (UK Ministry of Justice, 2008). 3. Others point also to the underrepresentation of women and minorities under this system (see, among others, Norris, 2004: 208; Norris, 2006; this point, together with the previous one, is discussed further in Chapter 10). 4. Another critical argument – though not exclusive of plurality – is that the system is particularly sensitive to district apportionment, as malapportionment or gerrymandering can produce even further exaggeration of its already high levels of disproportionality. 5. Finally, as far as developing areas are concerned, one should not forget that plurality is generally deemed to have 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’ (Reynolds et al., 2005: 43).6 Some of these arguments tend to apply to all majoritarian systems, but careful analysis of both 2RS and the AV shows important specificities of

Majoritarian Systems 41

these two systems. Although we shall not tackle all these points in detail, by setting the context of application of each system, in the next sections we will point to some of the main factors that contribute to their systemic consequences. The tests that are proposed in the second part of the volume can be better understood after such a preliminary contextual analysis. This is all the more crucial if we consider that majoritarian systems, ever since Duverger’s analysis, have been generally considered more coercive of voters’ preferences than proportional ones. As we shall see in the next chapter, whereas the latter often not only reproduce ‘proportionally’ the amount of votes each party obtains, but are also generally applied inside more homogeneous political contexts (parliamentary governments, a generally more uniform electoral process), the former tend to display important differences in one or more of these important aspects, as we now move on to see.

3.3 The mother country of plurality: the United Kingdom The United Kingdom can be considered the mother country of plurality. The plurality system (normally referred to also as ‘first-past-the-post’, FPTP), finds its roots in the medieval period: the English House of Commons was already elected with this system in the fifteenth century. The 1429 electoral Act, besides restrictions that granted voting rights only to the nobility, ‘introduced the plurality rule, establishing that candidates receiving the most votes were elected. The principle of the relative majority replaced the medieval principle of unanimity expressed in the form of elections by acclamation’ (Caramani, 2000: 947). Until the seventeenth century it was applied inside multi-member constituencies. The UK underwent important electoral reforms during the nineteenth century. The three Reform bills (1832, 1867–8, 1884–5) before the advent of universal suffrage in 1918–28, introduced fundamental changes in the voting procedures (especially, but not exclusively, linked to the expansion of the franchise), by standardizing also the use of plurality inside single-member districts (SMD). It was only in 1949 that the last multimember districts were abolished (Blackburn, 1995: 117–18). Around the same time, the beginning of decolonization did not bring about many changes in the former British colonies that, in many cases, had adopted single-member-plurality (SMP).7 Let us then see to what extent some of the traditional arguments pro and against SMP apply today in the UK. Disproportionality has been rather high during all post-war elections (often above 10, at its peak in 2005 with 22; see the largest deviation in the
column, Table 3.1).

42 Table 3.1 The UK: main effects of SMP on representation and government formation (1945–2005). MPs elected with a plurality of votes and comparison between seats and votes to main parties (values expressed in percentage points) Year

1945 1950 1951 1955 1959 1964 1966 1970 1974 (Feb.) 1974 (Oct.) 1979 1983 1987 1992 1997 2001 2005

MPs plurality winners

29.0 29.9 6.2 5.9 12.7 36.8 29.4 19.7 64.3 59.8 32.6 51.4 43.5 39.6 47.0 51.1 66.0

Turnout

72.6 83.6 81.9 76.8 78.7 77.9 75.8 71.9 78.8 72.8 76.0 72.7 75.3 77.7 71.3 59.4 61.4

Labour

Liberals/ Liberal-Democrats

Conservatives

votes

seats




votes

seats




votes

seats




48.0 46.1 48.8 46.4 43.8 44.1 48 43.1 37.2 39.3 36.9 27.6 30.8 34.4 43.2 40.7 35.3

61.4 50.4 47.2 44.0 41.0 50.3 57.8 45.7 47.4 50.2 42.4 32.2 35.2 41.6 63.4 62.7 55.2

13.4 4.3 −1.6 −2.4 −2.8 6.2 9.8 2.6 10.2 10.9 5.5 4.6 4.4 7.2 20.2 22.0 19.9

9 9.1 2.6 2.7 5.9 11.2 8.5 7.5 19.3 18.3 13.8 25.4 22.6 17.8 16.8 18.3 22.1

1.9 1.4 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.4 1.9 1.0 2.2 2.0 1.7 3.5 3.4 3.1 7.0 7.9 9.6

−7.1 −7.7 −1.6 −1.7 −4.9 −9.8 −6.6 −6.5 −17.1 −16.3 −12.1 −21.9 −19.2 −14.7 −9.8 −10.4 −12.5

36.8 43.4 48.0 49.7 49.4 43.4 41.9 46.4 37.9 35.8 43.9 42.4 42.3 41.9 30.7 31.7 32.3

31.1 47.7 51.4 54.8 57.9 48.3 40.2 52.4 46.8 43.6 53.4 61.1 57.8 51.6 25.0 25.2 30.7

−5.7 4.3 3.4 5.1 8.5 4.9 −1.7 6.0 8.9 7.8 9.5 18.7 15.5 9.7 −5.7 −6.5 −1.6

Sources: for 1945–1997 (Farrell, 2001), for 2001 onwards: own update based on official data; bold figures indicate majorities by parties in government.

Majoritarian Systems 43

The most quoted example of a very unfair result refers to the 1983 elections. With 25.4 per cent of the votes, the Alliance (a merger between the Liberal Party and the right-wing split of the Labour Party, the Social Democratic Party), only scored 3.5 per cent of the seats. This astonishing underrepresentation was due to the lack of a territorial concentration of the new-born party (later to become the Liberal Democratic Party).8 Underrepresentation of the third party (and, more generally, of the minor parties) is a general feature of SMP in the UK (Webb, 2005).9 On the other hand, disproportionality produces also the fabrication of government majorities. Only the Conservatives achieved close to 50 per cent of the votes in 1955 and 1959, inside a general pattern which sees a plurality of votes converting into a majority of seats. In the UK all postwar governments have been single-party governments formed by the winning party (see Table 3.1). There have been very few exceptions to this rule: a Labour minority cabinet (February–October 1974), this outcome having been caused itself by another exception, since the winning party was second in terms of votes won, as had happened also in another instance – in reversal order (in 1951, see italics in Table 3.1).10 Therefore, despite these two minor episodes, under SMP voters do not just elect their representatives; they are also decisive in electing a government. This is often perceived as one of the strongest arguments in favour of the system. As Curtice claims, ‘by discriminating against third parties and giving the winner a bonus, (SMP) ensures that elections are a contest between two alternative governments. As a result, it is voters who determine who runs the country rather than backroom deals between politicians in post-election coalition bargaining’ (2001: 804). Stability is generally preserved, as winning parties form governments and losers stand in opposition. At the following elections, the elector can judge and reward or punish: this provides a direct line of accountability which is one of the strongest arguments of the supporters of this electoral system. Only more recently have some critics (Electoral Reform Society, 2005) pointed to a possible counter-argument, namely that the party in government has obtained a shrinking majority of votes (decreasing progressively in the last decade, until the 21.6 per cent of the electorate in 2005) and the parallel growing percentage of plurality winners inside the districts, as documented by column 1 of Table 3.1. Indeed, a substantial contribution to disproportionality comes also from malapportionment. For a variety of reasons which we cannot examine in detail here (see McLean, 1995; McLean and McMillan, 2005) Scotland and Wales have been overrepresented in the Westminster parliament since 1945. The situation became more difficult to sustain a

44 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

decade ago, when devolution set up two assemblies in these territories.11 By 2001 Scotland was overrepresented in the Commons by 25 per cent, and Wales by 21 per cent (Johnston et al., 2002). A partial remedy to this question has been devised with the 2004 boundary review, although dishomogeneities still survive (Butler and McLean, 2006). Labour has benefited from this situation in the last two decades, since the Conservatives started to lose votes in Scotland and Wales, so much so that some authors claim that this imbalance could be decisive in determining the final outcome in case of a close contest between the two main parties. As far as connection with representatives is concerned, recent research has suggested that, though many MPs do actually undertake constituency work, involvement at local level remains low (UK Ministry of Justice, 2008). In general, electoral systems are not the only variable in determining the level and quality of constituency work: political culture also plays an important role, as a comparative study on British MEPs has shown (Farrell and Scully, 2003). Moreover, the adoption of a variant of the mixed-member proportional system used in Germany and in Scotland and Wales shows similar levels of activism by representatives elected in the PR lists of these systems (Curtice, 2006; Lundberg, 2007b). Since the 1970s, the British electoral system has come under increasing pressure (Mitchell, 2005), as the two-party vote fell from 90 per cent in 1970 to 67 per cent in 2005, mainly because of the rise of the Liberals and the birth of new parties. More recently, turnout has decreased dramatically. Another important change should also be considered. At the beginning of the twentieth century the so-called ‘cube law’ was devised, which states that, under a two-party system, with plurality if the popular vote is divided between the two main parties in the proportion A:B, then seats will distributed according to the proportion A3 :B3 .12 By the mid-1960s the law was already of decreasing value, and lost applicability after the rise of minor parties. All these issues, together with the birth of the new assemblies in Scotland and Wales in the late 1990s, seem to play against the survival of SMP.13 However, the rule of the ‘inverse relationship between the will and the power to change an electoral system’ should be borne in mind (Mitchell, 2005: 174). Overall, SMP in the UK has been pro-Labour biased ever since the mid-1960s (Johnston et al., 2001). Today, the decline of the cube law, the increase in minor-party seats, the decreased cohesiveness of legislative majorities, and the further rise in pro-Labour bias have led to increasing pressure on the system (Blau, 2004, 2008). Moreover, the use of mixed-member-proportional (MMP) systems for the new parliaments in Scotland and Wales, the adoption of proportional representation for

Majoritarian Systems 45

the European elections (see Chapter 4), and a faltering turnout (despite a small increase in 2005 as compared to 2001) are all elements that point to a persistent challenge to the electoral system as a fundamental component of the Westminster model (Dunleavy, 2006). The Liberal Democrats and some pressure groups (the Electoral Reform Society, ERS, imprimis14 ), have been able to put forward many arguments for change, which have also been supported by the press.15 Electoral reform was the object of several reports and commissions, including the Jenkins Commission, which reported a decade ago on the possible consequences of electoral reforms. It operated with the following terms of reference: (a) the requirement for broad proportionality, (b) the need for stable government, (c) an extension of voter choice and (d) the maintenance of a link between MPs and geographical constituencies. After careful consideration, the first preference was given to a variant of AV.16 However, even if the last 2005 elections were, from the reformers’ point of view, the ‘worst election ever’17 (ERS, 2005), in the ten years since the Jenkins report, Labour has been able to resist these pressures for change. Although some of the mentioned developments portray SMP as being ‘under siege’, the chances of electoral reform seem, for the time being, fairly weak.

3.4 SMP in North America Despite their common federal structure, Canada and the USA display many differences in terms of the institutional context in which the electoral system operates. Comparatively, by far the oddest is the latter, being the only country in our volume that simultaneously displays three rather peculiar factors that strongly affect the mechanics of the electoral system: appointment of the government does not depend on parliamentary elections, but is rather linked to presidential elections; a system of primary elections is institutionalized in all states as a fundamental process in candidate selection; and the latter factor is all the more important as incumbency is a crucial factor (normally more than 90 per cent of the incumbents successfully gain re-election in the congressional vote). These three factors strongly affect the electoral process, as does a fourth element: voters need to register before going to the polls, and this makes the ‘cost’ of voting higher than in the other democracies analysed in our volume.18 Let us look at the basic features of the US system. The US uses SMP for the election of the Congress (House of Representatives and the Senate). The 435 members of the House of Representatives are elected every

Table 3.2

SMP in Canada and the USA: institutional factors affecting the application of the system and some overall data

Party system; number of relevant parties and party system nationalization (PSN) Candidate selection Incumbency Number of elections and their decisiveness

Voter’s registration Average turnout (since 1945, comparatively assessed, with trend since 1990) Average disproportionality Main recent challenges to electoral system

USA

Parliamentary (personalized) Severe regional cleavages; national integrity threatened by Parti québécois’ separatism (two referedums marginally defeated in early 1990s) Three parties at national level (plus one predominant party in Quebec), great heterogeneity throughout territory; decreasing PSN Decentralized at constituency level, in the hands of the parties Not important, very high MP turnover

Presidential (highly personalized) Not challenged

Two parties; medium-high PSN

Just one election; parliamentary mandate not fixed: early dissolution in the hands of the prime minister (Senate appointed, not elected) Federal rules: initiative by state during first registration, register closes on election day 73.8 (Medium) decreasing

Direct primaries, as first (and open) step in the electoral process Very important, about 98% until 2006 ‘wave’ elections (still over 90%) Staggered elections; presidential vote most salient; but divided government – Congress with a hostile majority – in more than half of the 1960–2008 period State rules, but generally it is up to electors to seek registration 56.5 (Low) decreasing

12.7 1993 earthquake elections; mounting pressure for reform, initiatives in British Columbia, Ontario

5.5 No major immediate threat; proposals for instant run-off by Center for Voting and Democracy (www.fairvote.org)

Sources: own compilation with information mainly derived, for Canada: from Massicotte (2005), Bakvis and Wolinetz (2005), Weaver (2001); for the USA: Fabbrini (2005), Bowler et al. (2005); for party system nationalization see Jones and Mainwaring (2003); for registration procedures see: Massicotte et al. (2004); data from turnout referred to period 1945–2002, from our previous analysis of the same 21 democracies studied in this book (Baldini and Pappalardo, 2004).

46

System of government Polity: territorial integrity

Canada

Majoritarian Systems 47

two years, whereas the 100 senators are elected (two by each state) for six-year terms, with one third of the Senate seats up for a vote every two years. As mentioned above, contrary to all the other countries analysed here (but see France below), it is not parliamentary elections which determine which of the two main parties will be in government, this being the outcome of presidential elections. The US president is elected every four years and can stand for two mandates. The election is only formally direct. Rather, voters choose the 538 so-called presidential electors. The candidate who obtains the greatest support among the electors is nominated President of the United States.19 The US is the only advanced democracy in the world where a presidential system (with ‘separate institutions sharing power’) holds primary elections to select both the presidential and parliamentary candidates. Moreover, parties as organizations are historically rather weak (Katz and Kolodny, 1994; Wattenberg, 1998; Fabbrini, 2005). Therefore, the electoral process has a unique shape in the United States: ‘victory in a primary guarantees access to the general election ballot . . . since most congressional . . . districts are not competitive . . . the nominee of the district’s dominant party is almost guaranteed victory in the general election’ (Bowler et al., 2005: 189). This fact contributes to explain why participation is comparatively low. But this fact is also an important argument for those who support electoral system change (Hill, 2001). However, given the strength of the two-party system, proposals for reform are not very popular with the public (Bowler et al., 2005), and definitely less than in the United Kingdom, although there are pressure groups such as the Center for Voting and Democracy which support reform in the direction of the alternative vote, known in the US as the instant-runoff system.20 When compared to the USA, Canadian party and political systems look rather different, as does also the electoral legislation more generally (see Table 3.3). The Canadian party system is not a two-party system, although the two main parties (Liberals and Conservatives) have alternated in government during all the post-war period. Canada has experienced a very important change in the last quarter century, after the rise of new parties (Reform in the West), and the surge of the regionalist/separatist Parti québécois (which fields candidates only in the eastern francophone province of Quebec), whose result in terms of seats has been magnified by SMP. An ‘earthquake’ took place in the 1993 election, when the Parti québécois and Reform won enough seats to become the second- and third-largest parties in parliament respectively, while the Conservatives, with support spread out across Canada, lost all but

48 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

two seats. This contributed to one of the most important trends in the Canadian political system, the rise of regionalized party systems: Until the 1980s, the Canadian party system had a level of nationalization only slightly lower than that of the United States . . . In the 1990s, two new forces emerged at the national level and dramatically lowered Canada’s party system nationalisation score (PSNS). The BQ (Bloc Québécois) . . . which competes only in Quebec, is the sole single-province party in the 17 countries analysed here that obtained 5 percent or more of the national vote. The Reform Party (RP), which first contested national elections in 1988 (garnering a meager 2 percent of the vote), also has a very low PNS, reflecting its concentration in the West. The RP drew many of its votes from the historic base of the PC (Progressive Conservatives), which saw its support dissipate in the West, but remained competitive in the Maritime provinces. The remarkable changes in the Canadian party system in 1993 were associated with the second largest single inter-election PSNS change (tied with Ecuador) in the 68 inter-electoral periods covered in this study, from 0.78 in 1988 to 0.62 in 1993. In contrast to the 1980s, when two of the country’s three major parties (PC and LP [Liberal Party]) were relatively nationalized, in the 1990s, of the five major parties, only the LP remotely approached a significant nationwide presence. (Jones and Mainwaring, 2003: 151) Also as a result of these developments, the prospects for electoral reform have started to grow in the last decade (Weaver, 2001). In 2005, a referendum on the Citizens’ Assembly proposal to change from SMP to STV in the province of British Columbia fell short of the required majority (Lundberg, 2007a). A new referendum is scheduled in that province for 2009. In Ontario, in 2006, the proposed change towards MMP was defeated by another referendum with a majority of 63 per cent. To sum up, the experience of SMP in these two vast democracies shows more differences than similarities. Plurality is often perceived as being an electoral system with strong effects (Sartori, 1994: infra chapter 7). This is undoubtedly true in terms of penalization of minor parties. However, even before approaching the specific tests included in the second part of this book, the significance of the political context within which each electoral system operates should be stressed. Simplicity, accountability and overall government stability on the one hand, penalization of minor parties and vulnerability to malapportionment on the other: these are the few common elements that can be selected from this first comparison

Majoritarian Systems 49

of the three main Anglo-Saxon democracies where SMP – with or without much criticism – survives today.

3.5 Majority systems The majority systems are those in which a candidate needs to win at least 50 per cent of the votes to be elected. There are two main variants of majority systems: multiple-round elections and rank-order systems. Inside the first group a further distinction should be made between systems that use the so-called ‘majority-runoff’, or ‘second-round runoff’ (whereby the top two candidates get access to the second round), and those that use a system also known as ‘two-round majority-plurality’ (a candidate needs 50 per cent of the votes at the first round and a simple plurality at the second). Whereas Australia uses a rank-order system for the election of its House of Representatives, it is France that today uses both systems of multiple-round elections.21 Generally speaking, majority systems are associated with some of the main disadvantages of plurality: high disproportionality, lower turnout, underrepresentation of women, and vulnerability to malapportionment. On the other hand, they are also linked to accountability, high decisiveness of the elections in the process of government formation, political stability, and, more specifically, penalization of extremist parties.

3.6 The two-round system in France France is the only advanced democracy to adopt the two-round system (2RS). When compared to the other countries adopting SMP, the French system is also unique because of two main factors. The first is its relatively recent application, the second the political context within which this system is used, namely a semi-presidential system where government formation and leadership is dependent on both kinds of elections, parliamentary as well as presidential. The 2RS was initially adopted during the transition from the Fourth (1946–58) to the Fifth (1958–) Republic, following the institutional design of General Charles de Gaulle, aimed fundamentally at achieving stability and marginalizing the (veto) power of political parties. Actually a variant of the 2RS had already been adopted during the Third Republic (1870–1940), as also documented by the classic study of Maurice Duverger (1954), who based his predictions on the main effects of the 2RS (linked to multi-partyism) on his country’s first experience. However,

50 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

the two systems differed in many aspects, and there was also a very different institutional context of application.22 Indeed, the Fourth Republic had been paralysed by a high record of instability: 17 governments in 12 years. Once appointed President of the Republic, de Gaulle thought that 2RS could decisively help in curbing party system fragmentation and in building stronger, and more accountable, institutions. To achieve this task, four years after the introduction of 2RS for legislative elections, de Gaulle obtained also the extension of 2RS, in its ‘majority-runoff’, or ‘second-round runoff’ variant, for the popular election of the president, first held in 1965. Since its first application, exactly 50 years ago, 2RS has experienced some important changes, including also a short-lived return to PR, in the middle of the 1980s. As many commentators have noted, France is indeed one of the countries where electoral engineering has been more developed, and also linked to more or less explicit partisan aims (see Alexander, 2004; Elgie, 2005). More generally, France’s transition from the Fourth to the Fifth Republic is perceived as having been a successful transition, decisively helped, in its outcome, by the 2RS. The changes consisted firstly in two important increases of the threshold for access to the second round. While in 1958 all candidates reaching 5 per cent of the valid votes inside each constituency could access the second round, in 1966, in order to further limit the still excessive fragmentation, this threshold was raised to 10 per cent, this percentage being calculated again at the same level (the district) and on the same base (valid votes). In 1978 another important change took place. The threshold was further increased to 12.5 per cent, and – most importantly – calculated not on the basis of the valid votes, but of the electorate.23 This could mean, in times of increasing abstentions, that a candidate needs 20 per cent of the valid votes in order to be present in the event of a second round – increasingly frequent in the last two decades. Actually, majority wins have not been very frequent ever since 1958.24 Ever since 1958, 2RS has had some important effects on party representation. When analysing the effects of the electoral system, it should be remembered that French parties are comparatively weak (Ysmal, 1989). Party system structuring is also very weak, and party label changes are an almost permanent feature of the system (Knapp, 2004). On the right side of the political spectrum, the Gaullist movement has been shaped, even after the death of its founder, as a personalized party, changing its denomination eleven times in 60 years (Derville, 2001). On the other side, the left was first dominated by the PCF (Parti Communiste Français), a doctrinaire Communist Party whose parliamentary

Table 3.3 France: 2RS effects on representation and government majorities (1958–2007). MPs elected at first round. Comparison between seats and votes to main parties (values expressed in percentage points) Year

1958 1962 1967 1968 1973 1978 1981 1986 1988 1993 1997 2002 2007

PCF

PS

Centrists

Gaullist

FN

votes

seats




votes

seats




votes

seats




votes

seats




21.2 21.9 22.5 20.0 21.4 20.6 16.1 9.7 11.2 9.1 9.9 4.8 4.3

1.8 8.8 15.3 7.0 15.4 18.1 9.2 5.8 4.3 4.0 6.6 3.6 2.6

−19.4 −13.1 −7.2 −13.0 −6.0 −2.5 −6.9 −3.9 −6.9 −5.1 −3.3 −1.2 −1.7

17.3 19.8 18.9 16.5 19.1 22.8 36.6 31.3 36.6 19.1 23.5 24.1 24.7

7.3 22.5 25.1 12.1 18.8 21.5 56.5 35.6 46.8 9.9 41.8 24.3 32.2

−10.0 2.7 6.2 −4.4 −0.3 −1.3 19.9 4.3 10.2 −9.2 18.3 0.3 7.5

17.5 22.7 17.1 15.8 19.3 22 18.9 15.8 18.6 19.6 14.7 4.8 7.6

16.8 18.0 18.3 18.8 17.4 26.2 12.4 23 23.4 37.3 18.7 5.0 0.5

−0.7 −4.7 −1.2 3.0 −1.9 4.2 −6.5 7.2 4.8 17.7 4.0 0.2 −7.1

19.7 33.7 33.0 38.0 26.0 22.8 21.2 26.8 19.1 20.2 15.7 33.7 39.5

34.6 49.5 40.6 60.0 37.6 30.0 16.9 26.3 22.2 44.5 23.2 61.9 54.2

14.9 15.8 7.6 22.0 11.6 7.2 −4.3 −0.5 3.1 24.3 7.5 28.2 14.7

votes

0.3 0.2 9.8 9.8 12.7 14.9 11.3 4.3

First round winners seats

0.0 0.0 6.3 0.2 0.0 0.2 0.0 0.0




−0.3 −0.2 −3.5 −9.6 −12.7 −14.7 −11.3 −4.3

20.7 15.3 22.8 10.4 12.0 22.7 n.a. 20.7 13.0 1.3 9.7 18.9

Note: 1986 elections held with PR (italics). Sources: official data, for last column see: Jaffre (1997); Dolez (2002); own update. Minor parties excluded, centrist parties include different minor parties born and subsequently dead in the first five elections, UDF since 1978; MoDem in 2007, see note 26.

51

52 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

representation has constantly been penalized by its extremism and highly ideological platform (see Table 3.3). The PCF’s underrepresentation has been the exception to the rule giving major parties a bonus in seats that the 2RS has constantly favoured since 1958. Two main changes took place in the French political system during the 1970s and 1980s, on both sides of the political spectrum. On the left, the socialists, after the crushing defeat in the 1969 presidential election (which followed President de Gaulle’s resignation) were able to merge in the PS (Parti Socialiste) under the leadership of François Mitterrand (at the 1971 Epinay congress: see Grunberg, 2007) and subsequently to progressively marginalize the PCF as the dominant party of the left. On the right, the emergence of a non-Gaullist party, the Union pour la Démocratie Française (UDF) led by President of the Republic Valéry Giscard d’Estaing (1974–81) was important in order to achieve more durable coalitional dynamics inside the camp. In the words of Maurice Duverger, this brought about the so-called ‘quadrille bipolaire’, a pattern of competition allegedly favoured by the 2RS: a bipolar – rather than a bi-party system – where the main parties could compete against the opposite bloc by strategically abstaining and selecting the best candidate to defeat the opposite camp. This pattern of competition, however, was challenged by the rise of the extreme right’s Front National (FN), and, on the other side of the political spectrum, by the progressive crisis of the communists. This brought about the symmetric rise and fall of the two parties that exemplify the anti-system attitudes described by Giovanni Sartori (1976; see also Chapter 7, this volume). Against this background, it is not difficult to detect the partisan aim behind the 1985 return to PR. After two defeats in the 1983 municipal and 1984 European elections, the socialist President François Mitterrand found few opponents, in his camp, to his sudden repêchage of the 1981 electoral manifesto, which pledged the return of PR. The 1986 electoral defeat of the left (after which the centre-right coalition immediately resumed 2RS) was important for two main reasons. First of all, the winning centre–right coalition inaugurated the first period of cohabitation, which was an important factor – after a symmetrical second two-year cohabitation in the last two years of the second Mitterrand septennat (1993–5) – in fostering the debate on a further reform within the 2RS dynamics. We are referring to the important reverse of the electoral calendar for presidential and legislative elections, which took place in 2000, together with the decrease of the length of the presidential mandate from seven to five years.25 Since 2002, president and parliament are elected for synchronous terms of five years and the presidential elections precede

Majoritarian Systems 53

the parliamentary elections. Secondly, the adoption of PR opened the doors of parliament to the FN. These changes have decisively contributed to strengthening an important tendency that had been present inside the system since the 1960s: the increasing presidentialization of the political system, and, as a consequence, the centrality of presidential elections in affecting electoral behaviour and strategic choices of both parties and voters during parliamentary elections. The problem of strategic coordination, together with the related question of the underrepresentation of extreme parties, will be discussed with its implications in Chapter 7. Suffice here to say that 2RS displays incentives, mechanics and consequences that are different from the other majoritarian systems. Advantages and disadvantages of the system are periodically discussed by most penalized parties and by the public (Elgie, 2005), especially around election time. Supporters of the system underline some of its important merits: it is based on the principle of (absolute) majority rather than plurality, the underrepresentation of parties incapable of being seen as second or third choices during the decisive round, and the anticipation of the (traditional post-electoral) coalitional negotiations in the week between the two rounds. In contrast, critics claim the system is as disproportional, or even more so than SMP (see Table 3.5 and Chapter 7), turnout is low, and recently getting lower as presidential elections, after the 2000 reform, acquired new centrality in voters’ perceptions: electing parliament in the president’s honeymoon period brings few surprises, mobilizing much fewer voters than in the two previous rounds (in 2007 a record high differential of 25 percentage points; see Baldini and Lazar, 2007; Grunberg and Haegel, 2007).26 More generally, 2RS is also appreciated by institutional engineers in countries like Italy, or the former Soviet Union bloc. Also for this reason, the discussion of the effects, virtues and vices of this rather unique electoral system deserves, after this brief and general presentation, a more careful scrutiny (Chapter 7).

3.7 The alternative vote: the Australian experience Australia is the only country included in our study that uses the alternative vote (AV) for the election of its House of Representatives. This fact, together with the use of the single transferable vote (STV) for the election of its Senate, makes Australia the homeland of preferential electoral systems. According to two leading experts of the system, Australia’s ‘fixation with the preferential system’ has its origins in two main factors:

54 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

the influence of the British debate on proportional representation and STV in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the action of some campaigners that supported this kind of system during the foundation of the Australian political system, in the early 1900s (Farrell and McAllister, 2005, 2006). When compared to the two previous majoritarian systems, AV presents an important peculiarity: it combines, in just one round of elections, the use of single-member constituency with the principle of majority, typical of the 2RS. According to an interesting interpretation, ‘recording multiple preferences at the outset eliminates the cost and inconvenience of a second election and also avoids the sort of bargaining among parties that takes place between the first and second ballots in second-ballot systems . . . This system may also encourage moderation, because candidates and parties in the middle can draw second and subsequent preferences from both sides of the political spectrum’ (Hugues, 2000: 15). Since voting is compulsory – as is also the rank-ordering of all the candidates appearing in the ballot paper – one can say that the electoral system is an essential component of the traditional Australian political culture. The latter can be seen as rather different from the individual-libertarian British heritage that affected US political culture in the eighteenth century. Quite the contrary, Australia’s later enfranchisement from British rule was shaped by a utilitarian political culture, whose roots lie in thinkers such as Jeremy Bentham (McAllister, 2002: 379) and by an ‘emphasis on citizens’ duty over and above individual freedom’ (Farrell and McAllister, 2006: 55). Historically Australia has a two-party system, albeit with a peculiarity. If on the left side of the political spectrum the Labor Party stands as the major party, on the opposite side it is faced with a coalition of the Liberal and the National Party, that practically act as a single party. Fifty years on, one can still consider valid the classic analysis of Lipson (1959), according to which the Labor versus Liberal–National competition acts as ‘a trio in form and a duet in function’ (quoted in McAllister, 2002: 382). In order to win each seat, a candidate has either to score 50 per cent of the valid votes or to be appreciated as second or third preference.27 The growing number of parties fielding candidates has meant, in the last half century, the increase of the multiple counts necessary to assign all seats at stake (from less than 10 per cent preferences used in 1955 to more than 50 per cent in 2004; Farrell and McAllister, 2005: 91). In the example shown in Table 3.4 (the 1990 election in Richmond), the Labor candidate Newell managed to subvert the order of first preferences (Blunt: 41 per cent, Newell: 27 per cent), profiting from the progressive exclusion of the least

Majoritarian Systems 55

voted candidates and the redistribution of the preferences. Although this is a real-world example, one should not forget that the reversal of first preferences is a rather rare occurrence. In this case no real trend can be detected during the post-war period: this has happened for between 5 and 10 per cent of the seats in each election. To put it bluntly: more parties compete, making it increasingly necessary to count several preferences before the seat is assigned, but with little overall effect in terms of who gets elected. Therefore, although the example shown in Table 3.4 is not a typical outcome, it is correct to underline that the multiple preferences effect tends to limit the chances of extremist parties winning many seats. Indeed, parties give instructions to voters on how to use their preferences. In 1998, these instructions were crucial in defeating the challenge posed by the leader of the national-populist One Nation Party, Pauline Hanson. In her district, Hanson was the ‘plurality winner’ with 36 per cent of the first preferences, but lost to the Labor candidate who only got 22 per cent, thanks to the fact that both major parties placed One Nation, rather than their main opponent, at the bottom in their ‘how to vote’ cards. In conclusion, it can be said that overall the system works rather well in giving voters a greater say, not only for their first choices. Preference voting is generally one of the most appreciated virtues of AV, as we have already seen in the previous sections that documented the presence of variants of this system as options for reform both in the UK and in the US.

3.8 A comparative approach to majoritarian systems How do we compare the three systems viewed so far? Let us start from the similarities. They all give a bonus to the major parties and display high levels of disproportionality. They also tend to be rather vulnerable to other potential forms of bias, including gerrymandering. Clearly, the political context of application (overall electoral legislation, political culture, general institutional features of the political system) strongly affects the way electoral systems can influence voters’ choices and constrain party behaviour and representation. As for simplicity and the structure of choices available to voters, there seems to be a trade-off between the ‘straight’ line of plurality, whereby the party which gets more seats governs alone and losers go into oppositions on the one hand, and the AV on the other, as the maximization of the set of preferences can bring about a possible subversion of the

56

Table 3.4

How the alternative vote works

Candidate

First Count

Second Count

Third Count

Fourth Count

Fifth Count

Sixth Count

Gibbs (Australian Democrats) Newell (Australian Labor Party)

4,346 18,423

4,380 18,467

4,420 18,484

4,504 18,544

4,683 18,683

Excluded 20,238

Baillie (Independent) Sims (Call to Australia Party) Paterson (Independent) Leggett (Independent) Blunt (National Party) Caldicott (Independent)

187 1,032 445 279 28,257 16,072

Excluded 1,053 480 294 28,274 16,091

1,059 530 Excluded 28,303 16,237

1,116 Excluded

Excluded

28,416 16,438

28,978 16,658

Source: adapted from Reilly (1997).

29,778 18,903

Final Count

34,664 Elected

33,980 Excluded

Table 3.5

A comparison between the three majoritarian systems

Number of votes

Type of vote

Formula

Average turnout for legislative elections (1945–2001)

SMP

1

Categorical

Plurality

63.8

10.5

–

35

Canada, UK,USA

High in Canada, medium UK, low USA

2RS

2

Categoricalcategorical

Majorityplurality

74.6

15.8

12.5%

35

France

Medium-low

AV

1

Ordinal

majority

94.5

11.7

–

35

Australia

Almost absent, only compulsory element critical

Electoral system

Average disproportionality

Legal threshold

Effective threshold

Countries adopting the system

Prospects for reform

Sources: information in this and previous chapters; on thresholds see Lijphart (1994a: 17).

57

58 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

first preference. In this respect, 2RS is more complicated, since strategic entries and withdrawals are affected by a different set of incentives (though the 2000 reform has relatively simplified the structure of the competition, further increasing the centrality of the presidential elections). In any event, in this system it is always necessary to wait for the second round in order to see if, and how, voters can express a further preference for the competitors who are still running. In the week between the two rounds, parties (and candidates) can display their preferences also by changing – or even running against – previous commitments. So the voter is faced with a different set of incentives and, as a consequence of this, the overall process of government election is much less straightforward than in SMP. From the practice of the five countries very briefly examined in this chapter, we can argue that majoritarian systems generally share at least two main characteristics which deserve further scrutiny. The first relates to voters’ choices. Voters are generally aware of the effects of disproportionality: they can choose to abstain or to vote for a candidate who has more or less chances of getting elected. So strategic voting is one of the major questions to be tackled in order to assess the overall effects of electoral systems on party representation. The second element is related to the choices that parties make when faced with the selective incentives provided by majoritarian systems. Leaving aside the issue of electoral participation,28 both questions will be dealt with in Chapter 6. Generally speaking, simplicity, accountability and government stability are some of the factors usually associated with majoritarian systems. In this respect, the situation of the five countries examined in this chapter does not show any major threat to these positive features. It is more difficult to ascertain whether the underrepresentation of extremist parties is really a common and permanent feature of these electoral systems. Three out of the five countries analysed in this chapter have shown growing pressures for electoral reform, be that in the direction of some form of preferential voting (STV, AV) in the United Kingdom, of an injection of a ‘dose’ of proportional representation (France) or to some more vague aspiration to more proportionality, through the adoption of a less disproportional system. Also in the fourth country, the US, some initiatives for reform have gained some credit (especially after the 2000 ‘presidential fiasco’ in Florida). Perhaps it is not a coincidence that most of the reformers look at the AV as a possible option for change. In Australia there has been some debate only on the compulsory element of the system.

Majoritarian Systems 59

To sum up, we can say that majoritarian systems show a certain degree of resilience, despite growing criticisms of some consequences they are deemed to cause. However, as we shall see in the second part of the volume, not all debates and accusations have followed logical arguments, and therefore deserve further discussion. It is now time to turn to the second great family of electoral systems, those of proportional representation.

4 Proportional Systems

4.1 Introduction Most contemporary advanced democracies today adopt a proportional electoral system (PR). Indeed, the variety of PR systems is very large. Recalling briefly the criteria of analysis introduced in Chapter 2, we can say that there can be very different combinations of formulae, type of vote and district magnitude, as well as the possible presence of electoral thresholds, or multiple tiers, and so on. When compared to majoritarian systems, PR systems display a greater level of complexity. In this chapter we aim to analyse some of the most utilized forms of PR, following a double path. On the one hand we shall concentrate on the specific mechanics of the different PR formulae, which we have not analysed in Chapter 2, and which can operate simultaneously at different territorial levels, in those systems where multiple tiers are used. On the other hand, by selecting some interesting and paradigmatic national cases, we will analyse some applications of PR systems. However, given the high number of countries that adopt PR, we shall present in some detail only a few national cases. This is a necessary choice, which can also be justified on the basis of the more homogeneous institutional environment in which PR systems operate. In other words, while in the previous chapter we examined five countries belonging to three different continents, ruled by the greatest varieties of governmental systems (presidential, semi-presidential, parliamentary), with very different electoral legislation provisions (primary elections and registration requirements being two cases in point), PR systems are all European, their greatest majority is governed by parliamentary systems, in which PR was introduced at the beginning of the twentieth century and has, since then, operated uninterruptedly. In 60

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these countries, PR is still generally perceived as being in ‘good health’, despite important changes in some of them with regard to one or more components of the system (formula, tier, thresholds, etc.). Moreover, we are not interested in replicating an analysis of ‘the politics of electoral systems’, successfully undertaken by the cited book by Gallagher and Mitchell (2005a), where further details on the single countries can be found.1 The first step to undertake in order to analyse the general characteristics of PR is the analysis of the formulae that affect the transformation of votes into seats. This is all the more important as the formula has widely been considered an important predictor of electoral system effects, among others, by Lijphart (1994a), whose work we shall take as a benchmark in the second part of the book. After this, we will briefly examine the peculiar situation of three countries that have traditionally relied on PR as one of the fundamental elements of their democratic polities: Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands. Another interesting case to be analysed is the Spanish one, which uses the most disproportional PR system. Italy deserves special attention as the country most affected by the politics of electoral reform in the last two decades. Then, some information on the only non-list PR system, the single transferable vote, in its application in the Irish case, is due (given also its high regard as a possible model for reform in several majoritarian countries). In order to further substantiate our choices in the selection of cases, afterwards we shall briefly concentrate on the systems currently used by the countries included in our sample for the elections of the European Parliament (EP) of Strasbourg. By means of conclusion, we will point to some of the main results of the analysis, as a step towards the final chapter of Part I, dedicated to the increasingly popular mixed-member systems.

4.2 Proportional electoral formulae Proportional formulae are traditionally divided into two main groups. The basic distinction is between systems determining seat allocation by subtraction (‘largest remainder’), and those operating by division (‘highest average’). The latter utilize pre-specified divisors. By contrast, the largest remainders method uses a quota system. The formulae are named after the personality (usually a mathematician) who first proposed their use in the second half of the nineteenth century. Let us start with the systems that use a divisor, which are by far the most applied. The three best-known systems are the d’Hondt system (the

62 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters Table 4.1 Hypothetical seat distribution according to the highest average formulae (using divisors) with information on the countries currently using them* Divisor

Blue (57,000)

D’Hondt

Belgium, Finland, Greece, Japan, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland 57,000 (A) 26,000 (C) 25,950 (D) 12,000 (I) 6,010 28,500 (B) 13,000 (G) 12,975 (H) 6,000 19,000 (E) 8,667 (L) 8,650 14,250 (F) 6,500 11,400 (J) 9,500 (K) 8,143 6 3 2 1 0

/1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Total seats

White (26,000)

Red (25,950)

Greens (12,000)

Yellow (6,010)

Modified Sainte- Laguë /1, 4 3 5 7 9 11 Total seats

Sweden, Norway

Sainte-Laguë /1 3 5 7 9 11 Total seats

New Zealand 57,000 (A) 26,000 (B) 25,950 (C) 12,000 (E) 6,010 (K) 19,000 (D) 8,667 (G) 8,650 (H) 4,000 2,000 11,400 (F) 5,200 (L) 5,190 8,143 (I) 3,714 6,333 (J) 5,182 5 3 2 1 1

40,714 (A) 18,571 (C) 18,536 (D) 19,000 (D) 8,667 (F) 8,650 (G) 11,400 (F) 5,200 (K) 5,190 (L) 8,143 (I) 3,714 3,707 6,333 (J) 5,182 5 3 3

Pink (3,050)

3,050

0

8571 H 4,000

4,293

2,179

1

0

0 3,050

0

* In multi-tier systems the formula is the one operating as the most decisive for the overall outcome (see also Table 8.2); in mixed-member systems, the formula refers to the PR component (see also Chapter 5). Source: adapted from Blais and Massicotte (2002: 49–50).

most disproportional) and the two Sainte-Laguë systems (known as the Webster method in the US). Their functioning is explained as follows (see Tables 4.1 and 4.2). According to the d’Hondt system (known in the US as the Jefferson method), the divisor sequence begins with the number 1 and divides each party vote share by this number. The first seat is therefore allocated to the party with the highest number of votes (i.e. the largest party). After the allocation of this first seat, the next divisor for that party (currently with one seat) is 2, which is divided into the original vote share for only

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Table 4.2 Hypothetical seat distribution according to the largest remainder (using quotas) with information on the countries currently using them Votes

Blue (57,000)

Hare 130.010/12 = 10.834 Q = (V/S)

Austria, Denmark, Germany, Italy

Total seats

White (26,000)

Red (25,950)

Greens (12,000)

Yellow (6,010)

Pink (3,050)

/10,834 = /10,834 = /10,834 = /10,834 = /10,834 = /10,834 = 5,260 2,400* 2,395 1,110 550* 280 5 3 2 1 1 0

Droop Ireland 130.010/13 = 10.001 Q = (V/S + 1) + 1 /10,001 = /10,001 = /10,001 = /10,001 = /10,001 = /10,001 = 5,699* 2,660* 2,595 1,200 601 305 Total seats 6 3 2 1 0 0 Imperiali None, Italy until 1992 130.010/14 = 9286 Q = (V/S + 2) + 1 /9,287 = /9,287 = /9,287 = /9,287 = /9,287 = /9,287 = 6,138 2,800* 2,794 1,292 647 328 Total seats 6 3 2 1 0 0 * Remainders to which residual seats are assigned.

that party. The next seat is given to the party that has the greatest number of votes, after the largest party’s original vote share has been divided by 2. If the largest party still finds itself with the highest score, it will be given an additional seat and its original vote share will be divided by the number 3 for its next score to be compared to the others. However, if another party beats the reduced score for the largest party, then the second party is awarded the second seat and that party’s original vote share is divided by 2 for its next score. The process continues until all the seats have been allocated, the divisor increasing sequentially by whole numbers. The Sainte-Laguë formula works in the same way, except that the divisors are odd numbers instead of sequential whole numbers. This process helps smaller parties, as the vote share for the largest party diminishes more quickly (being divided by 3, 5, 7 . . . instead of 2, 3, 4 . . .), therefore giving more seats to smaller parties. However, in order to avoid excessive fragmentation, a modified Sainte-Laguë is now in use in many Scandinavian countries, where the first divisor used is not 1, but 1.4, which diminishes the vote share for the smaller parties.

64 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

Largest remainder methods that use quotas divide the total number of votes by the total number of seats, which produces the quota of votes that a party must have before it is awarded a seat (or seats if a party is large enough to meet many quotas). The seats that are not allocated by the quota method (because the amount of the remaining vote share for each party falls below the amount of the quota) are awarded to the parties with the largest remainders. As Table 4.2 shows, there are three main variants of largest remainder systems: the Hare system (where the quota, Q, is calculated simply by dividing the number of votes by the number of seats to be assigned, known in the US as the Hamilton system), the Droop system (which is also equivalent to the Hagenbach-Bischoff system) and the Imperiali system which adds 1 and 2 to the number of seats for the calculation of the quota, which is then obtained by the further addition of 1 to the result of the division. Proportional formulae are therefore associated with different degrees of proportionality. In our examples in Tables 4.1 and 4.2 the differences are comparatively minor, in the order of one seat. But it should not be forgotten that this example is a hypothetical assignation of seats referred to a single district. We should always remember that the overall definition of the effects of the electoral formula must consider the entire national territory, in which the single deviations from (pure) proportionality mount up, thereby contributing to the overall effect of the electoral system.

4.3 PR no longer untouchable? Challenges and changes in Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands In his seminal analysis of the deeply divided European societies, Arend Lijphart described the proportional electoral system as a fundamental component of what he first defined as the model of ‘consociational democracy’ (1968).2 Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland are the four countries where consociational pacts based, among other factors, on proportionality (in the voting system as well as in public sector employment), had succeeded in bringing about stable governments founded on power sharing mechanisms.3 Leaving Switzerland aside (in many respects an outlier in Europe, with its directorial form of government and the very frequent use of referendums), all the other three countries have either experienced some electoral reform (Austria in 1992, Belgium in 2003), or are in the process of considering it (the Netherlands since 2005: see Van der Kolk and Thomassen, 2006). This does not mean that the countries are shifting from PR to another electoral system.

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Rather, it signals that PR might be losing its once famous ‘sanctity’ (Andeweg, 2005), and seems no longer an untouchable principle. Indeed, PR electoral systems in the three countries show many differences in all their main components, from formula (d’Hondt is used in Belgium and the Netherlands, Hare in the most important tier in Austria), to district magnitude (the Netherlands being the only European country to assign seats in a single nationwide district), to threshold, only recently introduced in Belgium. However, the three countries have all experienced, or are currently experiencing, some form of legitimacy crisis (and anti-party sentiments), which have also been tackled by electoral reforms (or proposals). First came Austria, where the reform was ‘an attempt to remove the issue of declining democratic accountability from the public debate’ (Muller, 2005: 400). In this country, after a failed attempt to introduce a mixed-member system with 100 single-member districts, the reform strengthened the mechanism of accountability by increasing the number of electoral districts (therefore making MPs more visible and accountable in the eyes of the voters) and by strengthening the preference vote. The reform was conceived by the grand coalition of the two main parties (SPÖ and ÖVP) in partisan terms, although the general mechanics of the system has not substantially changed (ibid.). And, most of all, the reform did not prevent the rise of the challenge of an outsider like the FPÖ leader Jorg Haider in 1999. Belgian electoral reform is part of a very different story. In this country, consociationalism has been threatened by the increasing importance of the territorial cleavage. Since the early 1960s, successive decentralization reforms coped with this phenomenon, and culminated in the 1993 federal constitution. Ten years later, an electoral reform introduced a 5 per cent threshold, and also strengthened the preference vote (De Winter, 2005; Hooghe et al., 2006). Overall, the net effect in the first two elections has been rather limited: if disproportionality has almost doubled and fragmentation (at the highest level in Europe, also as a consequence of the ‘split-up’ of the party system along linguistic lines) has at least not increased, Belgium is still characterized by exhausting post-electoral bargains, as the 10-month-long procedure to form the current government shows. The Netherlands have yet another story to tell. The electoral system is undoubtedly among the simplest of the PR family. The use of a single national district for the allocation of the 150 seats brings about an extreme level of proportionality (see Table 4.3). The current electoral system was approved in 1917 and has remained unchanged ever

66 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters Table 4.3 Almost perfect proportionality: results of the last three elections in the Netherlands 2002 votes %

2003 seats seats %

CDA 27.9 43 28.7 PvdA 15.1 23 15.3 SP 5.9 9 6.0 VVd 15.4 24 16.0 PVV 0.0 Groen 7.0 10 6.7 CU 2.5 4 2.7 D66 5.1 7 4.7 PvDD SGP 1.7 2 1.3 Fortuyn 17.0 26 17.3 Others 2.4 2 1.3 Total 100.0 150 100.0




0.8 0.2 0.1 0.6 −0.3 0.2 −0.4

votes % 28.6 27.3 6.3 17.9

2006 seats seats % 44 42 9 28

5.1 8 2.1 3 4.1 6 0.4 0 −0.4 1.6 2 0.3 5.7 8 −1.1 1.3 0.0 100.0 150




votes %

seats seats %

29.3 0.7 26.5 41 27.3 28.0 0.7 21.2 33 22.0 6.0 −0.3 16.6 25 16.7 18.7 0.8 14.6 22 14.7 0.0 5.9 9 6.0 5.3 0.2 4.6 7 4.7 2.0 −0.1 4.0 6 4.0 4.0 −0.1 2.0 3 2.0 0.0 −0.4 1.8 2 1.3 1.3 −0.3 1.6 2 1.3 5.3 −0.4 0.2 0 0.0 0.0 −1.3 1.0 0 0.0 100.0 100.0 150 100.0




0.8 0.8 0.1 0.0 0.1 0.1 0.0 0.0 −0.5 −0.3 −0.2 −1.0

Glossary: Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA), Labour Party (PvdA), Socialist Party (SP), People’s Party for Freedom & Democracy (VVD), Party for Freedom (PVV), Green Left (Groen Links), Christian Union (CU), Democrats 66 (D66), Animal Party (PvDD), Political Reformed Party (SGP), (List Pim) Fortuyn. Source: official results.

since, despite some proposals for reform. These were especially linked to the process of secularization that has strongly affected Dutch society since the 1960s: ‘as the politics of accommodation and its extremely proportional electoral system were so strongly related to the system of pillarization, it is no wonder both the politics of accommodation and the proportional electoral system became a matter of dispute once pillarization started to crumble’ (Van der Kolk and Thomassen, 2006: 122). Several reform proposals, including the introduction of a German-style mixed-member system, and another mixed system with a single nontransferable vote component, have been discussed in the last two decades (ibid.), and again with more vigour after the 2002 ‘earthquake elections’ with the spectacular rise of the Pim Fortuyn list. The fact that no change has taken place does not diminish the importance of the discussion, which – very much like in Austria and Belgium – has focused on the possible strengthening of the preference vote for fostering voters’ influence vis-à-vis the parties’ declining popular legitimacy as main agents for the selection of MPs (see the Italian case below). These three examples are instructive insofar as they show that no system is immune from the challenges that have affected many advanced

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67

democracies with regard to confidence in political institutions (Dalton, 2004), and more specifically in political parties (Webb et al., 2002). Be they successful or not, many electoral reforms have become a means of responding to such challenges, as we will see also in Chapter 5.

4.4 Proportional only in name? The Spanish electoral system The Spanish electoral system displays some important peculiarities in comparative perspective. It is among the most disproportional PR systems, thanks to the combined use of the d’Hondt formula and, in particular, one of the lowest district magnitudes in Europe. Today the electoral system is generally perceived as having positively influenced the formation of single-party governments, although often dependent on external support by regionalist parties. The system was devised after the death of Francisco Franco in 1975, as a means for consolidating the transition to democracy. The Spanish system is also peculiar because it combines three further elements which make it rather unique in the European context: a closed list system with no preference vote, a 3 per cent legal threshold, and a single tier system, whereby districts coincide with the 52 provinces of the Spanish state (Hopkin, 2005). Among all these factors, however, district magnitude (M) is the most important. Indeed, as Table 4.4 shows, the average M is comparatively very low: the 3 per cent legal threshold is higher than the effective threshold only in the greatest district around the town of Madrid, as well as being coincident with it in the second-largest district of Barcelona. The disproportional dynamics of the system can be further ascertained by looking at the distribution of seats and votes for the main parties (Table 4.5). Ever since 1977, the system has shown the following tendencies: a consistent bonus to the two major parties (first to the UCD as a catch-all party in the founding elections of 1977 and 1979, then to the PSOE on the left and the PP on the right), a penalization of the PCEIzquierda Unida, and, last but not least, a generally fair representation for the regionalist parties, which have played an important role in the Spanish party system by supporting alternatively, sometimes independently of their ideological profile, one of the two main governing parties.4 The seat bonus (see
column in Table 4.5) has sometimes fabricated an absolute majority of seats (in 1986 and 1989 for the PSOE, in 2000 for the PP), while in the other instances officially minority governments have counted on the ‘variable geometry’ support of one or more of the regionalist parties, which have an important role in the Spanish Estado

68 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters Table 4.4 data)

Seats, districts and thresholds in the Spanish system (2004 election

District (M) magnitude

Frequency (number of districts)

1* 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 16 31 35

2 9 9 9 5 5 3 4 1 1 1 1 1 1

(Malaga) (Alicante) (Sevilla) (Valencia) (Barcelona) (Madrid)

Total seats

Effective threshold

2 27 36 45 30 35 24 36 10 11 12 16 31 35 350

– 25.0 19.3 15.9 12.5 11.8 10.4 9.2 8.3 8.1 7.0 5.4 3.0 2.6

* The small enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla elect one MP each in single-member constituencies. Source: www.electionresources.net (website by M. Alvarez Rivera).

Table 4.5 Majoritarian effects of the Spanish electoral system: votes and seats for the main parties (1977–2008) Year PCE-IU votes seats

PSOE


1977 9.4 5.7 −3.7 1979 10.8 5.6 −5.2 1982 4.0 1.1 −2.9 1986 4.5 2.0 −2.5 1989 9.1 4.8 −4.3 1993 9.6 5.1 −4.5 1996 10.6 6.0 −4.6 2000 5.5 2.3 −3.2 2004 5.0 1.4 −3.6 2008 3.8 0.6 −3.2

CIU

votes seats 29.3 30.5 48.4 44.6 39.9 38.7 37.5 34.1 42.6 43.6

33.7 34.6 57.7 52.6 50.0 45.4 40.3 35.7 46.8 48.2


+4.4 +4.1 +9.3 +8.0 +10.1 +6.7 +2.8 +1.6 +4.2 +4.6

UCD/CDS

votes seats 2.8 2.7 3.7 5.1 5.1 4.9 4.6 4.2 3.2 3.0

3.1 2.3 3.4 5.1 5.1 4.9 4.6 4.3 2.8 2.8




votes seats

AP/PP


votes seats




+0.3 34.6 47.4 +12.8 8.3 4.6 −3.7 −0.4 35.0 48.0 +13.0 5.9 2.6 −3.3 −0.3 6.8 3.1 −3.7 25.9 30.0 +4.1 0.0 9.2 5.4 −3.8 26.2 30.0 +3.8 0.0 7.9 3.1 −4.8 26.0 30.5 +4.5 0.0 34.8 40.3 +5.5 0.0 38.9 44.6 +5.7 +0.1 46.6 52.3 +5.7 −0.4 37.7 42.3 +4.6 −0.2 40.1 43.7 +3.6

Source: Own compilation from official data. Bold figures indicate parties in government.

des Autonomias. So, after the early requests by the PSOE for a more proportional system, the two main parties have adapted to the institutional structure that gives them important incentives to cultivate a broad ideological appeal in order to run alone for the government of the country, in

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the context of a pattern of competition that is in many respects typical of a majoritarian democracy, especially if one considers the powers of the president of the government and the rationalization of the parliamentary system. By giving fair representation to the regionalist parties, the system has enjoyed wide appreciation, and it is only timidly contested by the shrinking left of IU, constantly penalized because of its lack of territorial concentration. The latter, in such a system, becomes, very much like in SMP, an essential factor in order to win a seat in the majority of low M districts (see again Table 4.4). When compared to the Netherlands, Spanish PR shows how different results can be caused by a different combination of the components of the system (M, tier, formula, etc.). In particular, in Spain this is related to the low values of M, which we shall analyse in further detail in the second part of the book, in order to see if, and to what extent, this effect can be extended to other countries.

4.5 Italy: back and forth from PR, and the majority bonus Nowhere have electoral reforms been more important in the last 20 years than in Italy, shaping the never-ending institutional transition that started in 1991 with a referendum on the limitation of the preference vote. Quite differently from what we have just seen in other countries, the preference vote in Italy had been one of the main symbols of ‘partytocracy’ and of the control of the ‘exchange vote’ in many areas of the country, especially in the south (Pasquino, 1993). Seventeen years later, in 2008, Italy has voted for the second time with a law approved towards the end of the previous legislature, in 2005, which adopted a PR electoral system with a ‘majority bonus’, which abolished the previous 1993 reform based on a mixed-member system with three-quarters of the seats assigned with SMP and the remaining quarter with PR. The Italian case deserves a detailed analysis not only because of the frequency of the reforms, but also because it is the only country which has ‘travelled back and forth from PR’, although without ever completely abandoning the principle of proportionality. With few limited exceptions, Italy has adopted PR at all territorial levels of government since 19195 (Baldini and Pappalardo, 2004). The so-called ‘swindle law’ approved by the Alcide de Gasperi government in 1953 was aimed at consolidating the centrist coalition around the predominant Christian Democratic Party (Democrazia Cristiana, DC), against the emergence of extremist threats at both the left and right end of the political spectrum. The law was to give a majority bonus of 65 per cent of the

70 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

votes in the Chamber of Deputies to the coalition which gained at least 50 per cent of the votes. The DC and its allies fell short of this threshold by just 0.4 per cent of the votes. The text was immediately repealed, after the 1953 elections, and proportionality with the Imperiali quota system and a rather large M (on average higher than 20, with peaks of 50 in districts around the two main cities of Rome and Milan, granting representation to very small parties) went on substantially unchanged for the following 35 years.6 The peculiarity of Italian PR is that the electoral system came to be perceived as one of the causes of its endemic instability: the country had more than 40 governments in the 1945–89 period. The electoral system, though far from being the only factor to blame, was ‘assumed to be instrumental in creating and maintaining the conditions for fragmentation, factionalism, incapacity, instability, and irresponsibility that afflicted the Italian polity’ (Katz, 2001: 96). If the 1991 referendum on single preference was to be, in the intentions of the reformers, a first step in the direction of a majoritarian reform, the subsequent ‘Clean Hands’ judicial investigations revealed widespread corruption and also delegitimized the majority of the political class. Many MPs of the eleventh legislature (1992–4) underwent judicial investigations. After a new referendum in April 1993, a new mixed electoral system was approved, which we shall come back to in due course. Means and aims were far from shared between the discredited political class and the referendum movement, which perceived the electoral reform as a further step in the direction of a more majoritarian model of democracy. The new pattern of competition in the three elections that took place with this system in the period 1994–2001 was a rather bizarre form of ‘fragmented bipolarism’ (D’Alimonte, 2005), whereby two main coalitions were competing for government, but with a high number of parties inside them. As we will see in more detail in the next chapter, the failure of two further referendums, in 1999 and 2000, showed how instrumental was the action of important leaders of both the two main coalitions in opposing the advent of a more consistent and unambiguous system (Baldini, 2008). But it is especially the latest reform which is revealing about the partisan attitude of Italian politicians with regard to electoral systems. The 2005 Calderoli law extended to the national level, although with substantial differences, the principle of PR with a ‘majority bonus’ previously introduced at all the lower territorial levels of government (i.e. for the election of the regional, provincial and municipal councils). The centre-right decided to reform the electoral system mainly after the 2005

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defeat in the regional elections and with increasingly negative opinion polls for the forthcoming general election of 2006. Although there had been some proposals for a return to PR since the birth of the Berlusconi government in 2001, the strategy was clearly aimed – very much like Mitterrand’s 1985 reform – at making the victory of the opposite camp more difficult. Moreover, the system used from 1994 to 2001 penalized the centre-right, which was consistently stronger in the PR component than in the SMP component. Under the new law, deputies are elected in 26 constituencies from closed party lists, two or more of which can be linked together in order to claim the majority bonus. The distribution of seats takes place according to the total votes obtained at the national level by coalitions and lists that have reached particular thresholds. Lists casting the ballot alone (i.e. not in coalition) must reach at least 4 per cent in order to win seats. Coalitions must secure at least 10 per cent and contain at least one list that has gained over 2 per cent. Seats are apportioned between the lists and the coalitions (according to the total number of votes received by their different lists). If the coalition (or list) with the most votes has not received, by means of a proportional distribution, at least 340 seats in the Chamber (i.e. 55 per cent of the 630 seats), then it is awarded a majority bonus that brings it up to that figure.7 The electoral system for the Senate works similarly, albeit with two main differences and some exceptions. Because of (indeed rather ambiguous) constitutional constraints, the allocation of seats, and therefore also that of the eventual bonus for the most-voted list, is conducted on a region-by-region basis. Moreover, the thresholds are higher: to win seats, independent lists must secure 8 per cent, coalitions 20 per cent, and lists that have banded together 3 per cent.8 What is so peculiar then, about the Italian case? In Italy PR has been held co-responsible for many of the ills that the political system has suffered for decades. At the same time, once the season of reforms started, it appeared that the 1993 electoral system contained significant incentives for the survival of fragmentation, albeit within a different pattern of competition, as well as for the conservation of the multiple veto powers of small parties. It is no wonder that support for the prospect of resurrecting PR was widespread, and not only among the small parties. The outcome of the 2006 election (with the Prodi government enjoying a bare 2-seat majority in the Senate) was only partly attributable to the electoral system, as the two ‘catch-all coalitions’ finished very close to each other in terms of votes. But it is indisputable that the 2005 law contains many partitocratic elements, which have contributed to the growth of anti-politics sentiments after the very slim Prodi victory.

72 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

This explains why, almost 20 years after the first concrete discussions on electoral reforms began on the curtailing of preference voting, the resurrection of the latter has become a major point in the public debate (and in the platform of some parties as well). Once again, very much as in 1993, electoral reform became in 2007 the object of increasing expectations, often misplaced and with very scant attention to the overall institutional structure as well as to the strategic choices made by the political parties. In other words, after almost 20 years of frustrated expectations of change and ‘normalization’ of the political system, it still seems very complicated to find a compromise between the simplification of the party system, a rationalization of the system of government and efficient stability: what should be the right place of the electoral system in such a process? We will return to this point in Chapter 10.

4.6 Non-list PR: the single transferable vote in Ireland The STV is the only non-list proportional electoral system used in contemporary advanced democracies. In this ordinal system, candidates competing for a seat contest elections also on an intra-party basis, as each of them struggles to obtain the first preferences of the voters. The system has been used in Ireland since 1922 (as well as in Malta, a tiny country not included in our analysis). As already seen in Chapter 3, STV currently ranks high among the supporters of a reform inside SMP systems, especially, but not exclusively, in the UK. Like the alternative vote, STV is a preferential system. Unlike AV, however, STV does not require an absolute majority for the candidates to gain a seat, as it is applied inside multi-member constituencies. In Ireland M is comparatively the lowest of all the PR systems, ranging from 3 to 5, with an average slightly less than 4 (Gallagher, 2005a: 519). However, the consequence of low M is not a high level of disproportionality9 as one might expect having just seen what happens in Spain. Michael Gallagher, using his own index, estimates an average level of disproportionality of 3.9 in the first 80 years of application of the system (2005a: 521), as against an average of 7.6 for Spain in the 1977–2004 period (Hopkin, 2005: 382). The reason for this is again explained by Gallagher (2005a: 522): Under PR-STV, the tendency of the largest party to win a seat bonus creates its own countervailing force. The transferability of votes means that it is possible, and may be strategically sensible, for supporters of smaller parties to use their votes in such a way as to help each other and thereby prevent the larger ones reaping a sizeable bonus . . . At all elections since 1932 the largest party, Fianna Fáil, has been perceived

Proportional Systems

73

to have had some kind of chance of winning an overall majority of seats, and this gives supporters of other parties an incentive to deploy their lower preference votes against it, regardless of their respective policy positions. Indeed, even supporters of parties that might see Fianna Fáil as a potential coalition partner have an incentive to do this, in order to prevent Fianna Fáil securing an overall majority and thereby rendering their own party redundant in the government formation process . . . This can be achieved under PR-STV by ranking candidates of all other parties above the Fianna Fáil candidates on the ballot paper, and there is no doubt that many supporters of other parties have done precisely this at many elections. Let us see in more detail how the system makes this possible. Voters can express one or more preferences for the candidates (whose party symbol, names, and recently also a photo, are reproduced in the ballot paper). Seat distribution takes place as shown in Table 4.6. First a quota is established, by using the Droop system (Q = [(V/s + 1) + 1]). The first count gives the first seat available to Evans. The following operation consists in the transfer of his surplus votes to the remaining candidates.10 The redistribution of surplus votes does not allow any candidate to reach the quota.11 The third count consists of the further exclusion of the least voted candidate – and the further redistribution – and so on, until all seats have been assigned. As we have already mentioned, STV was among the best preferred choices in many countries until the rise of mixed-member systems (see Chapter 5). It is generally perceived as a good alternative to SMP as it saves the personal component of the vote typical of that system (Farrell, 2001). This same personalization, however, can also be a negative point, as STV can foster intra-party rivalries based on family or patron–client ties. Be that as it may, the system scores highly also in the US; its possible reform has been twice defeated in two Irish referendums, in 1959 and 1968, and recent data show persistent appreciation by the electorate (Gallagher, 2005a: 529).

4.7 EP elections and the varieties of proportionality Since 1979, the European Parliament of Strasbourg (EP) has been directly elected by the citizens of the member countries. As of 1999, after the reform of the British electoral system, all countries use some variety of PR. This section presents a general description of the systems used by the countries included in our study, with two main aims. The first is to justify our decision – contrary to Lijphart – to leave this kind of election

74 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters Table 4.6 How STV works Candidate and party

Evans B Augustine W Harley W Stewart G Wilcocks W Lennon G Cohen B Vine B Pearson B Non-transferable Total

1◦ count

2◦ count transfer of Evans’ surplus

144 95 91 66 60 58 55 48 30

−36 =108 95 +1 = 92 +2 = 68 60 58 +9 = 64 +20 = 68 +4 = 34

647

647

3◦ count Pearson excluded

4◦ count Lennon excluded

5◦ count Wilcocks excluded

+1 = 96 +1 = 93 +1 = 69 60 58 +5 = 69 +23 = 91 −34– +3 647

96 93 +46 = 115 60 −58 – +2 = 71 +6 = 97 – +4 = 7 647

+32 = 128 +15 = 108

[Quota [(647/5 + 1) + 1 = 108]. Bold figures indicate elected candidates. Source: adapted from Electoral Reform Society website: scotland.org.uk/downloads/what%20is%20stv.pdf.

−60 – +1 = 72 +7 = 104 +5 = 12 647

http://www.electoral-reform-

system out of our data set. The second is the further exemplification of the complexities of PR systems, which can bring about very different consequences depending on the peculiar mix of the single ‘ingredients’ on which they are based, i.e. the formula, district magnitude, thresholds, and so on. Ever since the late 1960s, when the debates on the direct election of the EP gained momentum, there have been many proposals for the predisposition of a uniform electoral procedure throughout the European Economic Community/European Union (Farrell and Scully, 2005). However, as we can see from Table 4.7, despite the common PR framework, today there are still many differences among important components. Ever since 1979, EP elections have displayed a different character from national ones, very well captured by the definition of ‘second order’ elections (Reif and Schmitt, 1980). When compared to general elections, EP elections show: 1. a generally lower participation (becoming even lower than average, from 62.3 per cent in 1999 to 49.4 per cent, with the 2004 enlargement and the accession of ten new member countries); 2. negative results for the national government parties; 3. better performances for minor parties, the rise of Eurosceptic formations and generally bad scores for main parties (see Marsh, 2000).

Table 4.7

EP electoral systems in the 14 European countries Electoral system

Austria Belgium Denmark Finland France Germany Great Britain Greece Ireland Italy Netherlands Portugal Spain Sweden

List PR List PR List PR List PR List PR List PR List PR ** List PR PR- VST List PR List PR List PR List PR List PR

Ballot structure

Ordered Ordered Open Open Closed Closed Closed Closed STV Open Open Closed Closed Ordered

Preference voting

Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No Yes Yes Yes No No Yes

District number

Single 4 Single Single Single Single/16 12 Single 4 5 Single Single Single Single

Formula

d’Hondt d’Hondt d’Hondt d’Hondt d’Hondt Hare-Niemayer d’Hondt Hagenbach-Bischoff d’Hondt d’Hondt d’Hondt d’Hondt d’Hondt Mod. St.-Laguë

Electoral threshold*

4% NO NO NO 5% 5% NO 3% NO NO NO NO NO 4%

No. of seats

18 24 14 14 78 99 75 24 13 78 27 24 54 19

Overall rank disproportionality (from high to low) 1999

2004

5 10 13 6 9 8 13 7 12 2 1 11 3 4

10 9 8 11 14 7 12 4 13 1 6 3 2 5

*All thresholds are calculated at national level; rank of proportionality for 1999 elections: Baimbridge and Darcy (2001: 258); 2004: Farrell and Scully (2005: 978); ** Data do not include the 3 Northern Irish seats assigned with STV. Sources: Baimbridge and Darcy (2001); Mather (2005); Farrell and Scully (2005).

75

76 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

Electors do not feel mobilized in this kind of election, although recently the powers of the EP have grown. EP elections cannot be compared to national elections insofar as they constantly display (even after the 2004 enlargement: see Schmitt, 2005) some structural differences. Parties and voters behave very differently when faced with EU elections: campaigns are conducted at national level (and on national issues), and there is much less at stake as elections do not directly bring about a new government, even to the extent that this word can actually be applied to the EU. So voters either stay at home or vote with their hearts much more than with their heads. Therefore, it seems to us that the inclusion of these elections (and therefore the increased N) in our data set would have brought more ‘noise’ than benefit. Let us now consider the variety of systems currently applied in the 14 countries included in out data set, which also shows how many difficulties the prospect of the standardization of the different procedures still faces today (Lodge, 2005). In the last column of Table 4.7, systems are rank-ordered from the most to the least disproportional, following calculations by Baimbridge and Darcy on the 1999 elections (2001) and of Farrell and Scully following the 2004 elections (2005). If we take the 1999 data, based on an average of several disproportional measures, we find that in the Netherlands the high proportionality is linked to the use of a single national district, as well as to the absence of a threshold. At the opposite end of the spectrum, one finds Great Britain and Denmark. In between, the other countries display some differences that might seem, at first sight, rather unexpected. So, sticking to the Netherlands–Spain comparison, one might expect the latter, given the common use of a single national district and the same formula, but double the seats to assign, to be more proportional, but this is not the case. Or, to take another example, the comparison between Denmark and Finland: respectively among the least proportional countries and close to the middle in the overall score, despite the same formula, M, and no thresholds. If we take the 1999 data, based on an average of several disproportional measures, we find the highest disproportionality in the Netherlands. At the opposite end of the spectrum, one finds Great Britain and Denmark. In between, the other countries display some differences that might seem, at first sight, rather unexpected. So, sticking to the Netherlands– Spain comparison, one might expect the latter, given the common use of a single national district and the same formula, but double the seats to assign, to be more proportional, but this is the case only in 1999, and not in 2004. Or, to take another example again from 1999, the

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77

comparison between Denmark and Finland: respectively among the least disproportional countries and close to the middle in the overall score, despite the same formula, M, and no thresholds. From these two examples it is clear that more detailed analyses should be undertaken in order to explain the peculiar effects displayed by the electoral system with regard to EP elections. At the same time, it is also evident that EP elections are structurally different from national general elections, and should be treated as such. Further research is in order for a better understanding of the specific consequences of the electoral systems in this very peculiar kind of electoral competition.12

4.8 Conclusion In this chapter we have examined some of the many varieties of PR systems spread throughout contemporary advanced democracies (see Table 4.8 for an overall account of the main dimensions). Generally, PR systems are adopted in those countries where there are historically more salient political cleavages, and where the latter have given birth to parties that were able to obtain a significant lowering of the thresholds that regulated the access to power in the early decades of the twentieth century (Boix, 2007). As we have documented in Chapter 2, the general tendency, over a long time span, has been the move from more disproportional to more proportional systems. In principle, PR systems have been introduced in order to give a fairer representation to all (or at least most of) the political parties present in each society. The only country where PR has recently been partly abandoned is Italy, but in this case a PR system with a majority bonus has since been reintroduced. When compared to many majoritarian systems, PR is generally perceived as being in ‘good health’. This does not mean, however, that PR is immune from pressures for change, however limited they might be in many instances (see also Table 8.2 for a general overview of changes in the post-war period). By analysing some national cases we have seen how different are the effects of PR, for instance when the Netherlands and Spain are compared. On the one hand, any tiny party with 1 per cent (or less) of the votes will get a seat in parliament, on the other a party with up to 10 per cent, like the ‘united left’ of Izquierda Unida, is systematically underrepresented. Although these are two extreme examples, they show how important it is, in the adoption of PR systems, to share aims and means, in order to get a coherent system with foreseeable consequences.

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Table 4.8

PR systems in the main West European countries (2008)

Country

Type of vote

Districts

List/nonlist

List structure and number of preferences

Austria

List PR

Belgium Denmark Finland Greece

List PR List PR List PR List PR

Ireland Italy Norway Netherlands Portugal Spain Sweden Switzerland

PR- STV List PR List PR List PR List PR List PR List PR List PR

Formula and thresholds

Average M

No. of tiers

Quota/divisor (in decreasing order of importance if both used)

Threshold, with level of application *

Open, 1

20.3

2

Hare, d’Hondt

7.5 7.9 14.3 5.1

2 2 1 2

Hare, d’Hondt Hare, modified St.-Laguë d’Hondt Droop, Hare on regional basis

4%, national / 1 full quota at the Land level 5%, national 2%, at regional level/ full quota – 3%, national

Open, 1 Open, 1 Open, 1 Open, from 1 to 5 (for 288 seats), closed for the remaining 12 VST Closed Closed Closed Closed Closed Open,1 Open with panachage

4.0 23.7 8.3 150 10.5 7.0 10.7 3.3

1 1 2 1 1 1 2 2

Droop Hare Modified St.-Laguë d’Hondt d’Hondt d’Hondt Modified St.-Laguë d’Hondt

– 4% for parties outside coalitions 4%, national 0.67%, national – 3%, district (provinces) 4% national –

* In multi-tier systems, the latter are ordered starting in decreasing geographical order (often coincident with the national level) to the tiniest. In all multi-tier systems the majority of seats are assigned at the national level. See also Lijphart (1994a) for some details on the thresholds applied at each level.

Proportional Systems

79

As we have already pointed out, we do not aim to judge the performance of PR, or any other system, by selecting some more or less arbitrary criteria. Let us point to some of the main evidence which comes from the general overview of the formulae and of some national experiences. As for the formulae, the examples given in Tables 4.1 and 4.2 show their main basic mechanics, and point also to the need to contextualize their dynamics by considering all the other components of the electoral systems. With regard to the national cases, we have sketched some significant examples, which can aid the understanding of the tests conducted in Chapters 6–9. In particular, in Chapter 8 we shall come back to analyse the following point in more detail: all countries adopting PR systems, except for Greece and Spain, have coalition governments. Is this more due to the electoral system or to the fact that the two main parties score around 40 per cent of the votes? Put another way, is it the electoral system which shapes the party system or the other way around, as recently suggested by Colomer (2005)? We think that the question should not be put in this form. No definitive answer can be given to such a question, but in the second part of the book we shall face it more directly, conducting all the most important tests on each electoral system. Generally speaking, and without entering into detail, PR systems are associated with a greater variety of effects than majoritarian systems with respect to two important analytical dimensions: disproportionality, and the number of relevant parties. If the Netherlands and Spain are two important examples of the first dimension, Belgium and Italy versus Greece might be taken as extreme cases of the second. Clearly, each of the other national cases not analysed in this chapter shows some peculiarities when origins, functioning and consequences of PR are considered. More generally, in every country the main effects of the electoral systems are associated with the specific adoption of their relevant components: formulae, but also district magnitude, tiers and ballot structure (see Table 4.8).13 The variety is indeed very big and one can go so far as to say that no single electoral system is identical to any other when all these components are considered. Specific variations within one or more of these components can have important consequences in terms of the capacity of a party to gain seats, which can be indispensable for its survival, for its inclusion inside a particular coalition, or even for its capacity to form a single-party government. These are all crucial points. And they are all indispensable in order to understand the main contents and characteristics of some recent reforms that have enlarged the new family of mixed electoral systems. It is to this topic that we now turn.

5 Mixed-member Systems

5.1 Introduction Over the last two decades, several reforms have introduced electoral systems that cannot be classified along the proportional/majoritarian divide. Indeed, two of the leading experts on the subject have gone so far as to say that the drive towards ‘mixed’ systems ‘holds out the promise of being the electoral reform of the 21st century’ (Shugart and Wattenberg, 2001a: xxi). According to the classification criteria used by Golder (2005: 114), as many as 15.3 per cent of the world’s democratic legislative elections, in the 1990s, took place with some kind of mixed system (as compared to 2–4 per cent in the three previous decades). Indeed, if one looks at the electoral reforms adopted since the fall of the Berlin Wall, most of them are associated with systems that mix components of the majoritarian and proportional families. In this chapter we will not present a thorough analysis of the forms that such mixes can take (see Shugart and Wattenberg, 2001a; Chiaramonte 2005). Rather, we will first point to a general discussion about the criteria of classification and analysis of such systems. Then we will move on to the German system, which has inspired many of the most recent reforms. Within our group of countries, this was especially the case with New Zealand, which experienced one of the most significant changes, moving from a prototype of Westminster democracy to a completely new pattern of electoral (and political) competition. The two other important mixed-member (MM) systems that we will analyse in some depth are the system currently applied in Japan (after the 1994 reform), and the Italian system applied in the three elections between 1994 and 2001. By pointing to the most important elements of each system, we will then be able to justify and substantiate the treatment 80

Mixed-member Systems 81

of these systems conducted in the tests of the second part of the book. Given the high reputation that such systems have gained in recent years, it is crucial to first understand their different dynamics, then to look at some of the main consequences that they have brought about in the four countries mentioned. Although we shall again abstain from normative assessments, the high expectations that seem to surround these new systems in recent years deserve close inspection.

5.2 Classification and analysis of a growing ‘family’ After the rise of many new electoral systems in the former East European bloc as well as in Latin America (Bolivia, Columbia, Mexico, Venezuela), it became apparent that the two great and already heterogeneous classes of majoritarian/PR systems were no longer able to capture the essence of this new tendency. As a result of these changes, scholars of electoral systems started to concentrate on attempts at classification, which had hitherto mainly been dedicated to Germany, the only important country using a combination of PR and plurality since the late 1950s. Indeed, even for the German case there has never been a general consensus on how to classify the system. This is also due to the fact that, despite combining two formulae (plurality and PR) it is the latter which is crucial in terms of the overall seat distribution. An admittedly incomplete catalogue of classifications of the German system includes the following: ‘personalized PR’, ‘additional member system’, ‘compensatory seat system’, ‘two-tier electoral system’ and ‘correctional’ (Chiaramonte, 2005: 39). It is especially since the early 1990s that the birth of systems that combine majoritarian and PR components has fuelled this rather new sector of study (Blais and Massicotte, 2002; Massicotte and Blais, 1999). However, it is Shugart and Wattenberg’s (2001a) book which has set the scene for the comparative study of what they call ‘mixed-member systems’. Although we share some of the reservations advanced by Chiaramonte (2005: 34–5) with regard to the Shugart and Wattenberg scheme,1 we start from the same basis. Shugart and Wattenberg propose considering as mixed-member all those systems that include a nominal tier, which usually consists of single-seat districts and a tier made up of lists, where seats are normally allocated proportionally (Shugart and Wattenberg, 2001b: 10–11). Clearly, the criteria chosen as to how to mix these two components can be highly disparate. Inevitably, the most thorough classification of mixed systems is not the most parsimonious (Chiaramonte, 2005: 59). Chiaramonte, however, considers the universe of what he

82 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters Table 5.1 Linkage between tiers: mixed-member systems Seat linkage?

No (parallel) Yes (compensatory)

Shugart and Wattenberg’s typology of

Vote linkage? No MMM Japan

Yes MMM with partial compensation Italy

MMP Germany New Zealand

Source: adapted from Shugart and Wattenberg (2001b: 15).

calls mixed electoral systems, no matter what the level of democracy. His analysis is therefore different and not applicable to our study, even if we share some of his criticisms of a too enthusiastic approach to this new ‘family’ of electoral systems which we shall come back to. Table 5.1 reproduces the two main dimensions along which a simple typology of these systems can be formulated. The two factors considered are respectively seat and vote linkage. By selecting the four real-world cases analysed in this volume, we find exemplifications of the three relevant cells analysed also by the original study which this table comes from. Following this typology, we can identify two types of mixed-member electoral systems. According to which component prevails, Shugart and Wattenberg call them respectively mixed-member-proportional systems (MMP) and mixed-member-majoritarian (MMM) systems. The presence of a compensation mechanism can be decisive in determining the overall effects of the system in one direction rather than the other. So an MMP system leads to a seat distribution which can be very close or even identical to that of a ‘normal’ PR system, as indeed is the case both with Germany and New Zealand. On the other hand, a total or partial compensation, as in the Italian case, can push the system towards more majoritarian outcomes.2 This typology has the merit of capturing some of the most important differences between the mixed systems adopted in the countries analysed in this study. However, as often happens with electoral systems, the devil is in the details. Mixed systems are no exception. Indeed, one of the main criticisms moved against these systems is exactly that, by combining different formulae and making use of complex devices, they tend to be very

Mixed-member Systems 83

complicated. In other words, if the two families analysed in the previous two chapters already showed a quite high level of differences, this applies also to the attempt that many reformers have recently undertaken in mixing ingredients coming from what were once perceived as being two separate principles of plurality and PR (also underlying two different conceptions of democracy: recall Chapter 2). To what extent has this attempt succeeded? Again, we shall abstain from strong normative judgements, as our main task will be to test the main effects of these systems when compared to majoritarian and PR systems. But we will come back to this point after having analysed them in some detail, in order to understand the basis on which Shugart and Wattenberg claim that they seem to be able to carry the ‘best of both worlds’ (2001c).

5.3 The German MMP system: two formulae and proportional effects As we have already mentioned, the classification of the German system has for a long time been very controversial. The first free election after the fall of the Nazi regime took place in West Germany in 1949. However, the system was not the one that is currently applied, as it underwent two important changes in the 1950s, which brought about, among other things, the extension of the 5 per cent threshold from the regional to the national level and the double vote. In its genesis, the system was characterized by a sort of compromise. The Allies opposed the adoption of a pure PR system, which brought back bad memories of the Weimar experience (1919–33). But neither could a pure majoritarian system meet the objective of being fair to all the different cultural expressions present in German society at that time. In other words, as Scarrow explains (2001), the need to mediate between the majoritarian political culture expressed by the US and Britain and the priority of appeasing the country resulted in the search for a compromise. The result was the 1949 system, and the subsequent fine-tuning of 1953 and 1956 (see also Klingemann and Wessels 2001; Kreuzer, 2004). At that time, probably nobody could have imagined that the system was to become, as it has in the last two decades, a model for electoral system design or change in many areas of the world. From being a unique case, for many years since its first adoption, the German system has become a source of inspiration for such different contexts as Eastern Europe3 (Birch, 2007), Latin America (Mayorga, 2001) and the devolved assemblies of Scotland and Wales in the United Kingdom (Curtice, 2006).

84 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

Let us see how the system works now. In the last (2005) election the 614 members of the Bundestag were elected according to the two formulae present in the system: a 50 per cent SMP component, whereby the candidate who gets more votes is elected, and the remaining 50 per cent of seats assigned with PR. Indeed, the labels given to the two votes, respectively named Erststimme and Zweitstimme, are somewhat misleading, as the crucial peculiarity of the German system is exactly the prevalence of the ‘second vote’. This compensatory dynamics consists of the topping up of the results of the single-member districts to reach the PR quota of seats they are entitled to. If a party wins more seats than it is entitled to by PR, it can retain these seats, which are defined as ‘surplus seats’ (the so-called Überhangmandaten). In more detail, a party only receives PR seats if it reaches a 5 per cent threshold or wins at least three district seats. If a party gets less than 5 per cent of the PR vote and also wins less than three district seats, it will keep any district seats it wins but is not awarded any additional seats based on its PR vote share. Then, the second votes of the parties exceeding at least one of the two thresholds are counted and the Hare quota method is used4 to calculate the overall number of seats each party is entitled to have. The same procedure is then repeated for the assignation of the seats at the Land level. Finally, ‘the winners of the district races are deducted from the number of seats accruing to each party in each Land and proportionality is established by drawing the appropriate number of candidates from the Land party lists starting at the top of the list’ (Saalfeld, 2005: 214). Since the 1990 unification, there has been a controversy about the surplus (or ‘overhang’) seats, as they have tended to increase disproportionality and to be almost decisive in terms of the government majorities5 (ibid.). Candidates in the (closed) lists can also contest elections in the single-member districts: this fact is also rather controversial, although not as much as it has been in the Italian case (see below and Chapter 4). Table 5.2 demonstrates the overall proportionality of the system. Distortions from proportionality are very limited: the two major parties are slightly more favoured than the other parties exceeding the 5 per cent threshold. However, the ‘seat bonus’ is really small, never reaching 5 points. The thresholds have also been instrumental in preventing the access of extreme right parties such as the Republikaner and the NPD to the Bundestag, although they have gained access to many regional parliaments in the last fifteen years.6 Supporters of the German system argue that the capacity to determine the proportionality of the list system with the personalization

Table 5.2 Year

1949 1953 1957 1961 1965 1969 1972 1976 1980 1983 1987 1990 1994 1998 2002 2005

(Second) votes and seats in German elections (1949–2005)

PDS (Linke in 2005)

Greens

votes

votes

2.4 4.4 5.1 4.0 8.7

seats

2.6 4.5 5.4 0.3 8.8




+0.2 +0.1 +0.3 −3.7 +0.1

1.5 5.6 8.3 5.0 7.3 6.7 8.6 8.1

SPD seats

0.0 5.4 8.5 1.2 7.3 7.0 9.1 8.3

FDP

CDU/CSU




votes

seats




votes

seats




votes

seats




−1.5 −0.2 +0.2 −3.8 – +0.3 +0.5 +0.2

29.2 28.8 31.8 36.2 39.3 42.7 45.8 42.6 42.9 38.2 37.0 33.5 36.4 40.9 38.5 34.2

32.6 31.0 34.0 38.1 40.7 45.2 46.4 43.1 43.9 38.8 37.4 36.1 37.5 44.5 41.5 36.1

+3.4 +2.2 +2.2 +1.9 +1.4 +2.5 +0.6 +0.5 +1.0 +0.6 +0.4 +2.6 +1.1 +3.6 +3.0 +1.9

11.9 9.5 7.7 12.8 9.5 5.8 8.4 7.9 10.6 7.0 9.1 11.0 6.9 6.2 7.4 9.8

12.9 9.9 8.2 13.4 9.9 6.0 8.3 7.9 10.7 6.8 9.3 11.9 7.0 6.4 7.8 9.9

+1.0 +0.4 +0.5 +0.6 +0.4 +0.2 −0.1 – +0.1 −0.2 +0.2 +0.9 +0.1 +0.2 +0.4 +0.1

31.0 45.2 50.2 45.4 47.6 46.1 44.9 48.6 44.5 48.8 43.3 43.8 41.5 35.1 38.5 35.0

34.6 49.9 54.4 48.5 49.4 48.8 45.4 49.0 45.5 49.0 44.9 48.2 43.7 36.6 41.0 36.8

+3.6 +4.7 +4.2 +3.1 +1.8 +2.7 +0.5 +0.4 +1.0 +0.2 +1.6 +4.4 +2.2 +1.5 +2.5 +1.8

Source: adapted from Farrell (2001: 107); we aggregated the data of CDU and CSU, and added the PDS (Linke in 2005); bold figures indicate parties in government.

85

86 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

component of the first vote is one of the main ingredients which explains its general success. In the sixty years since 1949 there have only been five different kinds of government coalitions and eight chancellors, in the context of a centripetal competition, with the Liberals acting as pivot party, alternatively as a coalition partner of the two main parties, the CDU/CSU and the SPD. However, the last (2005) election led to a deadlock, and a grand coalition between these two parties was subsequently set up (as had previously happened only between 1966 and 1969). As far as personalization is concerned, some analyses have shown that the single-district vote is not really related to important accountability links between voters and representatives. According to survey data of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, almost 60 per cent of German voters are not even able to name one candidate (Klingemann and Wessels, 2001: 293). Dual candidacy has become very frequent in recent times, and this practice makes it all the more difficult to distinguish between first and second votes. Other survey data confirm that the ranking of the two formulae is misinterpreted by many voters.7 Another controversial issue is strategic voting. It has been estimated that the percentage of electors splitting their votes has increased from 6.4 per cent in 1957 (the year the double vote was introduced) to 20 per cent in 1998 (ibid.). So, if today around one voter in five supports a different party in the two votes, it also appears that just one third of these votes are actually associated with strategic behaviour, i.e. they support one of the two major parties in the SMP vote, in which only the SPD and CDU/CSU stand chances of winning a seat. A recent, more specific analysis has estimated at 3 per cent and 1 per cent the percentage of electors that voted strategically respectively in the 1998 and 2002 elections (Herrmann and Pappi, 2008). This indeed indicates a low level of strategic voting. Be that as it may, Germany has been a model for some recent reforms. However, among the advanced democracies it is only New Zealand that has adopted a comparable system in the terms used by Shugart and Wattenberg (2001a). As the same authors also concur (2001b), countries using MMP display very proportional dynamics, and we will group them together with those using PR in some of the tests conducted in the second part of the volume.

5.4 When reforms really matter: New Zealand and the farewell to the Westminster model New Zealand was a textbook case of Westminster democracy until the 1980s (Lijphart, 1987). But as we have already mentioned in Chapter 2,

Mixed-member Systems 87

two consecutive elections, in 1978 and 1981, resulted in the electoral victory of the National Party, second to the Labour Party in terms of popular votes. This fact, together with general dissatisfaction about minority representation and other factors (Denemark, 2001; Nagel, 2004), first led to the setting up of a Commission on the Electoral System in 1985,8 then to two referendums, the second of which was binding, on the choice of an MMP system (see the detailed reform time line in Denemark, 2001: 72). The new system, adopted for the first time in 1996, differs very slightly from the current German system. There are three important differences: the percentage of seats assigned with plurality is a bit higher: 57.5 per cent as compared to 50 per cent in Germany; district threshold consists of one seat instead of three; and the formula used is the Sainte-Laguë (New Zealand is the only country to use this system in our group: recall Chapter 4). Until 1996 National and Labour single party majority governments regularly alternated in power, with disproportionality indexes close to the average of the plurality class (for details see Vowles, 2005: 301). Since 1996 (minority) coalitions have become the norm, as disproportionality also dropped considerably. The aim of achieving a better descriptive representation, which was on top of the reformist agenda, was fulfilled. Given that New Zealand is also unique among the countries of our study for its three-year term, the new system has already been in use for four elections, and the fifth one is scheduled for autumn 2008. As in other countries, it is not easy to disentangle the effects of the new electoral system from other factors (rise of anti-politics sentiments, decreasing party membership, etc.) which preceded the reform. So, although supporters of the reform claim that the problem of representation has been solved, arguments against the new system are not absent. In contrast to what we will see in Japan and Italy, or to what is currently happening in the discussions for reform in other Commonwealth countries (Lundberg, 2007a), in New Zealand the path of the reform has been very long, and many alternatives have been carefully inspected. In the late 1980s, the question became a campaign issue. Today there are signs of some disquiet about the new system. However, the extent to which these complaints are due to deeper anti-politics sentiments or excessive expectations still remains to be seen.

5.5 MMM systems: Japan . . . Italy and Japan have often been assimilated in the problems that the respective political systems have suffered throughout the post-war period

88 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

(see, among others, Bouissou and Lazar, 2001). Both countries faced, at the beginning of the 1990s, a period of political crisis, linked to the discovery of corruption and clientelistic practices. Of course there were many differences as far as socio-political and economic conditions were concerned. However, both countries decided, as a means of finding a possible solution to their problems, to change their electoral systems. We are not interested in conducting a thorough analysis of whether the (often misplaced) expectations were met or not. But it is interesting to see that in both countries the outcome of such changes was the adoption of a mixed-member-majoritarian system. In this section we will briefly explain how the new Japanese system works, and in the next the Italian system used between 1994 and 2001. Japan was the only advanced democracy to use the single nontransferable (SNTV) system from 1947 to 1993. The classification of this system was very controversial: was it a proportional (Sartori, 1994), semiproportional (Lijphart, 1994a, 1999), or a variety of majoritarian system (Norris, 2004)? The answer depends very much on the criteria adopted for classification, but we think it is best classified as a peculiar variant of a majoritarian system. It is therefore interesting to recall the essentials of this system. In the last election held with SNTV, in 1993, the 519 seats of the Japanese parliament were elected in 129 multi-member districts, with an average magnitude of four. Like in STV, in each district parties could field more than one candidate. However, the similarities between the two systems stop at this stage, as the votes obtained by each candidate were not transferable to others. Each candidate was contesting the seat on his own, and electors, on the other hand, had a single and categorical vote, not an ordinal one as in STV. This had important consequences for the party system, and especially for the LDP, the dominant party that had been able to govern Japan uninterruptedly since 1955. The party often fielded two candidates in each district, and in this way it was able to gain an absolute majority of seats. The two candidates often belonged to two rival factions. The LDP was a highly factionalized party and corruption practices were widespread, very much like in Italy, as the party was able to build a great deal of its success on clientelistic ties. Theoretically, the strategy of fielding two candidates in each district could have been risky, as the non-transferability of votes could have resulted in the concentration of too many votes for a single candidate, to the detriment of the other. In practice, being the two candidates expressed by rival factions, each of them was able to secure, via patronage links, a substantial package of votes, and therefore grant both of them high chances of being elected. The electoral system was,

Mixed-member Systems 89

very much like in Italy, perceived as being co-responsible for the lack of alternation and for the widespread practices of corruption. The 1994 electoral reform came after the LDP party was, for the first time since 1955, deprived of an absolute majority in parliament, following the 1993 election. According to the new system, 300 seats were assigned with plurality, and the remaining 200 (reduced to 180 before the 2000 election) in 11 multi-member districts, with a rather variable M, from 6 to 30, for a high average of 16.4. PR seats are attributed to all the parties completely independently from the other seats, and using the d’Hondt formula. The two components of the system are separated: hence the definition of ‘parallel’ system. To the disappointment of many who thought electoral reform could contribute to breaking the mould of the system, and also overcome the clientelistic ties and corruption practices associated with the previous electoral system, dual candidacy is permitted: candidates who find a safety net in PR are unambiguously nicknamed ‘zombie’ (Reed and Thies, 2001). What have been the main consequences of electoral system change? Very differently from Italy, there has been continuity in terms of the overall party system structure (although several parties appeared and disappeared in a very short time-span: see Thies, 2002). Actually the party system was already changing at the time of reform, and some authors think that this factor was decisive for such a reform to take place (Reed, 2005). However, the LPD was able to handle the transition to the new system. Indeed, the latter clearly had prevalently majoritarian outcomes: for instance, in the last election (2005) the LDP was able to secure 73 per cent of the plurality seats and overall the largest majority since the post-war period. In this system, therefore, PR seats have the main effect of somehow mitigating the disproportionality of the prevalent plurality component, without any specific link between the two votes cast by each elector.9 Summing up, one can say that in the Japanese case the effects of reform on the party system have been rather limited. Parties have operated in an environment less affected by external (f)actors and the LDP is still the dominant party, though in the context of an increasing bipolarization of the plurality component, which makes alternation in power possible in the short term (Reed, 2005; see also Scheiner, 2008).

5.6 . . . and Italy (1994–2001) As we have already documented in Chapter 4, Italy is the only country that has experienced two important electoral reforms over the last fifteen

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years. We have already analysed the current PR system with ‘majority bonus’. In this section we will briefly recall how the 1993 reform came about, and how the system which was applied three times, for the elections of 1994, 1996 and 2001, worked. In contrast to Japan, and despite several similarities between the respective political systems, in Italy the reform took place in a much more compromised political context. Many politicians were delegitimized by judicial investigations and the parliament was constrained in its decisions by a referendum held in April 1993 which abolished some parts of the previous legislation for the election of the Senate. The new law for the Senate introduced only limited changes to the text reformed by the referendum. The new system of the Senate was a bit simpler than that of the Chamber. Since Italian governments need a vote of investiture (and support throughout all their – often brief – existence) by both chambers, the system for the Senate should also be analysed. Besides both being MMM systems, the systems for the two branches of parliament had few similarities. Three can be underlined at the outset: the mix between the two formulae (in both cases 75 per cent plurality and 25 per cent PR), the presence of a mechanism of partial compensation between these two formulae, and the abolition of preference voting, which had already been the object of the 1991 referendum (see Chapter 4). Apart from these points, the systems differed in terms of all the other main dimensions of analysis. The system for the Senate was simpler: only one vote, no multiple candidacies in the SMDs, but the possible presence of independent candidates. The latter point was due to the fact that, given the absence of a second vote (i.e. a PR ballot paper), the compensation took place in the form of a mechanism of negative vote transfer (the so-called scorporo) which was calculated by subtracting from a group’s total vote all the votes received by those candidates affiliated to the group who won SMD seats in the constituency (and was therefore named scorporo totale). The use of the d’Hondt system also meant there was no redistribution of seats at the national level. No explicit threshold was set up. In contrast, the system for the Chamber was based on two separate votes, and therefore different party strategies in the two arenas. SMD candidates could profit from the ‘safety net’ by being put on top of (closed) constituency lists in safe regions, and therefore pretend to be involved in hard contests in facing strong opponents in risky districts. The different scorporo was faced by the parties with the set-up of fake lists (liste civetta), which by the 2001 elections were able to invalidate this compensation mechanism.10 This strategy was made possible by the

Table 5.3

Italy: MMM electoral systems for the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate compared (1994–2001)

- Voters’ choices Number of votes and ballots Preference voting - Partisan constraints Multiple candidacies Link between plurality and PR components

Chamber

Senate

Two, in separate ballot papers No

Just one No

Not allowed in SMDs, up to three in the PR vote Compulsory: between a candidate and at least one PR list

Not allowed

- Links, formulae, thresholds, districts Link between the votes Partial Scorporo: subtraction (pro-quota in case of candidates backed by a coalition) of the votes (+1) obtained by second placed candidate in each SMD (equivalent, or brought to this level if inferior, to 25%) Quota and no. of seats assigned 75% plurality (475), 25% PR (215) with respective formulae Formula for the PR component LR-Hare Quota Threshold for the access to the 4% of votes at national level PR component N. of constituencies 26 (+SMD in Valle d’Aosta)

None; independent candidates can also run

Total Scorporo: votes of winning SMDs subtracted at constituency level

75% plurality (232), 25% PR (83) d’Hondt divisor No threshold 20, coincident with regions (smallest regions of Molise e V. d’Aosta only containing SMDs)

91

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defeat of two referendums which, after the first two in 1991 and 1993, in 1999 and 2000 proposed the abolition of the PR quota for the Chamber and the assignation of the former PR seats to the best losers inside each district.11 The differences between the two systems had important consequences already in their first application. Silvio Berlusconi, with his brand-new party Forza Italia, was able to win the 1994 election with a ‘variable geography’ coalition. However, his first short-lived government (only seven months, less than the record-low Italian average of ten months during the so-called ‘first republic’) had a majority of seats only in the Chamber and not in the Senate. Again, in the following 1996 election, the centre-left had a majority in the Chamber but was dependent on the support of the re-founded Communist Party (RC) in the Senate. In both cases, the divorce with the two most radical components inside the centre-right and centre-left coalitions triggered a government crisis. This is just one example of the fragility of the ‘fragmented bipolarism’ the new system has been associated with (D’Alimonte, 2005). Even before the 2005 reform which we have already described in Chapter 4, questions were raised as to whether the new law would be able to foster the evolution of the Italian political system towards a more majoritarian pattern. Alternation came about in all the three elections held with this system. It is also true, however, that the system had many deficiencies: it was very complicated, and permeable to stratagems like the liste civetta, definitely ameliorable in many of its parts. The academic discussion which followed the first partial party system restructuring around two main coalitions was vitiated by different expectations (see Pappalardo, 2001). Among the critics, Giovanni Sartori dubbed the system ‘Mattarellum’ after the name of its rapporteur.12 It remains questionable whether this system was actually worse than its successor, promptly named ‘Porcellum’ after the explicit admission of its main proponent, the then Reform minister Roberto Calderoli.13 We will come back to some aspects of both the Italian reforms in the next chapters.

5.7 Conclusion: ‘best of both worlds’ or ‘worlds apart’? The analysis of the MM systems completes the first part of the volume dedicated to the description of the electoral systems applied in the 21 advanced democracies on which our study is based. There is no perfect electoral system. No system is able to adapt to all cases and circumstances: mixed-member systems are no exception. The assessment of the consequences of each electoral system is particularly difficult in the case of MM

Mixed-member Systems 93

systems. One of their main aims is precisely to overcome the respective vices of majoritarian and PR systems. One should not claim the best performance for one of the three families by considering only its respective merits and neglecting the intricacies or discrepancies. Shugart and Wattenberg claim that mixed-member systems appear in many cases to be close to a ‘best of both worlds’ situation. Though not free of disadvantages, they claim that they ‘lend themselves to an even greater range of fine-tuning than the various “pure” electoral systems’ (2001c: 595). This is probably true, although the two reforms that have occurred after the introduction of MM systems, in Italy and Russia, have not resulted in a simple fine-tuning, but in a switch to different systems. This example leads us to mention a further problem about mixed systems. After one of the most thorough comparative analyses of the latter, Alessandro Chiaramonte concludes that ‘if these systems cannot claim to be the “best of both worlds”, one can at least say that they represent “a world apart”, clearly different from both majoritarian and PR systems’ (2005: 245). Although his analysis is referred to the universe of mixed electoral systems applied in the 1990s, it is instructive about the important tendencies that these systems show. Take the mentioned cases of Italy and Russia. In the Italian case the reasons for a second reform in less than fifteen years can be attributed to a mix of affection for PR, after the general disappointment about the persistent instability and/or fragmentation of the party system in the first decade, but also of partisanship and miscalculation. The Russian case – which we have not analysed in detail since it is excluded from our study – confirms that our case selection based on democratic consolidation is crucial. In that country, a decree approved the year before the 2007 December election by President Vladimir Putin was enough to switch from a MMM system to a PR system with a high threshold (7 per cent), aimed at making difficult the rise of challengers in the Russian Duma. This could cast some doubts on the possible generalizations that Shugart and Wattenberg made about the best suitability of MM systems for fine-tuning, no matter what the quality of democracy in the country. Moreover, as we have underlined, most of the MM systems share the rather unpopular practice of dual candidacy. The proportional repêchage is a practice that shows how the sapient mix that stands behind each MM system is often governed by shrewd politicians. All too often political elites have played with some ingredients to build up MM systems without bothering about any explanation of the reasons (and the rationale) that stand behind the choices made for a specific electoral system rather than another.

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This brings us to the question of the complexity of MM systems. Shugart and Wattenberg claim that most of them are not more complicated than some PR systems involving multiple tiers or other intricacies. We agree. But it is also true that the last 30 years have witnessed an increase of anti-political sentiments and an erosion of political support which should suggest careful treatment of the delicate tool of electoral systems. On the other hand, it is also true that research on citizen evaluation of electoral systems is still in its infancy. The main programme, the above-mentioned Comparative Study of Electoral Systems is definitely a useful tool in this respect, though there remain some problems as far as the standardization of questionnaires is concerned. To sum up: the issues involved in evaluating the performance of electoral systems are highly disparate. The question posed in the title of this section can only be faced after a more thorough analysis. It is the task of the second part of the book to ascertain how majoritarian, proportional and MM systems have scored so far in terms of their effects on voters’ behaviour and the party system structure, i.e. the core of the politics of contemporary advanced democracies.

Part II

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6 Electoral Rules: How Effective and Why

6.1 The problem of endogeneity In a frequently quoted statement, Giovanni Sartori (1968: 273, 1994: ix) defines electoral systems as ‘the most specific manipulative instrument of politics’. This chapter, and the next two, will introduce, discuss and amend the theoretical literature on such ‘manipulations’. More to the point, we will focus on the predicted effects of electoral systems and on the related conditions, as well as on the operationalization of the relevant independent and dependent variables. This will in turn set the appropriate context within which to verify whether, and to what extent, predicted effects have materialized, and/or have varied, in our sample of 21 democracies through the post-war period. As shown by Figure 6.1, the anticipated effects of electoral systems range from electoral participation, to the number and types of political parties, to cabinet composition, to systemic properties (accountability, responsiveness, representativeness). These effects are crucial dimensions of democratic performance. Before entering into any discussion of the latter, however, we will defend Sartori’s statement. Indeed, though frequently quoted, the statement is far from being universally agreed upon, and disagreement may go so far as to involve its very epistemological foundation. The statement’s foundation is, of course, that electoral rules have a systematic manipulative capacity, and that such capacity can aptly be expressed through valid comparative generalizations, or law-like propositions; but this is often denied because very complex and bi-directional social relationships are deemed irreducible to scientific laws and, this being the case, ‘the comparative study of electoral systems and party systems will most probably shed light on what is unique … rather than produce whatever 97

98 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

Involved Actors

Concerned Behaviours/ Institutions/ Political Processes

Electors

Participation

Abstention Strategic Voting

Psychological Elites

Type of Effect

Participation

Mechanical

Elites

Number and Type of parties/ Government Composition

Systemic

Elites

Accountability Responsiveness Representativeness

Strategic Entry/ Withdrawal

Democratic Performance

Figure 6.1 Effects of electoral systems: an overview

generalization’ (Bogdanor, 1983: 261; see also Lavau, 1953; Mackenzie, 1957). It goes without saying that an in-depth discussion of this radical position is well beyond the scope of our book, and, in any case, would not really be helpful. Indeed, we share Cox’s advice (1997: 16) that no common ground can be found between those who take social science as clearly possible and desirable and those who explicitly reject one, or both, qualifications;1 and without a common ground even to argue that the latter position is ‘demonstrably wrong’ (Sartori, 1994: 27) would simply displace the controversy to the next level, since the very criteria of scientific demonstration are at stake here. The unavoidable conclusion, then, is that any debate is worthwhile and useful only within the epistemological divide, i.e. among members of the scientific community. However, within the community itself, another preliminary question to be dealt with concerns what affects what, i.e. whether Sartori’s alleged ‘manipulations’ are really caused by electoral rules. The controversy concerns specifically the hypothesis that the number of parties depends upon these rules, as stated first by Duverger’s propositions. These propositions will be extensively discussed throughout the chapter, but it is worth noting that, just after

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their formulation in the early 1950s, they were challenged by Grumm (1958), Eckstein (1963: 253) and several others. For such critics, ‘any theory making the electoral system a fundamental causative factor in the development of party systems cannot be sustained’, since ‘electoral systems must be understood against the background of a society’s historical development, which is in turn profoundly affected by political choices’ (Bogdanor, 1983: 333). On the opposite side, authors like Riker (1982), Sartori (1994) and Cox (1997: chapter 2) have defended Duverger’s position with theoretical arguments and empirical proofs; but the late resurfacing of a literature on ‘electoral systems as political consequences’ (Colomer, 2005; Benoit, 2006, 2007), shows that the controversy is still open, and in need of further clarification. Clarification has to start from Duverger’s best-known formulation (1954: 217): ‘The single-majority single-ballot system [i.e. SMP rule] favours the two-party system.’ To many scholars, this formulation appears to convey a kind of ‘institutional determinism’, whereby the final outcome (two-partyism) is ensured merely upon application of a particular set of voting rules. Such a reading of Duverger may be more or less well founded,2 but the key point is that it implies a genetic causation, and this type of relationship is surely false: as already shown by earlier criticisms, a wealth of historical counter-examples is available;3 and in what is the most systematic, comprehensive and updated research work, Colomer (2005: 1) definitively states that ‘it is the number of parties that can explain the choice of electoral systems, rather than the other way around … Political configurations dominated by a few parties tend to establish majority rule electoral systems, while multi-party systems already existed before the introduction of PR representation.’ On the other hand, one can fully agree with this statement (as much as we ourselves do) without rejecting the causal impact of electoral institutions. Indeed, his announced ‘Reversal of Duverger’ notwithstanding, Colomer himself (2005: 1) readily admits that – although unable to generate ‘new’ party system formats – ‘in general, electoral systems will crystallize, consolidate, or reinforce, previously existing party configurations’, and much the same conclusion is shared by supporters of the ‘manipulative’ effect. For authors such as Sartori (1994: 27), Fisichella (2003: chapter 8) or Cox (1997: 17), the key point (in Sartori’s words) is that ‘once in place, electoral systems become causative factors that produce, in their turn, consequences of consequence’. If it were otherwise, it would become impossible to explain the very same political choices that are said to have generated them, since these choices obviously imply that those who make them believe in the causal effectiveness

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of electoral rules. And it makes little or no difference whether the reformers’ beliefs are right or wrong: indeed, ‘if they are correct in anticipating the outcomes of reform (which is often not the case), then the causal efficacy of electoral systems is validated. If they are incorrect, and electoral reforms have consequences they have not anticipated, then the problem disappears’ (Birch, 2003a: 18). In short, electoral systems’ origins may well be ‘endogenous’, but this is precisely the reason why the supporters of this thesis should be the first to recognize their effectiveness, if the criticism they put forward is to stay logically consistent. Moreover, not only does party systems’ preexistence not disturb the institutionalists’ point; as we shall see, this very pre-existence should also be taken into account as a key condition for the validity of Duverger’s propositions. But before entering a full discussion of the latter, another preliminary question should be dealt with.

6.2 Institutionalists vs. sociologists Many of Duverger’s critics oppose to his (real or supposed) ‘pure’ institutionalism an equally one-sided sociological determinism. For such critics, the format of party systems depends upon the number and type of social cleavages, while electoral rules are either unimportant, or very minor and without systematic effects. Since its earlier formulation, the sociological approach has won growing popularity,4 and has often been argued in quite inclusive and strong terms. According to Nohlen (1993: 27), for instance, ‘the greater the social fragmentation, the more probable is the adoption of a proportional system and also the rise of a multiparty system. The greater the social homogeneity, the more probable is the adoption of the simple plurality system; but, also, the more probable is the rise of a two-party system … or of a limited party pluralism.’ From this point of view, the social structure explains all and everything, both the party- and the electoral systems, but the problem that is raised by this kind of explanation has been aptly stressed by Sartori (1994: 27): ‘In a causal argument, nothing is uncaused: everything is caused by something but, in turn, the consequence of something becomes the cause of something else. Thus, to argue that electoral systems are “caused” does not imply that at that moment the causal chain is broken’; and if the chain stands unbroken (i.e. if electoral systems themselves have causal effects), there is as much room for the institutional factor as for the social one. Here, we take the same standpoint, and reject Nohlen’s reductio to a ‘first cause’ that is probably imaginary and, to be sure, carries less,

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not more, cognitive content than specialists’ research. As political scientists, in other words, we take electoral systems as our starting point, and maintain this choice irrespective of what other scholars are doing, and discovering, in their own fields. On the other hand, the principle of scientific specialization does not hinder (indeed, it is the prerequisite for) the integration of contributions coming from autonomous disciplines; and we will thus equally subscribe to the conclusion that ‘to assert that the electoral structure affects party competition in important and systematic ways does not imply that the social structure is irrelevant’ (Cox, 1997: 19). To be sure, fostering inter-disciplinary integration, i.e. entering and testing the contribution of social variables to party systems’ format, is a difficult practical matter. In the (rather thin) relevant literature, there is relatively little agreement on what social cleavages are, or on their empirical indicators: for example, while some prefer to list a number of ‘issue dimensions’ (Lijphart, 1984; Taagepera, 1999), most authors make use of indices of ‘ethnic heterogeneity’; but one must agree with Taagepera (1999: 544–6) that both alternatives are less than satisfactory.5 Electoral variables, in contrast, are comparatively unambiguous in conceptual terms, and much more operationally precise, with differences confined mainly to technical details of one or the other measure. Be that as it may, any measure of thresholds of representation, district size, and the like, is based on safe, systematic, and secular time-series data, whereas issue dimensions, and especially ethnic heterogeneity, are highly questionable on all three counts.6 Finally, correlations between heterogeneity indexes and the presumed dependent variable (number of parties) are invariably zero, as against the strong and significant association always recorded by electoral predictors alone.7 The main finding of the literature, then, is that only when interacting with electoral predictors does social heterogeneity acquire explanatory status;8 but while this conclusion may be of some interest, our research strategy will avoid a path marred by too many shortcomings and will, instead, develop an alternative that is both traditional and innovative: on the traditional, safer, side, we will take Lijphart’s (1994a) comparative work as the reference point on which to build cumulative knowledge about the classic relationship between electoral variables and party system formats; on the innovative side, in section 6.6 we will integrate Duverger’s propositions with a crucial amendment, that will in fact add to their strictly institutionalist logic a sociological dimension or, more properly, a causal factor focusing on the relationship between societal cleavages and the party system.

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This factor (the degree of systemic structuring of the party system) was introduced in the first chapter to justify the selection of the cases taken into account throughout the book; and in the same chapter we have outlined the transformations undergone by the indicator of systemic (de-)structuring, i.e. electoral volatility. As already said, this indicator plausibly mirrors the ideological and organizational hold of parties on their electorate, and this hold, once strong and stable, has systematically and rapidly been weakening since the early 1990s (see Tables 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4). This weakening might be explained by a host of events and processes, a detailed account of which is neither possible nor needed for our purposes, but the abundant literature that connects it to the crisis of the secular cleavages of industrial democracies, and/or to the rise of new alignments, is of course fully representative of the sociological approach to the study of politics. As the bulk of this literature agrees on the crucial crisis-signalling role of electoral volatility, it follows that we may take advantage of a variable, which is both new and free of all the problems of issue dimensions and ethnic heterogeneity,9 to test for the impact of the (decline of) cleavages on the party system. Beyond this general appraisal, our use of volatility will be justified in full detail in Chapter 8, and its empirical relevance when added to electoral variables will be confirmed by the regression analyses of Chapter 9. However, before getting there, several other steps must be taken, the next being a full re-examination of Duverger’s propositions in the context of the debate, the criticisms and the amendments put forward within the institutionalist school itself.

6.3 Duverger and his critics Let us return to Figure 6.1, and consider the types of effect that electoral systems are presumed to be responsible for. The description of, as well as a clear distinction between, these effects is a crucial contribution of Duverger (1954: 224), who speaks of a psychological and a mechanical impact of majoritarian, or PR, systems. Both types of effect operate on voters and on party elites as well, and the former are the ones to start with. The psychological effect takes place before the vote, by conditioning the decision whether to vote or to abstain and, in the affirmative, which party to vote for.10 Given any votes’ distribution, the mechanical effect, i.e. the votes/seats conversion rule, steps in. The latter, then, is chronologically distinct from the psychological effect, but – contrary to Duverger’s view (Benoit, 2006) – the distinction fades away logically. The psychological effect, indeed, presupposes that any

Electoral Rules: How Effective and Why 103

votes/seats conversion rule will provide incentives, or pose constraints, that each rational voter will find convenient to adapt to; and to the (controversial) extent to which the adaptation takes places, the mechanical effect cannot but be conditioned by its anticipation and, thus, blurred.11 This endogeneity should never be forgotten through empirical research, since it reduces (though does not suppress) the value of the standard indicator of the mechanical effect, i.e. the number of parliamentary parties; but the question to be dealt with right now is the process that models the psychological anticipations of the voters. Anticipations materialize through strategic (or tactical, in the British literature) voting, the working of which is best illustrated by a classic basic example. Let’s suppose that three candidates (say, A, B and C) are competing in the single-seat district of an SMP system. A certain number of voters prefer candidate C to B and B to A, but they also know that C is the least popular and has virtually no chance of getting elected. As a consequence, C’s supporters have the following choice: either they express a sincere vote, i.e. follow their first preference, thus wasting their vote as C is too weak to win; or they strategically support B, thus making their vote useful by endorsing a candidate that might beat the least preferred A. If the latter choice is made by a sufficient number of electors, the vote will tend to leave third candidates/parties, and to concentrate on the two strongest competitors. This is the very process supporting the proposition ‘the simplemajority single-ballot system favours the two-party system’, that was later generalized as ‘Duvergerian equilibrium’, or the ‘M+1 Rule’, and credited by Duverger himself (1954: 217) and Riker (1982) with the status of a ‘true sociological law’.12 As a corollary to the law, moreover, a second proposition, technically known as a ‘hypothesis’, follows: since they do not provide incentives to strategic behaviour, ‘the simple-majority system with second ballot [herein, 2RS] and PR representation favour multipartyism’ (Duverger, 1954: 239). We shall discuss the 2RS in Chapter 7, whereas here we will focus on the wide, and often quite lively, debate on majoritarian single-ballot and PR systems. Through the debate, both the theoretical worth and the empirical foundations of Duverger’s propositions have been extensively discussed, and several crucial amendments have been proposed, some of which – though by no means all – have met with general agreement and are nowadays quite standard in the literature. In decreasing order of expert consensus (but not of theoretical relevance) these amendments concern: 1. The majoritarian systems/PR systems relationship. 2. The conditions for strategic voting.

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3. The micro-(local), as against the macro-(national) reach of Duverger’s propositions. The first amendment is the most compatible with the original theory, and was fully incorporated into it long ago. While Duverger contrasted the ‘multiplying’ effect of PR with the reductive effect of majoritarian systems, the ongoing standard version is due to Sartori and consists of two arguments. First, even the purest proportional formula cannot but transfer votes into seats ‘photographically’, and a photographic transfer does not ‘multiply’ in any meaningful sense of the word, but is, at best, ‘without effect’.13 Second, the null effect being the limiting case, ‘PR affects the party system to the extent that it is non-PR, and this on a variety of counts: the relatively small size of constituencies, clauses of exclusions, majority premiums and, lastly, disproportional translations of the votes into seats. It follows from this that, whenever PR obtains manipulative effects, these effects are restrictive, not multiplicative. Hence, the influence of PR merely represents an enfeeblement of the same influence that is exerted by the majority-SMP system’ (Sartori, 1994: 47; see also Sartori, 1968). According to this view, then, majoritarian and PR systems have to be conceptualized as the poles of a continuum going from strong to weak systems, i.e. from the capacity to maximize strategic voting and to minimize the number of parties, to coexistence with extreme multi-partyism. This marks, in turn, a twofold advance, because – apart from its logical cogency – Sartori’s statement provides the necessary justification for quantitative research on electoral systems through statistical techniques; but the advance would remain limited if not complemented by the crucial, though often overlooked, amendments put forward in points 2 and 3.

6.4 Conditions for strategic voting The next amendments are in order because, contrary to Duverger’s law, parties are stably at the minimum (i.e. two) only in the United States.14 All remaining majoritarian systems, indeed, start from at least three, and we will see in Chapter 9 that this number has been continuously growing, both in terms of voted-for parties and their parliamentary seats shares. Given this evidence, even to claim a ‘tendency’ to two-partyism (Sartori, 1968: 64) might appear unwarranted and, anyway, it is precisely its rarity, or its instability, that has fed, and still feeds, the more or less radical

Electoral Rules: How Effective and Why 105

criticisms that either reject the possibility of comparative social science generalizations, or maintain that the number of parties is primarily, if not exclusively, the effect of extra-institutional factors. As argued in the previous sections, though, our view does not adhere to any of these criticisms, but rather matches the stand taken by Cox and Sartori, who both believe that institutions count and that they have a systematic, law-like, impact. This view implies that the fact that Duverger was wrong does not suffice to end the debate, provided that his lacunae and/or mistakes can be redressed in order to account for the problems at hand. Since these problems have been dealt with by Cox and Sartori, we will consider now their proposed solutions to show how they can strengthen the original theory and put on safer grounds our subsequent empirical tests. Duverger’s law is problematic at both the micro- and macro-levels and the two require separate treatments. We will start, then, from Cox’s micro-analysis and leave to the next sections the macro-approaches (by Cox himself and Sartori), though it should be borne in mind that any conclusion must take account of all the relevant arguments. Microanalyses properly concern district-level voting behaviour, and the first theoretically relevant question here is that strategic voting is typical of ‘instrumentally rational’, and ‘myopic’, individuals, i.e. voters that only care about the election outcome and will therefore desert losers for the winner. Along with such individuals, however, many, if not most, electors are mobilized by class, ethnic-cultural, and confessional cleavages, by party identification, by contingent campaign topics and by candidates’ personalities: in short, a host of incentives that – whether rational or not – are disconnected from, or even in contrast to, the logic of ‘useful’ voting.15 However large or small its spread, then, this logic concerns just one fraction of the electorate and, moreover, it is activated if, and only if, the involved electors share some relevant requisites: a given preference structure, the needed information, and the appropriate context of competition. To begin with, electoral preferences should be neatly rank-ordered: as with our previous example, the most preferred and weakest candidate (C) will be deserted if his supporters are able to choose between the strongest (A and B), but not if they are indifferent between the latter. Even if the requisite is satisfied, then, it should be known that B is well ahead of C and competitive enough with the least preferred A to have a reasonable chance to beat him with the support of strategic voting. Thus, this vote will be expressed only by those electors who can gather such information, provided that the latter is reliable and coherent enough.

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These requisites, in turn, critically depend on the availability and accessibility of survey data, as well as on the length and stability of the electoral history of a given country. As already mentioned in Chapter 1, then, strategic voting is excluded, or of very minor importance, in political systems undergoing a transition, or in districts whose local equilibriums are, for whatever reason, unstable. And, whether in transition or not, equally unsuited are all systems and districts with such a high number and turnover rate of parties/candidates to make for a complex political supply, i.e. a supply exceeding the (always limited) time, attention and calculation resources available to the average voter.16 Due to one reason or the other, then, the majoritarian rule alone is not, and cannot be, a sufficient condition for strategic voting and, least of all, a condition of two-partyism; moreover – and quite apart from theoretical requirements – Duverger’s law fails to specify its own institutional conditions of validity. In the author’s original formulations, these conditions are limited to the single-seat simple-(relative)majority ballot; but this falls far short of the full listing, that should include no less than three more features: the single, non-transferable vote, single-tier elections, and the interdiction of multi-party candidacies. As shown by Cox (1997: 90–2), indeed, violation of one or more of these requirements reduces the incentives to strategic behaviour because it opens the road to the survival of minor parties and, thus, counterbalances, and even neutralizes, the restrictive push of the electoral method.17 At first sight, the inference the foregoing suggests is that there is no way to save Duverger’s law, unless it incorporates all mentioned specifications. If so, however, we will reduce ourselves to a redescription of just one (the US), or very few, cases, thus giving up the ambition to devise a true law, i.e. a reasonably parsimonious explanation of a whole class of systems. To preserve some generalizing power, then, the importance of the single-seat, single-ballot voting method must be downgraded: as mentioned, in and by itself it is not a sufficient condition of twopartyism, and some cases show that is not a necessary condition either.18 Since this note of caution is confirmed, and indeed strengthened, by the macro-approach discussed in the next sections, to overlook it would easily lead to some misunderstandings of the classic cases, and to total incomprehension of more recent majoritarian experiences.19 That said, however, strategic voting should not be dismissed altogether: though usually estimated in one-digit percentages, it is out of the question that it occurs in all majoritarian systems and that it is invariably linked to some ‘Duvergerian equilibrium’, i.e. to the electorate’s concentration on the two strongest parties;20 in intensely competitive elections,

Electoral Rules: How Effective and Why 107

moreover, this outcome is easily achieved, given the decisiveness of small numbers of economically ‘rational’ individuals; third, both competitiveness and several of Cox’s conditions are maximized by majoritarian voting, but by no means confined to it: as established by the first amendment to Duverger, majoritarian and PR systems are poles of one and the same continuum of reductive potential; and, thus, even the latter may be, and are, concerned by systemically significant incentives to strategic voting. In section 6.6, we will decline Duverger’s propositions in Sartori’s version, which makes room for these incentives and their effects. Within this version, then, strategic voting gains in extension (through whatever type of electoral systems) what it might have lost in frequency, due to its many constraining requirements. A larger diffusion, and the underlying, gradual and continual, variations, will be confirmed by the strength of the psychological effect resulting from our findings in Chapter 9; but a final question needs to be clarified in this connection. Strategic behaviour is supposed to influence the number of parties that enter the electoral arena, and these are as such the dependent variable of Duverger’s proposition. A related ambiguity, however, is that party numbers plausibly depend both on voting choice and the psychological impact of electoral rules on candidates, or the competing political elites. This impact is shown in Figure 6.1 under the headings strategic entry/withdrawal, which are of course two faces of the same coin. The terminology is due to Duverger, who thought that in majoritarian systems the third parties foresee being ‘burnt’ by strategic voting and, then, will abstain from entering the electoral race altogether. If so, the number of competitors will diminish, and the diminution would be nothing else than a side-effect of the behaviour of rational voters, as anticipated by equally rational elites. However, later authors, and especially Cox (1997: 17–19; Chapter 8, this volume), have dealt with the topic more extensively, and shown that parties are subject to complex incentives: first, some of them may decide to run anyway, when determined to discount the defeat at the current election with greater chances of success in the medium to long period, or because they want to demonstrate their blackmail potential in order to extort political concessions from the major parties; second, parties that are in fact under the representation threshold might overestimate their support, and this will occur all the more easily if the outcome of the competition is unpredictable, as might be the case in unstructured or destructured systems, or when the electoral rules change frequently.21 By working separately or together, these incentives will counterbalance the presumed reductive tendencies of strategic withdrawal, or might

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even fully deactivate them, leaving majoritarian systems with an ‘abnormally’ high number of parties. Such phenomena and processes have surely played a role in the experience of two important cases in our sample (Italy and Japan), that are often taken as examples of the failure of the SMP method to reduce the political supply.22 Apart from the examples, the topic anticipates the crucial role of party system structuration that will be fully discussed in the next sections. Be that as it may, it emphasizes the limits of too straightforward reasoning: while Duverger does not consider any alternative to the reductive synergy between strategic voting and strategic entry/withdrawal, the truth of the matter is that the synergy is subject to several contextual conditions; if these conditions are unfavourable, like the mentioned ones, elites’ behaviour will weaken, not reinforce, the reductive effects of strategic voting, and specific analyses will have to ascertain what is responsible for how much weakening and why;23 moreover, when the synergy is in place, it is not obvious that it will work in the ‘right’ (i.e. reductive) direction, because rational elites and electors might join forces to maximize the number of the competitors. As we shall see in Chapter 7, the latter case finds the ideal context within the French legislative 2RS; and, paradoxically enough, our demonstration will start from one argument put forward by Duverger, who ‘sees’ here the complexity that the critics often accuse him of oversimplifying.

6.5 Mechanical effects However important the previous questions might be, a much more extended and lively debate surrounds the topic of the electoral systems’ mechanical effect, i.e. how electoral rules convert votes into seats. Since these rules critically affect the parties’ parliamentary strength, and thereby the type of government, such interest (both scientific and political) is hardly surprising, though it should not make us forget what mechanical action owes to the psychological factor: as already said, indeed, a high electoral threshold, and/or whatever else might distort the votes/seats ratio, works on party numbers already modified by the anticipation of their effect (i.e. by strategic voting and/or strategic entry/withdrawal).24 As a consequence, while electoral parties are surely and exclusively conditioned by psychological effects, the interplay of the mechanical effect with its psychological anticipation bars an equally precise calculation of how much parliamentary parties and their seats shares depend upon each factor. More to the point, what we can observe is, on the one hand, the difference among voted-for parties and represented

Electoral Rules: How Effective and Why 109

parties, which is deceiving as anticipations weigh on both sides; on the other hand, we have the difference among represented parties, which is unsatisfying as it measure the outcome of (and not the process of) conversion of votes into seats. As no ideal solution exists, however, the latter is commonly used throughout the quantitative literature, and we will have to follow the same practice here. Be that as it may, it is at this point that the third amendment to Duverger steps in. This amendment stems from our point 3 above and is as crucial as it is overlooked. To begin with, it is crucial because the dependent variables of Duverger’s propositions are national parties and party systems; but the supporting theory may explain only micro-effects, i.e. effects at district/constituency level, not their extension to, or ‘projection’ onto, a whole system (Sartori, 1968, 1994: 32–6; Fisichella, 1970, 2003: 259–60; Cox, 1997: chapter 10). The objection, to be sure, is quite old; it was already formulated during the 1950s (Leys, 1959; Wildavsky, 1959) and, paradoxically enough, was recognized by its target himself. Duverger (1954: 223), indeed, admitted ab initio that ‘the true effect of the simple-majority system is limited to local bi-partism’, that is, to ‘the creation of a two-party system inside the individual constituency; but the parties opposed may be different in different areas of the country’ (italics added). If so, the concerned system will maintain a multi-party format and, since this would nullify his law, the same author immediately tries to neutralize the non sequitur. His (rather puzzling) argument is that ‘the increased centralization of organization within parties and the consequent tendency to see political problems from the wider, national standpoint tend of themselves to project on to the entire country the localized two-party system brought about by the ballot procedure’ (1954: 228). The argument, then, does introduce a new factor – party centralization – that was later reworded and turned into a really convincing one by Sartori (see below). Duverger’s formula, vice versa, fails to convince because of its ambiguity, i.e. because his variable is not put forward as a condition for the law’s validity: in the main work and all following writings as well, Duverger invariably maintains that the simple-majority, single-ballot systems favour (national) two-partyism; but since no reason is given as to why such systems should enhance the admittedly crucial party centralization, it goes without saying that his projection argument essentially assumes what is to be shown.25 Later solution proposals fall equally short of the mark, generally because they try to deduce the macro-effect (national two-partyism) from micro-behaviours (of voters and/or the elites) at the district level; and

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while ‘there may be factors that push the system toward bipartism . . . these factors do not depend on local electoral structure, and no one has supplied any argument that says the equilibrium of these forces necessarily pushes to bipartism. Thus, Duverger’s law at the district level is a theoretical proposition, while Duverger’s law at the national level is an empirical generalization, and one to which there are many exceptions at that’ (Cox, 1997: 186). Moving from these quite compelling premises, one may take two roads, both aiming at amending Duverger’s law, though differing in ambition and success. The most ambitious strategy, followed by Cox (1997: 186), purports to develop ‘an argument that explains not only why districtbased groups would seek to link together to form multi-district parties, but also says something about the equilibrium level of such linkage’. In short, why do national parties emerge, and under which conditions are no more than two national parties to be predicted? Answering both questions would indeed mean dissolving altogether the projective problem of Duverger’s theory; but as a matter of fact, Cox’s answer is far from full or satisfactory. According to it, there are two main incentives to two-partyism – presidentialism and a premiership system;26 and while the first point can be proved false empirically, the second is both empirically false and logically ill-founded. To start with, Cox himself readily recognizes that a stable and unmistakable association between presidentialism and two-partyism only occurs in the US. This remark prompts him to outline a model of ‘strong’ presidentialism (Cox, 1997: 187–90), and to propose using its best empirical approximations as a test for his hypothesis. If one follows the suggestion, however, what is found is that the best (Latin American) approximations mostly ‘stand upon the “wrong” [i.e. multiparty] system’ (Sartori, 1994: 93); moreover, the just four two-party systems counted by Sartori in 1994 (Argentina, Costa-Rica, Philippines and Venezuela) have meanwhile become multi-party systems, while still presidential; and two major entries in the very same class (Brazil and Mexico) have directly moved to multi-partyism from the previous stages of atomism and semi-authoritarian rule respectively. So, one cannot but conclude that the behaviour of the supposed independent and dependent variables is at odds with Cox’s hypothesis; and the latter systematic failure feeds doubts even about the single exception: given that American presidentialism and two-partyism go together, which is the cause and which the effect? Cox’s opinion notwithstanding, there is evidence that it was an early structuring of two nationwide parties that fostered the two-candidates race in presidential elections (Fisichella, 2003: 285).

Electoral Rules: How Effective and Why 111

Be that as it may, problems loom larger in relation to parliamentary systems and the pertinent explanatory variable – ‘strong’ premiership: indeed, there is no doubt that in the UK model the latter came after two-partyism, and that two-partyism, in turn, pre-existed the single-seat district (Fisichella, 2003: 191); besides that, and more generally, all (or almost all) European comparatists would find historically and logically objectionable the claim that prime ministers are ‘strong’ because their ‘elections are always held concurrently with legislative elections. And voters always have only one single vote with which to affect both the election of legislators from a given constituency and the election of the premier. Thus, executive and legislative elections are always firmly connected in parliamentary systems’ (Cox, 1997: 191, italics added). In place of these rather odd sentences, the truth of the matter is that heads of governments are strong(est) when firmly in command of a large, disciplined national party that won at the last election enough seats to govern alone (Sartori, 1994: 104–8). In other words, nothing less than two-partyism is needed to secure an ‘elected’ premiership, with the accordingly maximal power resources; and, conversely, multi-partyism, coalitions, and the post-electoral bargaining to assemble them, go hand in hand with the weak(er) prime ministers so common throughout continental Europe. Quite obviously, then, things do not work the way Cox supposes them to.

6.6 In defence of Sartori’s projection argument Given the previous negative findings, our question should be asked again: How can Duverger’s law be ‘projected’ to the national level? The answer is prompted by a closer look at a hint provided by Cox himself (1997: 183–4). In his introductory review of the literature on the topic, he discusses Sartori’s projective argument, concluding that it is partially persuasive. The argument is that ‘SMP systems have no influence (beyond the district) until the party system becomes structured’ (Sartori, 1968: 281), and its plausibility, according to Cox, rests on the fact that it ‘is not circular’, or inconsistent, like other available explanations. ‘Unfortunately, however, Sartori gives no theoretical argument that having a structured party system should allow the effect of single-member plurality elections to be felt fully at the national level, thus unleashing national bipartism . . . The argument that Sartori makes just suggests that the more nationalized are the parties, the fewer there will be.’ Cox’s half-hearted approval takes us a step further, but, as we believe that Sartori’s argument is altogether right, the question deserves a more

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extended treatment. If we were to take the quickest road, we could simply dismiss the criticism above by saying that the argument explains more than Cox’s, and that falling short of predicting the ‘equilibrium’ number of parties (be it 2, or M+1) may be theoretically sub-optimal, but is surely irrelevant to the empirical testing of Duverger’s law.27 One can, however, go further than this, since Cox’s criticism is not truly accurate. The criticism is inaccurate because it does not take into account the fact that Sartori’s approach has two dimensions, i.e. it is concerned as much with the explanans (the electoral system) as with the explanandum (the number of parties). And the relevant point here is that our author makes to Duverger’s explanandum two fundamental objections. First, his law does not specify which parties should be counted, and according to which criteria; but this being the case, it cannot truly be tested, or cannot but lead us off the track. Lacking any counting rules, indeed, the forced conclusion will be that, while the US qualifies for two-partyism, Australia, or the UK, or pre-1996 New Zealand do not. Conversely, the problem disappears if one stipulates that the only parties to be counted are the systemically relevant parties, i.e. parties being able to compete for an absolute majority of seats, and willing to govern alone when getting it;28 given this ‘qualitative’ definition, one can ignore all third, or n, non-conforming parties, and put all four mentioned cases within the same class, i.e. in the right (two-party) ‘equilibrium’ state.29 Even this advance, however, leaves one main exception (Canada), since this SMP system coexists with strong and relevant third and fourth parties, which as a matter of fact do impose a relatively frequent recourse to single-party minority governments, whose survival of course depends on some implicit legislative coalition, or coalitions. Third and fourth parties, in turn, prosper thanks to their regionally strong support, which allow them to win most, or a large share of, seats in their strongholds (Rae, 1967; Sartori, 1968; Riker, 1982). It follows that the validity of Duverger’s law is also conditional upon the territorial distribution of the votes: as a general rule, ‘a two-party format is impossible under whatever electoral system – if racial, linguistic, ideologically alienated, single-issue, or otherwise incoercible minorities . . . are concentrated in above-SMP proportions in particular constituencies or geographical pockets. If so, the effect of a SMP system will only be reductive visà-vis the third parties which do not represent incoercible minorities’ (Sartori, 1994: 40).30 Once the explanandum is so dealt with, attention may shift to the explanans on the very same assumption of Cox: since nothing in Duverger’s formula justifies the prediction of national two-partyism, the

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Party system STRONG (structured) WEAK (unstructured)

Electoral system STRONG WEAK 1 3 Reductive effect of Countervailing-blocking effect electoral system of party system 2 4 Blocking-reductive effect No influence at district level

Figure 6.2 Electoral systems and party systems: a typology Source: Adapted from Sartori (1994: 43).

explanation must lie outside it, i.e. requires changing the law’s causal structure. Otherwise said, another independent variable now steps in, as represented in Figure 6.2. Here, ‘strong’ systems are all majoritarian, or impure PR systems, that obtain a reductive effect; but to what extent the effect will materialize is conditional upon the ‘strength’ of the party system itself. This strength, in turn, varies with an already well-known property, i.e. the degree of the structural consolidation of the system, or the degree to which the system is dominated by large mass parties, i.e. parties that have deeply encapsulated society organizationally, and may count on the long-term support of a highly identified electorate (Sartori, 1968: 281, 293; Chapter 1, this volume). When voting choices are so controlled, or ‘channelled’, an equally strong electoral system will result in the outcome predicted by Duverger: as shown in cell 1, there will be room for no more than two (relevant) parties generated by structuration and held together by SMP rule. The italics emphasize the crucial point: ‘SMP systems have no influence (beyond district) until the party system becomes structured’ (Sartori, 1994: 38). Short of systemic structuring, then, what follows is the local two-partyism housed in cell 2, whose national correlates embrace Canadian (or Indian) multi-partyisms.31 On these grounds, important exceptions to Duverger’s law are reabsorbed, while his ‘hypothesis’ is accommodated through cells 3 and 4. As already said, the hypothesis concerns the permissive effect of PR rule, and is in turn marred by the exceptions as countries like Austria, Malta, and in part Ireland, have, or have had, longstanding two-party formats. Cell 2 deals precisely with such, and similar, cases, which Sartori (1994: 43–4) explains as follows: ‘When PR (even feeble PR) encounters a structured party system, the voter is still restrained, though not by the electoral system but by the potency of party channelment. In this case, then, the electoral system is counteracted by the party system: we can say we have a blocking, or

114 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

a countervailing, effect. That is the same as saying that here the causal factor, the independent variable, is the party system. [This] combination not only explains why PR may not be followed by ‘more parties’ but may even allow for two-party systems . . . and/or formats.’ Finally, cell 4 points to ‘no influence, meaning that, when relatively pure PR is combined with structurelessness, neither the electoral nor the party systems intervene in the political process with a manipulative impact of their own. Here the general point is that the more we approach pure PR, and the more electoral and related obstacles are removed, the less whatever party system happens to exist is “caused” by the electoral system. Much of Latin American experience … comes close to falling into this cluster. And the combination conveys that the newborn countries and the former communist states that start with PR have set for themselves the least favorable conditions for overcoming party atomization and for attaining structural consolidation’ (Sartori, 1994: 44). Precisely for this reason, we have excluded these countries from the present study; but to recall them now clarifies the scope of the third amendment to Duverger: from the ambiguities of, and the many exceptions to, his propositions, the conceptual refinement, as well as the theory’s consistency, have progressed a great deal; and to put it in the most synthetic form, the progress might be spelled out as follows (Sartori, 1994: 45): 1. Given systemic structuring and cross-constituency dispersion, SMP/AV systems are a sufficient condition for a two-party format. 1.1 Alternatively, a particularly strong systemic structuring is, alone, the necessary substitutive condition for causing a twoparty format. 2. Given systemic structuring, but failing cross-constituency dispersion, SMP/AV systems are a sufficient condition for the elimination of below-threshold parties, but will not eliminate as many parties above two as are allowed for by sizeable above-threshold voters’ concentrations. 3. Given systemic structuring, PR obtains a reductive effect to the extent of its non-proportionality. The greater PR impurity, the higher the entry costs for the smaller parties, and the stronger the reductive effect, or vice versa. 3.1 Alternatively, a particularly strong systemic structuring is alone the necessary and sufficient condition for maintaining whatever party format pre-existed the introduction of PR.

Electoral Rules: How Effective and Why 115

4. Failing systemic structuring and assuming pure PR, i.e. an equal cost of entry for all, the number of parties is free to become as large as the threshold allows for. As is readily apparent, Sartori’s laws are decidedly less parsimonious than Duverger’s; but no law can do without its conditions of application, and to specify such conditions requires a proportionate elaboration. Thanks to the specifications, an ambit of validity is circumscribed, and in this ambit the laws’ projective fallacy is overcome, and their submission to empirical testing becomes truly fruitful. No doubt, in Sartori’s terms the ambit is, essentially, if not exclusively, circumscribed by the party systems’ structuration – a condition that is superior to those listed by Cox both because of the latter’s weakness, or inconsistencies, and because of its own inclusiveness and its amenability to operationalization. By inclusiveness, we mean that the condition does not deal with this or that particular process of structural consolidation, or the actors, the incentives/constraints, the motivations, that might have been its driving historical forces: all that is needed for the laws’ validity is whether large mass parties, insisting on ‘frozen’ cleavages, exist, not how, when, or why they came about. In this perspective, structuration is obviously compatible with a whole range of (possibly diverse) genetic explanations, including perhaps some minor ones discussed by Cox (see note 27) and/or others put forward in the relevant single-country studies. Second, and more important, systemic structuring may be detected through an indicator that is both universally agreed upon and readily measurable; as we know, this indicator is electoral volatility, whose relationship with the electoral system should have become all the more straightforward: according to Sartori’s framework, no reductive effect of the electoral system may be reliably estimated if structuration is not kept under control, and – this being the case – to enter its indicator becomes an unavoidable step if one wants to refine any analysis of that effect. In Chapter 9, then, we will add the new variable to the more classical ones in the regressions on our population, and the findings – we shall see – will lend the needed empirical support to the theoretical argument defended here; but this stage will be reached after several intermediate steps, next of which is a detailed survey of a type of electoral system that has hardly been mentioned in this chapter.

7 The French 2RS: Suited for Comparative Research?

7.1 A manipulated threshold In Chapter 3, we have placed the 2RS together with SMP and the alternative vote. This choice is justified by structural isomorphism, namely the same electoral formula and the same district magnitude. Isomorphism, however does not imply the same mechanics and outcomes, at least as far as the 2RS legislative version is concerned. Since the latter is the only relevant one for our purposes (i.e. testing Duverger’s propositions),1 the topic requires an extensive reassessment. In our opinion, indeed, the accounts provided so far by most of the literature are far from exhaustive or satisfying; and their failures concern the explanation of both the number and type of parties the system allows for, which are two crucial questions for any comparative study of the effects of electoral rules. Our reassessment is prompted by a basic, indeed almost banal, remark: placing the 2RS within the majoritarian class means that it shares the latter’s electoral threshold (Lijphart, 1994a; Ordeshook and Shvetsova, 1994; Amorim Neto and Cox, 1997; Taagepera, 1999; Farrell, 2001; Blais and Massicotte, 2002).2 Since thresholds are the most powerful predictor of party systems’ format, this is a step of consequence that, as we just said, the literature fails to support consistently and convincingly: put in the boldest terms, both its theoretical foundations and its methodological correctness rest on questionable grounds, and this leads, in turn, towards self-defeating empirical applications. Most surprisingly, however, this literature is at odds with Duverger’s classic hypothesis. As mentioned in the previous chapter, Duverger associated the 2RS with proportional, not majoritarian, rule; like PR, in other words, the 2RS ‘favours multi-partism’ (Duverger, 1954: 239),3 and for much the same reason: neither one nor the other system discourages 116

The French 2RS

117

sincere voting, or encourages strategic behaviour; and this is so because ‘the variety of parties having much in common’ may all enter the first round without fearing that this will ‘adversely affect the total number of seats they gain since in this system they can always regroup for the second ballot’ (Duverger, 1954: 240).4 Because he was writing at the end of the 1940s, Duverger was generalizing from the experience of the Third Republic; but his argument was subsequently extended to the Fifth by Parodi (1978: 193): ‘Given that the first round does not count . . . every political group – and none more so than the smallest and newest ones – can take advantage of the situation to “stand and be counted”, and, in so doing, they may be able to influence the largest groups.’ To put it differently, the smallest parties have little to lose, and may gain a lot, by contesting the first round ‘because if they can register a sufficiently large degree of support, then they can ensure that they are indispensable to the second-round process of alliance building’ (Elgie, 2005: 123). In short, from this point of view, the first round is essentially, if not solely, a census (or a survey); as such, it is more permissive in principle than pure PR itself, and at any rate indifferent to the disincentive of the absolute majority requirement (to win the seat). In due course, moreover, the expected outcomes of the census were incorporated, and ex ante discounted, by the concerned parties; over the last 15–20 years, most electoral pacts have already been struck before the first round,5 thus highlighting the systemic relevance of two critical processes: first, the definitive displacement of electoral strategies from the thresholds’ constraints (be they the first, or second round’s constraints), to their neutralization thanks to a fully-fledged bargaining practice including even very minor political forces; second, and consequently, the consolidation (or the institutionalization altogether) of an apparently unavoidable extreme fragmentation. These tendencies – it is worth stressing – have progressed in spite of both the growth of the (qualification) threshold to 10 and 12.5 per cent in 1966 and 1976, and its computation in terms of the registered voters, that may push the effective threshold up to 20 per cent, especially whenever abstentionism is strong (see Chapter 3). As shown in Table 7.1, indeed, the number of electoral and parliamentary parties peaks precisely through 1978–2007, while their seats’ shares concentration records no more than a marginal growth.6 Thus, it was wrong to suppose that the raising of the threshold would result in ‘the automatic exclusion from the second ballot of most non-left or non-majority candidates, and reduce to almost nil the blackmail potential of the minor formations’ (Bartolini,

118 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters Table 7.1

Number of parties by time period, French 2RS, 1958–2007

Election years 1958–1973 1978–2007

Main parties

ENEP

ENPP

7 7.57

5.11 5.25

3.53 3.01

Note: 1986 PR election not included. Main parties are all parties with at least 2% of the vote; ENEP and ENPP are the effective number of electoral and parliamentary parties respectively (Laakso and Taagepera, 1979).

1984: 107). Quite obviously, the conventional reading of the mechanical effect mirrored by such sentences fails to convey the essential feature of the 2RS, namely the anticipations, and the psychological reactions, of both parties and electors to the exchange, alliance, and/or blackmail opportunities more perceptively grasped by Duverger, Parodi and other French specialists. Let us re-emphasize, then, that these opportunities grant the elusion, or neutralization, of any threshold, and lend credit to Duverger’s hypothesis (‘the 2RS favours multi-partyism’). The only due amendment here is prompted by the author’s overlapping of ‘favouring’ and ‘multiplying’, as we have shown in Chapter 6 that even pure PR is, at most, a no effect, or null effect, system. In a similar way, the 2RS ‘coexists with all possible classes of party format’, and thus deserves much the same conclusion: ‘Both electoral formulae have little influence on the number of parties, a number that they neither tend to “restrain”, nor to “multiply”’ (Fisichella, 2003: 313, 318). The amendment redresses a logical fallacy and a mistaken historical interpretation,7 but anyone can see that it does not alter the relationship between the 2RS and PR rule. In Fisichella’s version, indeed, the relationship takes the shape we need to develop the critical arguments of the next section, and that is most compatible with our data: a no effect, or null effect, system develops indifferently from the neutralization of high thresholds (with the 2RS), or from low thresholds (with the pure PR rule) and, whatever the track, the common outcome is the extreme multi-partyism shown by Tables 7.2 and 7.3; but to discuss this outcome in detail, we need first to deal with two theoretical attempts at rescuing the constraining strength of the (qualification) threshold.8

7.2 From Duverger, to Sartori, to Cox The first attempt is due to Sartori (1994: 63, 67–8), and wavers somewhat between flexibility and ambiguity. This author agrees with Duverger that

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119

Table 7.2 Number of parties by electoral formula, 1945–2007 Countries

All France

N

116 12

Majoritarian systems

PR systems

N

Main parties

ENEP

ENPP

Main parties

ENEP

ENPP

3.08 (3) 7.33 (7)

2.59 (2.43) 5.19 (5)

2.1 (2) 3.23 (3.25)

6.23 (6) 5.33 (5)

4.27 (3.9) 4.99 (4.65)

3.79 (3.49) 4.71 (4.26)

259 6

Note: The ‘All’ item excludes France. Entries are means and, in brackets, medians.

Table 7.3 Effective number of parliamentary parties by threshold, PR systems, 1945–2007 Threshold

N

Mean

Median

14.6 to 18.8 6 to 10.2 3 to 5.8 0.1 to 2.6

44 56 97 62

2.76 3.5 4.13 4.26

2.69 3.09 3.76 4.19

‘at the first round of voting the voter can and does freely express his first preference’. However – he adds – it is equally ‘intuitive that in singlemember districts the double ballot obtains the same reductive effects of all majoritarian systems . . . and that in small multi-member districts . . . will perform like a strongly impure proportional system’. Voting freedom, indeed, ‘is maximal when there is no threshold (or only a minimal barrier) for admission of the candidates to the second ballot’, but it will progressively fade away as ‘admission to the run-off is filtered by relatively high thresholds, especially when only the two front runners are admitted’. Through this interaction between strategic voting and the threshold, a rank-ordering of restrictiveness materializes, whereby four variants are singled out: strong 2R sub-systems (combining the singlemember district and top-two run-off); strong/feeble sub-systems (with a high second round threshold); the feeble/strong ones (if the threshold is low); and the no threshold and multi-member district’s feeble sub-systems. Given the terminology, and the very concept of a rank-ordering, this stance would seem at odds with Fisichella’s null effect, as it suggests a

120 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

crescendo of constraints from the weak to the strong variant and, thus, an accordingly decreasing number of parties; but, unexpectedly, this logical step fails to occur, and is even explicitly ruled out: ‘The reductive effects on the number of parties of the double ballot’ – Sartori (1994: 240) concludes – ‘cannot be generally predicted with any precision’! This rather paradoxical closure may be partly due to the fact that Sartori is surely as aware as Fisichella that the 2RS historically ‘coexists with all possible classes of party format’; but another, and probably crucial, explanation is that he acknowledges the relativity of the threshold in the given context. The acknowledgment, indeed, is explicit enough, and all the more important as it concerns the strong/feeble variant, i.e. the 2R French legislative rules we are focusing on here. As mentioned above, this variant combines single-member districts and high thresholds for admission to the second round; but – the threshold notwithstanding – Sartori’s view (1996: 83, italics added) is that the Fifth Republic practices ‘allow third dispersed parties to avoid, by bargaining, an excessive underrepresentation’. In short, we are led back to the crucial resource which feeds the irrepressible French multi-partyism, i.e. the exchange, alliance and blackmail mechanisms made available by the electoral rules. As a consequence, Sartori’s objections, clearly spelled out at the start, weaken through his own reasoning, and almost fade away with the ‘nonexcessive under-representation’ of minor parties. If this were the only difference it makes, indeed, the 2RS as revised by Sartori would probably prove compatible with the comparative-historical data collected by Fisichella.9 And even if one admits that the revision and the null effect might not fully match, a non-excessive under-representation is undoubtedly an approximation to the latter, rather than its contrary. Thus, a true alternative, provided it exists, is to be looked for elsewhere. The most systematic and firmest defence of strategic voting and the threshold within 2RS is Cox’s (1997: 123), whose discussion concerns ‘two main theoretical points. First, when voters are concerned only with the outcome of the current election and have rational expectations, strategic voting plays a role in dual-ballot elections similar to that which it plays in single-ballot SMP elections: acting to limit the number of viable first-round candidates. Second, the limit theoretically applied on the number of first round candidates is M+1, where M refers to the number of first round candidates that can legally qualify for second.’10 Both points are extensively dealt with in Chapter 6 of Cox’s 1997 book, but – once again – the treatment fails to be persuasive. To begin with, the discussion of the first point is especially weak, as it is based on the

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121

plausibility of strategic voting given a known number of candidates with known shares of votes.11 Such arguments, indeed, are nothing but ad hoc examples, which fall logically short of what has to be demonstrated, i.e. the structural equivalence (or the equivalence of systemic incentives) assumed to hold in 2RS and SMP systems alike. In other words, whatever the devised favourable combination of candidates/votes, what is left out of the picture is the incentive to sincere voting provided by the possibility of postponing strategic behaviour to the second round. As SMP systems structurally lack this possibility, a theoretically significant difference arises that should be dealt with by any convincing framework.12 Such a framework would have to integrate the voters’ availability prompted by the electoral rules with the intuitions of Duverger, Parodi, and even Sartori, about strategic entry, i.e. about the tendency of the weakest to enter the first round competition to ‘count’ and ‘be counted’, to signal their indispensability for the second round’s outcome and to exchange it with the appropriate concessions. Though the whole process cannot be discussed here, its quite paradoxical logic is readily apparent: through synergic electors/elites interaction, nothing less than an extensive mobilization of first round sincere voting/entries takes place, with the strategic purpose of viable placement at the second. Moreover, as alliances are more and more struck at the first round, paradoxes multiply and become entrenched: whatever their formula (cross endorsed, or ‘unique’, candidacies, a designated ‘preferred’ competitor among others, desistence),13 strategic coordination evolves from a tool to maximize seats returns to the technique of distributing them, thus greatly strengthening fragmentation and fostering interests in its growth. In sum, both the direction and the outcome of these processes compellingly point towards the very opposite of a ‘Duvergerian equilibrium’, and it is worth remarking that Cox himself should not be astonished at that: indeed, he devotes several pages to ‘non-standard’ varieties of strategic behaviour, i.e. to voting in favour of the weakest parties (1997: Chapters 5, 6); but his remarks concerning the 2RS are limited to a few lines, and make no mention of strategic entry, i.e. the most sophisticated and complex game, whereby rational elites and electors as well coordinate for the maximization of multi-partyism.14 Be that as it may, the paradoxes we have pointed out stand, and confirm the neutralization, or at least the minimization, of the 2RS thresholds, or more precisely, of their crucial deterrence function. This function, of course, is fully operative in SMP systems, where thresholds unambiguously signal the risk of waste and the parties that maximize it; but this turns into an ex post

122 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

function, i.e. into closing the doors of an already empty stable, when the 2RS non-standard coordination strategies pre-allocate the winning candidatures; accordingly, thresholds lose their causal status, and thereby their effects or, at any rate, the effects they have under SMP systems. If these remarks are agreed, Cox’s second point, i.e. his demonstration that ‘the limit theoretically applied on the number of first round candidates is M+1’, becomes untenable in turn. As he explicitly spells out, the demonstration purports to provide an equilibrium solution in order to obviate the difficulty of predicting the system’s effects previously admitted by Sartori; but the proof of equilibrium (namely, the mentioned M+1 rule) is much the same as the one offered for SMP systems, on the premise that the latter’s logic ‘works (mutatis mutandis) for double ballot systems as well’ (Cox, 1997: 127, note 5). As a matter of course, this presupposes an analogous strategic behaviour: in full detail, M+1 (i.e. all candidates standing above the qualification threshold, plus the best loser) is an equilibrium if, and only if, voters ‘destroy candidacies not in the running for a runoff spot, just as in SMP elections they destroy candidacies not in the running for a seat’ (Cox, 1997: 137). But what if the incentives voters, and the elites, face are demonstrably different? In the affirmative case, the answer is that M+1 ceases to be the theoretical upper bound on the number of candidacies, and, thus, loses all predictive power. Given our objections, indeed, strategic voting and strategic entry will push the number of ‘equilibrium’ district candidacies well ahead of it between first and second round; and even pre-electoral alliances designed to limit local candidacies would not ipso facto generate a proportionally reduced national party format. Indeed, as any bargaining logic necessarily implies mutual exchanges, the same coalition will support candidates of different member parties and an overall fragmented pluralism will be unavoidable, whatever the equilibrium within this or that district; thus, if not altogether wrong, the M+1 boundary becomes irrelevant, as Duverger’s propositions are about national party systems (see Chapter 6) or, at any rate, are only of interest in their macro-sociological version. As a matter of fact, this final remark is fully endorsed by Cox himself (1997: 28), who fails however to see the distinct disadvantage his rational choice district-centred approach touches upon here: while extrapolations from micro- to macro-generalizing are, ceteris paribus, consequential when dealing with SMP and proportional systems,15 they fall on the peculiar structural constraints/incentives inherent to the 2RS. After having shown why this is the case on theoretical grounds, let us now turn to some empirical evidence.

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123

7.3 The Fifth Republic party format The previous arguments unambiguously emphasize the paradox: the French legislative 2RS is a majoritarian system from which one should logically expect proportional, or at any rate non-majoritarian, effects. How pronounced these effects are is shown by Tables 7.2 and 7.3, which compare French party numbers with the averages of the remaining 20 democracies studied here. It is readily apparent that the 2RS score is systematically highest: as one might expect, the difference is largest with the majoritarian sub-set; but, perhaps more surprisingly, even proportional systems look significantly less fragmented when one compares main parties and the electoral effective parties, while mean (and median) parliamentary parties are roughly in the same range.16 To be sure, these data could be partly influenced by relatively heterogeneous contextual conditions, i.e. by peculiar country properties that might interfere with the electoral system’s effect. In order to check for this possibility, we have entered in the table the averages scored by French pre-1958 PR systems, which allow for an intra-national comparison providing the most constant environment; but even in this optimally designed comparative setting, fragmentation through the 2RS period exceeds that of the PR era if measured in votes, and only stands lower in terms of seats shares. Leaving aside the latter finding (to which we will return), comparisons make it quite clear that no psychological reductive pressure, i.e. no tendency to votes’ concentration, is detectable; and if whatsoever strategic coordination were to be hypothesized, it should necessarily be a nonstandard one, i.e. coordination in favour of the weakest, or in favour of fragmentation. In other words, the data fully confirm that thresholds (be they first or second round thresholds) are being neutralized or, at any rate, minimized; and to explain why, one cannot but revert to the previous theoretically backed statements: once voided of any power of deterrence through pre-arranged exchange deals, both the 12.5 per cent and the SMP requirements cannot do more than close the doors of empty stables. Thus, Table 7.2 simply confirms an expected conclusion, and a conclusion that points not to the ineffectiveness of SMP rule (as would follow from Cox’s framework), but to the very different working of the 2RS. On the other hand, the extreme multi-partyism ascertained by the table refers to the indicator of the psychological effect, namely votes and votes’ shares; but an advocate of the threshold’s function could object that the 2RS generates a record votes/seats difference and, thus, argue that at least its mechanical effect is definitely majoritarian.17 According

124 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

to our data, indeed, one could dub the 2RS more majoritarian than single ballot systems, as the latter’s parliamentary parties look scarcely more concentrated than the electoral ones: they make for a difference of less than half a point, as against more than two in the case of 2RS (Table 7.2); and the distance becomes even larger if calculated in terms of disproportionality indexes.18 This reading, however, is as easy as it is superficial, first of all because it fails once more to discount the radically different working of the psychological factor. In single ballot systems, indeed, a comparatively marginal votes/seats concentration ratio points to a maximal deterrence effect performed by the threshold, i.e. the ex ante destruction of medium and smaller parties via strategic voting, and/or strategic withdrawal (see Chapter 6); whence, the ‘perfect’ American two-partyism, with its remarkably low disproportionality or, at any rate, a lower one than that of many impure proportional systems. On the one hand, then, to evaluate the mechanical component in isolation from the contextual (or 2RS) structure amounts to a gross underestimation of the total distortion introduced by single ballot systems; on the other hand, an equally unwarranted overestimation of 2RS outcomes may occur for two reasons. First, the latter’s distortions are usually calculated by the difference between the final shares of seats and first round votes; but since the latter are census/survey, not election, votes, the procedure obviously overlooks the fact that, unlikely elections, censuses inherently push towards as large a fragmentation as possible.19 Second, the parties most concerned by the distortions are those on the extremes of the political spectrum, which have no, or very little, chance to place themselves above the threshold. The threshold, though, does eliminate extreme parties simply because their coalition potential is nil, or almost nil;20 and this bars a standardized comparison including these parties, since lack of coalition potential is an irrelevant factor in all remaining majoritarian systems,21 and as a matter of course under PR; but if one had to compare the 2RS net of the extremes, its overall distortions would once again substantially subside. A working solution to such problems could be devised by taking into account only the votes/seats ratios resulting from the outcome of the second round; but the improved comparability would incur the penalty of a blurring of the comparison’s object: once amputated of the first round, is it still the French system we are dealing with? To escape this puzzling outcome, we can try to infer the hypothetically ‘true’ threshold of the 2RS, and the accompanying mechanical effect, from a comparison of French seats concentration with the actual thresholds’ figures of the other systems.

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125

Even here, though, contextual heterogeneities should be discarded, and the fact that the mechanical effects are nothing but a residue of the psychological ones in the single round majoritarian systems bars the utilization of their data.22 In contrast, we have maintained with Duverger that the psychological effect in 2RS works much the same way as in the PR sub-set, which can then be taken as our reference population for a methodologically correct estimation. Table 7.3 shows the relevant data, i.e. a plausible distribution of effective electoral thresholds,23 with the corresponding seats’ shares. If these shares are compared to the 2RS figures in Table 7.2, the first thing to note is that its average 3.2 parliamentary parties matches the 3.5 of PR systems whose thresholds go from a low of 6 per cent to 10 per cent; however, if one takes the medians (more reliable, given the series’ quite strong variations), parties’ shares decrease in PR systems, whereas they stay unchanged in 2RS. As a conclusion, then, French parliamentary concentration is substantially the same as is to be expected within a 3–10 per cent threshold’s range! As a matter of course, this estimation does not purport to give a ‘new’ threshold to the 2RS, but it fully evidences the arbitrariness of the standard quantification of its mechanical effect on the number of parties: we refer to the 35–37.5 per cent figures that the comparative literature extends from the single ballot systems to the 2RS, on theoretical premises against which we have put forward our counter-arguments; whatever their merits, it is a matter of fact, not just an argument, that in the French 2RS representation heavily depends on bargaining ability, and that this ability is in turn conditional upon the opportunities the electoral structure provides to small and medium-sized parties. Thanks to the successful exploitation of these opportunities, thresholds as usually defined, both legal and effective, are neutralized by the most banal and most drastic device, i.e. by the systematic cross-endorsing of candidates of all sizes; and while this neutralization cannot be accounted for by Lijphart, Cox and many others, our estimate is ‘truer’ than theirs in at least one sense: it mirrors the neutralization process, and the mirroring is obviously possible because we move from parties to thresholds, while the standard literature moves from an a priori constructed threshold’s figure. How far astray the standard construction can lead is embodied in its 35–37.5 per cent range, as against our 3–10, but we stress once again that what we aim to do is to expose an obvious overestimation, rather than to recommend a substitute. Indeed, it goes without saying that an a posteriori constructed range has an essentially disrupting function,

126 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

namely, to deny the predictive power of the a priori figure. On the other hand, this is by no means a minor achievement: the disruption leaves us with much the same point already arrived at by Sartori, i.e. that the number of parties cannot be predicted with any precision in 2RS. This being the case, an implication of consequence immediately follows. The implication is that to make use of the French legislative 2RS in comparative research is methodologically incorrect and empirically counterproductive. It goes without saying, indeed, that its grossly overestimated threshold necessarily turns the system into a deviant case, and the size of the deviation is large enough to bias whatever test of Duverger’s propositions. More precisely, the data fit of regressions of the number of parties on the threshold drastically changes according to the choice one makes: to anticipate one of Chapter 9’s tests, the r2 explained variance amounts to 46 per cent (of main parties), 19 per cent and 29 per cent (of the effective electoral and parliamentary parties) if the 2RS is ruled out (Table 9.3); with it, however, figures fall to 32 per cent, 11 per cent and 26 per cent respectively! These results unequivocally show how fruitful the removal of such a monumental outlier is, but to avoid charges of arbitrariness, the outlier’s removal should be carefully justified, and this is the reason why we have drawn attention to its peculiar mechanisms of threshold neutralization. Since these mechanisms are not (or are only marginally) allowed for in single ballot majoritarian systems and under PR, the 2RS stands out as an unicum; consequently, to admit it all along with the other systems would mean bringing into our sample an amount of heterogeneity that is incompatible with the requisites of the ‘most similar systems’ design; and since these requisites are crucial to the reliability of comparative research, to withdraw the case is both appropriate and methodologically cogent. Apart from methodological requirements, the withdrawal is recommended, if not essential, in order to optimize the study of the deviant case itself: its peculiarities, indeed, are best dealt with through an intensive research strategy, i.e. a strategy out of reach of large-N comparative design. Through such a strategy, idiosyncratic properties can be fully explored by diachronic/qualitative insights, of the kind we find in one of the best accounts of the working of 2RS (Fisichella, 2003). Just as useful, moreover, might be a small range comparison between pairs of systems/countries: we ourselves propose this in the next section by pairing the French 2RS and the Italian MMS to explain the under-representation of the extremes. Finally, the foregoing does not concern the top-two runoff system used to elect the president, whose structure is much more

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127

amenable to generalization, and whose empirical counterparts are relatively numerous.24 In short, then, the crucial point is not that the French case is not comparable at all; rather, the chosen strategy should remain flexible, conditional upon the properties to be studied and the researcher’s goals. What counts most is that one should be able to justify what is being done in this or that specific setting. As we have provided all the needed justifications, it follows that the 2RS can be legitimately excluded from our tests of Duverger’s propositions; but our own reservations and specifications should make clear that this choice is limited to just one component of the complex institutional architecture of the Fifth Republic, and does not, nor could it, claim to provide a global account of its working.25

7.4 Anti-system parties This chapter focuses on the number of parties of 2RS, that is, the most relevant topic given the book’s structure and aims; but much of the literature also deals with the type of parties the system favours or discriminates against; and since even this debate needs some amendment, we have to survey it shortly in order to show why. In the earliest discussion of the topic, Fisichella (1970, 1984, 2003: 325–37), and later Sartori (1994: 67–9) have argued that the 2RS underrepresents, or eliminates altogether, anti-system parties or, in the most recent version, ‘extremist, extreme, and isolated’ parties.26 Since they are far too heterogeneous or, at any rate, they stand on the lateral (right and left) ends of the political spectrum, such parties indeed have little or no access to the alliances needed to get seats. Moreover, even when involved in an alliance, their success rate will be lower than that of moderate, middle-of-the-road candidates because winning the seat requires a support maximization capacity and this capacity is usually lacking for anti-system candidates for one, or more, of the following reasons: first, these candidates can count on support from electors of just one side, while the moderate ‘half wings’ occupy the ideal placement to receive votes from allied (and even non-allied) parties to their left and their right; second, even electors belonging to the same camp may choose to desert extremist/extreme candidates because the vote has limited ‘transferability’, and/or because a more attractive (i.e. moderate) candidate is presented by the opposite coalition; third, since the outcome extremist electors fear most is always the victory of the opposite side, they will always feel compelled to support massively even the most unattractive

128 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

common moderate candidate; finally, moderates are usually less disciplined and less thoroughly organized than anti-system parties, especially those of communist ascendancy: whence arises an additional source of bias through higher rates of abstention/desertion suffered by the latter. Taken together, these arguments are theoretically robust, quite widely held (Cox, 1997: 138), and fully supported by the systematically strong under-representation of the French Communist Party and the total exclusion from parliament of the far right National Front (see Chapter 3). They are then to be agreed to unreservedly; but reservations do arise regarding a concomitant statement explicitly formulated by Fisichella (2003: 358–9), namely that the extremists’ under-representation is an exclusive property of the 2RS. The phenomenon, we have just seen, stems from the inability, or low ability, of extremists to strike alliances and/or to maximize their profitability; and this works precisely against Fisichella’s statement, since alliances may conceivably emerge in singleballot majoritarian systems as well, provided that electoral norms allow for, or encourage, them and the party system is strongly fragmented and highly fluid.27 To be sure, the above conditions are very restrictive, and have failed to materialize in any relevant real-world system, whether in Australia, the UK, the US, Canada or New Zealand.28 This is the reason why Fisichella (2003: 358–9) is right when remarking that ‘no such experience [i.e. no experience of extremes’ under-representation] is available in SMP systems’. The lack of appropriate examples, however, means that we have fallen short of a proof, not that we have a proof of the contrary, i.e. a refutation. The hypothesis, then, stands, and not just because not disproved. Indeed, one potentially supporting case exists that couples SMP rule with all the conditions needed for a standardized comparison: relevant extremist/extreme parties, strong fragmentation, and legal norms favouring multiple electoral alliances and the cross-endorsement of uninominal candidates. The example we refer to comes from the SMP arena of the 1994–2001 Italian mixed system (see Chapter 5). Table 7.4 provides the relevant data, i.e. the information needed on the strength of the most relevant extremist/extreme party, the Communist Refoundation (henceforth, CR), compared with the centre-left coalition.29 In the first two elections with this system (1994, 1996), CR joined this mainly moderate alliance, but its returns were quite disappointing: as can be seen, the CR votes/seats difference is systematically negative, whereas moderates were regularly over-represented. In the 2001 elections, then, the party decided to run in the PR arena, refused to enter the SMP centre-left coalition,

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129

Table 7.4 Under-representation of an extremist party in the Italian SMP arena, 1994–2001 Election years

1994 1996 2001

Votes/seats difference

SMP vote minus PR vote

CR

CL

CR

CL

−0.3 −5.4 −5.0

0.5 17.8 4.9

−2.8 −7.2 –

−1.3 1.6 3.9∗

Note: CR = Communist Refoundation Party; CL = Centre-left moderate parties. The votesseats difference is calculated by subtracting the national percentage of SMP seats from that of party/coalition PR votes. *The calculation includes CR PR vote. Sources: Pappalardo (2006); own calculations.

and even avoided instructing its voters to endorse the latter’s common candidates. This notwithstanding, these candidates received a total vote higher (+3.9 per cent) than the total PR votes for the centre-left coalition plus CR (Table 7.4), and this fact makes it clear that extremist voters massively supported moderate candidates in order to obstruct the victory of the centre-right camp. The same support, however, had failed to materialize in favour of CR candidates when they ran for the centre-left alliance in the two previous elections: indeed, their strongly negative 1994–6 SMP/PR votes’ differences (Table 7.4, column three) unequivocally document the moderates’ ‘flight’ into abstention, and/or the opposite side, in order to avoid voting for a distasteful extremist. Thus, one, and only one, conclusion follows: CR was penalized by the Italian SMP and, mutatis mutandis, this likens its fate to that of the French National Front, or the French Communist Party. On the other hand, we have to admit that the differences between the two systems should not be underestimated: to be sure, the French pure 2RS electoral structure is not fully amenable to standardized comparison with the Italian mixed one; moreover, the latter was abandoned for a new PR system in 2005 (see Chapter 4), thus making it impossible to track the medium- to long-term support for the extremist party; and we should therefore wait for more evidence before moving to a fullyfledged conclusion. Be that as it may, one cannot fail to remark the ironic side of the whole story told in this chapter: the supposedly exclusive property of 2RS (i.e. extremes’ under-representation) does not seem to hold; conversely, its impact on the number of parties is wholly different from SMP, i.e. at odds with what the standard literature maintains!

8 Redesigning Cases and Indicators

8.1 Electoral systems between stability and change The presentation of the debate about electoral systems through the previous chapters has been supported by a number of examples and by anticipations of empirical data. Most quoted information and data come from the main available theoretical contributions, namely Duverger, Cox and Sartori, whose works also provide model qualitative comparative tests of electoral rules’ effects. While we highly value the latter, our focus here will be a systematic quantitative test, of the kind pioneered by Rae (1967) and brought to maturity by Lijphart’s (1994a) research. Indeed, the latter work will be our own reference point, though we will introduce more than a few changes in its research design, indicators and independent variables, and – as a consequence – will end up with partly different, and some new, conclusions. Before discussing any differences, or amendments, we emphasize that we share with Lijphart a crucial choice of research design, and the equally important stipulation it implies as to the measurement of electoral systems’ stability and change. The research design’s choice concerns the unit of analysis. In Rae’s pioneering work, and also in most recent literature, the unit of analysis is the election year, with the accompanying (majoritarian or proportional) rule. To be sure, this extremely disaggregated approach has its advantages, including simplicity, straightforwardness and the greatest suitability for statistical treatment. However, as Lijphart remarks (1990: 482, 1994a: 102), two or more ‘elections under the same rule are not really independent cases, but merely repeated operations of the same electoral system’. The only methodologically appropriate treatment, then, is to reduce these cases to a single observation by computing the average values taken by the relevant, independent and 130

Redesigning Cases and Indicators

131

Table 8.1 Majoritarian systems: independent variables, continuity and changes, 1945–2007 Countries

Number and years of elections

Formula

Australia

1-1946 15-49/83 8-84/04 20-1945/06 7-1958/81 5-1988/07 17-1946/93 17-1945/05

AV

31-1946/06

Canada France New Zealand United Kingdom United States

Assembly size

Effective threshold

Total net volatility

Change from 1990?

35

35 35 35 35 35

13.2 5.89 6.63 11.17 13.2 15.18 7.82 5.98

NO

SMP 2RS 2RS SMP SMP

74 122.2 148.37 276.85 470.14 555 85.69 637.76

SMP

435.13

35

3.69

NO

NO NO YES NO

Note: In this and the following tables, Lijphart’s data to 1 December 1990 have been updated to 10–17 June 2007 (i.e. to the French legislative elections) and thoroughly recalculated. The update has followed Lijphart’s rules, but for a variant concerning the proportional systems’ thresholds listed in the next table. While Lijphart averaged figures for assembly size and the number of constituencies and then moved to compute thresholds, we have determined the election-by-election thresholds first, and then averaged them by the concerned electoral system. The variant, however, entails very marginal differences, unable as such to affect the comparability of the two researches. Sources: Bartolini and Mair (1990); Mackie and Rose (1991, 1997); Lijphart (1994a: chapter 2); Caramani (2000); European Journal of Political Research, various years; Electoral Studies, various years; Wikipedia List of Election Results; own calculations.

dependent variables, through a whole time period.1 For example, the US never changed its electoral system through more than a century, and an ‘equilibrium’ figure for this system cannot be anything but the average number of parties across all election years concerned.2 This procedure, in turn, has its own faults and, taking account of them, someone might well argue that ‘there is no wholly satisfying methodology’ to define our unit of analysis (Ordeshook and Shvetsova, 1994: 101–3); on the other hand, the objections put forward are all of the practical variety, and can be obviated, or minimized, through (justified) data manipulations,3 while – we maintain – preserving the independence of cases is an unavoidable requisite of scientific treatment. In Tables 8.1 and 8.2, then, we show the relevant basic data, i.e. averages by ‘electoral system’ of the formula, assembly size and the effective threshold, plus the total net volatility. Besides volatility (to which we will return in section 8.3), these variables operationalize the crucial properties of the

Table 8.2

Mixed-member and PR systems: independent variables, continuity and changes, 1945–2007 Number and years of election

Formula

Assembly size

Austria

8-1945/70 6-1971/90 5-1994/06

LR-Droop LR-Hare LR-Hare

165 183 183

Belgium

16-1946/91 2-1995/99 2-2003/07

d’Hondt d’Hondt d’Hondt

Denmark

4-1945/53 3-1953/60 17-1964/05

Finland France

Total net volatility

Change from 1990?

8.5 2.6 4

5.4 4.1 11.58

YES

211.37 150 150

4.8 3.3 5

8.67 11.2 13

YES

LR-Hare LR-Hare LR-Hare

148.5 175 175

1.6 2.6 2

11.67 6.53 11.17

NO

18-1945/07

d’Hondt

200

5.4

7.45

NO

3-1945/46 2-1951/56

529.33

12.9

5.7

NO

1-1986

d’Hondt LR-Hare+ d’Hondt + SMP d’Hondt

544 556

12.7 11.7

20.1 13.2

1-1949 1-1953 8-1957/83 6-1987/05

d’Hondt d’Hondt d’Hondt LR-Hare

402 487 496.88 619.5

5 5 5 5

21.2 7.14 7.65

1-1974 2-1977/81 1-1985 3-1989/90 4-1993/04

d’Hondt d’Hondt d’Hondt LR-Droop d’Hondt

134.27 184.77 184.77 300 184.77

18.8 16.1 14.7 3.3 15.4

22.2 4.9 4.03 7.23

Ireland

18-1948/07

STV

154.89

17

Italy

1-1946 2-1948/53

LR-Droop/Imperiali Reinforced LR-Im.

556 582

Germany

Greece

Effective threshold

0.1 2.4

NO

YES

8.83

NO YES

18.55

132

Countries

9-1958/92 3-1994/01 1-2006

LR-Imperiali SMP + LR-Hare LR-Hare

626.22 475/155 617

2 35/4 2

8.01 11.95/23.47 8.6

1-1946 18-1947/93 4-1996/05

Limited vote SNTV SMP + d’Hondt

464 487.39 300/185

8 16.4 35/4.3

7.28 11.5/13.4

The Netherlands

3-1946/52 16-1956/06

d’Hondt d’Hondt

100 150

1 0.67

5.6 12.46

NO

New Zealand

4-1996/05

Sainte-Laguë

120.25

5

17.75

YES

Norway

2-1945/49 9-1953/85 5-1989/05

d’Hondt Modified S. Laguë Modified S. Laguë

150 152.44 165.8

9.2 8.9 4

7 7.7 16.1

NO

Portugal

12-1975/05

d’Hondt

238.83

Spain

9-1977/04

d’Hondt

350

Sweden

1-1948 6-1952/68 12-1970/06

d’Hondt Modified S.Laguë Modified S.Laguë

Switzerland

15-1947/03

d’Hondt

Japan

YES

6

11.79

NO

10.2

13.05

NO

230 231.67 349.17

8.5 8.4 4

9.8 4.4 10.05

NO

196.73

9

5.84

NO

133

Note: In multi-tier districting systems, the shown formula is the one operating at the level which is decisive for the proportionality of the election. Following Lijphart (1994a: 44, Table 2.7), the Greek systems up to 1985, as well as that of 1993/2004, are given the formula (d’Hondt) whose logic best matches the overall outcome of their four levels of seats distribution; the threshold, in turn, represents the weighted mean of each tier’s estimated values. Similarly, the mainly PR 1951/56 French system is characterized by three formulae, whose averaged effects are taken as the system’s threshold (Lijphart 1994a: 47, Table 2.8). The 5% Belgian threshold is an especially gross approximation, as it is the legal figure at provincial level, and was never applied in some Brussels districts. Volatility is unavailable for the first electoral systems of Germany, Greece, Italy and Japan, and was separately computed for the PR and SMP arenas of post-1990s Italian and Japanese mixed-member systems. Sources: See Table 8.1.

134 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

electoral structure as usually singled out in the literature,4 and presented in full detail in the first part of this book. Our operationalization, in turn, mirrors the computing guidelines adopted by Lijphart5 and faithfully adheres to his criterion for the independence of cases: a passage from PR to majoritarian rule, and/or a change of 20 per cent or more of figures for district magnitude, national thresholds, and assembly size, do differentiate the concerned system as much as needed to reclassify it and to expect different effects from the previous one (Lijphart, 1994a: 13–14). This criterion, of course, is merely conventional, and as such surely not the only one conceivable, legitimate or most frequently used. Indeed, many scholars simply put the border between majoritarian and PR systems, i.e. classify according to ‘fundamental changes’, like those typically occurring in cases of democratic transition or instaurations. As remarked by Nohlen (1984: 217–18), however, ‘fundamental changes are rare, and do emerge only in exceptional circumstances’, since electoral systems cannot ‘be constructed deliberately and changed freely’. And this is precisely the problem: given Nohlen’s remarks, debate becomes superfluous, as the independent ‘electoral system’ variable ceases to vary, or will vary with such a small frequency that no one would expect it to explain much more differentiated properties like the number of parties.6 This discouraging conclusion could be countered by noting that large-scale changes are historically more numerous than those counted by Nohlen (Sartori, 1994: 28), and that the early 1990s reforms in Italy, Japan and New Zealand signal an unprecedented acceleration of replacements of whole, and already well-established, PR or majoritarian, systems. Even so, however, change rates remain relatively limited (Katz, 2005: 58–9) and, anyway, below the figures required for reliable statistical treatment. In our view, then, the most fruitful strategy is to take advantage of the relativism allowed for by the conventional nature of our classification criteria. Otherwise put, conventional criteria by definition are to be evaluated contextually, i.e. according to the design and the aims of a given research work. Thus, in the context of a study on regime transition it goes without saying that only ‘fundamental’ changes of electoral rules are of interest, and should be singled out; here, however, we want just to test the psychological and mechanical effects of rules’ change on the number of parties (and government composition) of consolidated democracies; and this limited purpose may in principle be pursued by taking into account less than fundamental changes, though how less fundamental is harder to say a priori. A rule of thumb, however, suggests that Lijphart’s (and our own) 20 per cent mark is a plausibly satisfying approximation: with such a criterion,

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135

indeed, the electoral systems’ variability grows as much as needed to allow for the statistical manipulation of electoral thresholds and assembly sizes; and, on the other hand, a 20 per cent difference does suffice to grant the independence of cases, thus minimizing the occurrence of spurious regression findings.7 While statistical estimates will be shown in Chapter 9, Tables 8.1 and 8.2 give a detailed account of the growth of variability attained through the post-war period. As is readily seen, a large majority of the concerned countries (13 out of a total of 21, i.e. 62 per cent) have experienced a change of electoral system; and since some display more than one change, the overall number of observations rises to 51. Thus, beneath ‘fundamental changes’ (at any rate, occurring here and there), manipulation of electoral structure is not that uncommon, though differences do surface as to the frequency and depth of enacted reforms. It seems, indeed, that SMP/AV systems are comparatively less amenable to manipulation: changes involve half of the population (see Table 8.1), while only 3 out of 15 PR countries (i.e. Finland, Ireland and Switzerland) have kept one and the same electoral system since 1945 (Table 8.2). On the other hand, change from majoritarian systems are – when they occur – always wholesale and abrupt, as shown by the jump from 2RS to PR (France, 1985), or the adoption of a German-like mixed-member system in New Zealand (1993). This is, of course, the correlate of a more rigid, or less flexible, formula, whose comprehensive adoption or rejection is thus likely to be prompted by markedly critical, though not necessarily explosive, conjunctures. By the same token, transitions from, and to, this or that variety of highly flexible PR are surely less traumatic and/or less related to large-scale calculations or consequences; but the general principle is not without exceptions, since France has been wavering in and out of the two major classes, and ‘fundamental changes’ from PR to MMM systems have occurred in Italy and Japan. Finally, the last column of both tables focuses on changes having taken place in the most recent sub-period, which – as we shall see – is of crucial relevance for our tests in Chapter 9; as is readily apparent, since the early 1990s the frequency of changes is visibly falling, as they now involve just a few countries (6). This finding poses some puzzling questions to the literature on electoral systems, and will open the way to a significant theoretical and empirical innovation; but in the present context the relevant remark is that the lower frequency should be standardized by a shorter span of time (about 18 years, as against the previous 46); moreover, the wholesale transitions of Italy, Japan and New Zealand all took place through the 1990s, as well as the wave of major Belgian reforms that

136 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

have reduced the Lower House size by 30 per cent, suppressed symmetric bicameralism, and transferred key competences to sub-national assemblies. Quite obviously, then, an unprecedented number of in depth reforms is under way, and an equally unprecedented political debate over the reform topic is spreading all over the Western world (see Chapters 3, 4, 5). This, in turn, might mean that it is time to discard, or at least to downgrade significantly, Nohlen’s statement about the limits of electoral change;8 but whatever the new frontier, the legitimacy of our classification has been thoroughly defended, and its empirical fruitfulness will soon become apparent.

8.2 Comparable and non-comparable cases As already said, our tests will follow Lijphart’s framework with some important amendments. In Tables 8.1 and 8.2, the amendments concern the relevant population and electoral volatility. Our population, to begin with, was discussed in general terms in Chapter 1, but will now have to be defended against some more specific choices of Lijphart. Lijphart lists six countries that do not appear among our own, and adds the European elections to those for national parliaments. This allows him to bring the total number of observations, and ceteris paribus the scope of his generalizations, up to 69 electoral systems. The problem, however, is that the larger scope brings in a methodologically questionable heterogeneity, i.e. an excessive stretching of the ceteris paribus clause. More to the point, four of Lijphart’s countries (Costa Rica, Iceland, Luxembourg, Malta) do not count more than a few hundred thousand electors, as against millions, or tens of millions, in the larger ones. Given Lijphart’s unit of analysis, the related paradox is that the largest case (the US) is counted just once in all aggregate analyses, since it has never changed its electoral system, while the micro-democracies have been more unstable and, thus, are given disproportionate weight: overall, the four countries turn into 9 observations, i.e. 13 per cent of the total number (Lijphart, 1994a: 161–2). The overestimation, in turn, magnifies a peculiar feature of these cases, namely, the fact that they are longstanding PR systems and have significantly less parties than the sub-set average, or even a ‘perfect’ two-party format (Malta). As a cumulative consequence, Lijphart’s conclusion cannot but be strongly affected; and this translates into a substantial bias, since we know that the small party systems of these countries are mostly explained by a single variable (demographic size), which has nothing to do with institutional or, for

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that matter, socio-economic and cultural factors (Anckar, 2000). Since we (and Lijphart as well) do not deal at all with size, to discard these cases is imperative, if undue distortions are to be avoided. As seen already in Chapters 1 and 6, another country included by Lijphart (India) more resembles a competitive oligarchy than the typical mass Western democracies and is characterized, moreover, by an unstructured, or at most semi-structured, party system (Sartori, 1994: 41, and note 20). Since systemic structuring decisively affects the projection from the district to the national party format, Indian SMP rule is an a priori no effect system, and this fact, if not regime heterogeneity, should once again lead to the exclusion of one at least puzzling case. In turn, extreme party fluidity, a permanent inflow of immigrants, and the guerrilla warfare which feed Israel’s chronic state of emergency are obvious, and powerful, inhibitors of a ‘normal’ working of electoral rules.9 And, finally, it is well known that elections to the European Parliament belong to a class apart, i.e. they share a whole range of structural and functional ‘second order’ features which make them very different from elections to national parliaments (Reif and Schmitt, 1980, 1997; Bardi, 2002). So, why mix such strange bedfellows, and without a single word of justification? Since we cannot find a convincing answer, our option is to align ourselves with the more restrictive stand once taken by Lijphart himself, whose early methodological writings (1975), and even his 1994 book (Chapter 4), support, or accord higher scientific status to, the most similar systems’ design research strategy. At any rate, to focus on the 21 most homogeneous democracies here studied is surely the safest choice, and the fact that the maximum number of cases falls from 69 to 5110 appears a minor evil, when weighed against the greater reliability of the conclusions that working on a truly comparable population might secure.

8.3 Volatility as an independent variable Aside from electoral systems’ independent variables, Tables 8.1 and 8.2 list the average figures for volatility, i.e. the classic indicator of cleavages’ (in)stability and the (de)freezing of cleavage-based parties and party systems (Lipset and Rokkan, 1967; Bartolini and Mair, 1990). As repeatedly anticipated, volatility will be used in the next chapter to integrate the explanatory power of electoral rules by controlling for party systems’ structuration. This use is an innovation both in respect to Lijphart and the whole relevant literature, but meets with a preliminary objection that deserves careful scrutiny.

138 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

In the context of Sartori’s projection argument, systemic structuring, and thereby volatility, do affect the national format of the party system; but several authors have remarked that the causal sequence might conceivably be reversed, i.e. more volatility would be fed by a growing political offer, or by the entry of more parties into the marketplace (Pedersen, 1983; Bartolini and Mair, 1990: 130–45).11 As a consequence, what we have would be an endogenous variable, an effect, rather than the cause, or at any rate an interdependency relationship, whereby volatility and the number of parties do influence each other. Without denying the latter variant a partial plausibility (given that unambiguously one-directional causation processes are very unusual in social sciences), the endogenous production of volatility may be easily excluded, or minimized, through a logical argument and more than one empirical proof. The logical argument starts from the self-evident premise that the change of the party format materializes through the formation, and the success, of new parties. If one supposes constant (and then non-influential) electoral rules, as well as rational political entrepreneurs, new entries will be activated by the perception of, and information on, declining organizational and ideological bonds between electors and the established parties, while the challengers’ success will be maximized by a real, growing voters’ availability to change their choices, and the related higher volatility. On these grounds, in sum, volatility is, and cannot but be, the behavioural correlate of dis-alignments, and the related realignments, which govern the elites’ entry decisions; and this is all the more so as it can be readily proven that, without that correlate, no change, or almost no change, of party format will take place. Our proof is empirical, and – as said – at least twofold. To begin with, let us check the correlation between volatility and the number of parties: with a Pearson’s r of 0.38 and an r2 of 0.14 through 1945–2007, the correlation is weak enough to suggest that, whatever the number explains, the crucial causes of volatility are elsewhere.12 But if volatility is due to extraneous causes (whichever they might be), endogeneity cannot be a problem (at any rate, not a serious one), and the significant contribution given by this variable (plus the electoral threshold) to the prediction of party formats (see Chapter 9) may be legitimately viewed as a corroboration of our theoretical argument. The argument, however, is more directly supported by Tables 8.3 and 8.4, whose evidence unmistakably suggests that, besides being independent from the number of parties, volatility is also a condition for their variations. Through the tables, such variations are classified by four postwar sub-periods, and according to two different operational definitions:

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139

Table 8.3 All parties by time periods, 1945–2007 Years 1945–1960 1961–1975 1976–1989 1990–2007 1945–2007

N

Min

Max

Mean

Standard deviation

% change

87 81 89 98 355

3 4 3 6 3

17 16 21 24 24

7.61 (7) 8.37 (8) 10.85 (10) 11.96 (11) 9.8 (9)

2.92 2.99 4.20 3.73 3.94

9.98 29.63 10.23 −18.06

Note: All parties are parties with at least 0.2% of the votes, when available statistics allow singling them out. The miscellaneous ‘Others’ are counted as a single party. Entries within brackets are medians. US excluded as its constant party number distorts results. Change is calculated in % of the previous average. Sources: See Table 8.1.

Table 8.4 Main parties by time period, 1945–2007 Years 1945–1960 1961–1975 1976–1989 1990–2007 1945–2007

N

Min

Max

Mean

Standard deviation

% change

87 81 89 98 355

2 2 3 3 2

8 10 12 11 12

5.06 (5) 5.37 (5) 5.57 (5) 6.40 (6) 5.63 (5)

1.73 2.26 2.32 2.15 2.18

6.13 3.72 14.90 −12.03

Note: Main parties are parties with at least 2% of the votes. Entries within brackets are medians. US excluded as its constant party number distorts results. Change is calculated in % of the previous average. Sources: See Table 8.1.

the most inclusive one takes into account even the smallest, and/or ephemeral, parties (Table 8.3); the second one, instead, lists only successful parties, i.e. parties winning, and usually carrying through, 2 per cent or more of the votes (Table 8.4). Whatever the definition, however, the first relevant remark prompted by both tables is that a more or less protracted period of stability is followed by a strong acceleration. Stability, moreover, is of unequal length: it extends through the first post-war three and a half decades if one considers all parties, but lasts until the early 1990s as long as the main parties are concerned. Leaving aside the difference for the moment, this more or less late dynamism poses questions (why not earlier? and why at that given moment?) which imply that the growth of the number is more a dependent than an independent variable; and this in and by itself is a problem for whoever wants to explain something by the political offer; but the crucial step, it goes

140 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

without saying, is to establish where the party number’s growth might have come from. This question does not lend itself to easy or neat answers because the motivations, and the incentives, of political entrepreneurs are manifold, and, more often than not, idiosyncratic or plainly unknown. At any rate, the known incentives surely include the institutional (not just electoral) factors, whose weight, however, should not be overestimated in the case at hand. Below, indeed, we will see that the number’s growth is almost generalized through our population, i.e. it takes place even in a constant electoral context, and even in the least favourable majoritarian systems.13 Another incentive is volatility, and – we maintain – its plausibility is definitely greater. As shown in Chapter 1, indeed, volatility peaks up at the beginning of the 1990s, and peaks up faster in majoritarian than in PR systems (Tables 1.3, 1.4). Since the peaking matches the growth of main parties’ number (and the latter’s timing has no self-evident alternative explanation), the new incentive forcefully steps in: as just said, new entrepreneurs have perceived the electorates’ availability, have entered the marketplace, and have succeeded thanks to its volatility. The crucial step of the sequence here is success (defined by the 2 per cent votes’ threshold), and it is worth stressing why: first, and most obviously, only successful parties make a difference, i.e. translate, or will most probably translate, into a stable growth of the number of competitors; otherwise put, success, and success only, will generate a new ‘equilibrium’ format, i.e. the very object of electoral laws’ predictions; and this leads in turn to the second reason, namely, the comparison between the growth timing of successful and unsuccessful parties. In this connection, we remember once again that the ‘all party’ figures (Table 8.3) start climbing some fifteen years earlier than the sub-set of main parties, and, to be sure, this could be explained by incentives provided by symptoms of ‘de-freezing’, or destructuring, already apparent through the mid-1970s.14 The explanation, in turn, could be more or less agreed upon, but is, at any rate, less relevant than the undisputable information conveyed by our tables: obviously enough, the 1970s de-freezing was sufficient to stimulate new entries, but not as pervasive, intense and enduring as needed to translate into an equal timing of successful parties’ growth; the latter, indeed, would not materialize until the early 1990s, i.e. at the very peak of the de-freezing process. To put it differently, willing (and optimist) entrepreneurs may well precociously step in, as Table 8.3 suggests; but the fact that they themselves (or others) would have started succeeding much later (Table 8.4), is the definitive proof of our argument, i.e. that willingness and the optimism of political offer are

Redesigning Cases and Indicators

141

deemed to fail (and will then be of little of no consequence for the party system format) without the appropriate amount of electoral volatility.

8.4 Dependent variables: the effective number of parties and its alternative Tables 8.5, 8.6 and 8.7 list the indicators that the independent variables are supposed to influence: the number of parties and the type of parliamentary majorities. Following the literature’s widespread usage, Table 8.5 Majoritarian systems: dependent variables, 1945–2007 Countries and electoral systems

Main parties

ENEP

ENPP

Absolute majorities

Manufactured majorities

Australia

1 2 3

2 2.8 3.5

2.27 2.31 2.66

2.03 1.91 2

1 1 1

1 0.87 1

Canada

1

4.3

3.24

2.49

0.6

0.55

France

1 2

6.9 8

4.97 5.51

3.5 2.84

0.29 0.4

0.29 0.4

New Zealand

1

3

2.53

1.96

1

0.82

United Kingdom

1

3.24

2.8

2.16

0.94

0.94

United States

1

2

2.06

1.94

1

0.23

Note: The Australian Liberal and National parties, as well as their predecessors, have been computed as a single party. Main parties include all actors with at least 2% of the votes, whereas the effective number of electoral and parliamentary parties (ENEP and ENPP) are computed according to Laakso and Taagepera (1979). Figures for parliamentary majorities from absolute votes’ majorities, and majorities ‘manufactured’ by the electoral system from relative majorities, are expressed in frequency values. Sources: Lijphart (1994a: Appendix B); see Table 8.1.

Table 8.6 Mixed-member systems: dependent variables, 1945–2007 Countries and electoral systems Italy Japan

1 1

Main parties

ENEP

ENPP

PR

SMP

PR

SMP

10 5.5

3.67 5

6.99 4.14

3.22 3.34

PR

SMP

5.31 2.48 3.68 2.19

Absolute majorities

Manufactured majorities

PR

SMP

PR

0 0

0.67 1

0 0

SMP 0.67 1

Note: Data are separately computed for the PR and SMP arenas. Italian electoral and parliamentary coalitions are treated as single actors in order to compute both party numbers and majorities in the SMP arena. Sources: See Table 8.1.

142 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters Table 8.7 PR systems: dependent variables, 1945–2007 Countries and electoral systems

Main parties

ENEP

ENPP

Absolute majorities

Manufactured majorities

3.62 3.33 5

2.48 2.51 3.61

2.25 2.42 3.38

0.25 0.5 0

0.25 0 0

5.47 9.84 8.9

4.87 8.54 7.47

0.06 0 0

0.06 0 0

Austria

1 2 3

Belgium

1 2 3

Denmark

1 2 3

6 7 8.24

4.07 3.84 5.11

3.96 3.66 4.83

0 0 0

0 0 0

Finland

1

7.22

5.59

5.04

0

0

France

1 2 3

5 6.5 6

4.59 5.75 4.65

4.23 5.83 3.90

0 0 0

0 0 0

Germany

1 2

8 6

4.81 3.31

4.01 2.79

0 0

0 0

3 4 1 2 3 4 5

3.75 5 4 4.5 3 3 5.25

2.56 3.24 2.74 3.21 2.58 2.64 2.75

2.38 2.92 1.72 2.22 2.15 2.37 2.23

0.13 0 1 1 1 0 1

0 0 0 1 1 0 1

Ireland

1 1

4.61 7

3.28 4.69

2.87 4.39

0.22 0

0.17 0

Italy

2 3 4

7.5 7.56 10

3.55 4.36 5.5

3.05 3.87 5.04

0.5 0 0

0.5 0 0

Japan

1 2

5 5.22

7.78 3.55

5.76 2.93

0 0.61

0 0.44

The Netherlands

1 2

7.33 7.31

4.88 5.11

4.6 4.8

0 0

0 0

Greece

7.5 11 11

New Zealand

1

6.5

3.86

3.49

0

0

Norway

1

6

3.87

2.92

1

1

2 3

6.56 7

3.77 5.18

3.27 4.51

0.22 0

0.22 0

Portugal

1

4.5

3.33

2.83

0.42

0.25

Spain

1

5

3.60

2.66

0.33

0.33

Sweden

1 2 3

5 5 6.17

3.43 3.30 3.91

3.06 3.11 3.68

0 0.17 0

0 0 0

Switzerland

1

8.4

5.78

5.24

0

0

Note: The German CDU/CSU is counted as a single party. Sources: See Table 8.1.

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143

and the choice of Lijphart himself, the number of parties is operationalized, inter alia, through the ‘effective’ measure devised by Laakso and Taagepera (1979), and Taagepera and Shugart (1989: 77–91). This measure aims at discounting minor parties, that are deemed to make little or no difference, and accordingly computes the inverse of the sum of their relative sizes, i.e. their weighted (squared) percentages of votes/seats (see Chapter 2). The related indexes, then, express the level of concentration in the concerned systems, and – we maintain – do require a preliminary scrutiny since their relevance is not universal, but conditional upon the theoretical hypotheses at hand.15 In this section, we will precisely focus on this scrutiny or, more specifically, on the following topics: whether it is appropriate or not to test the laws on electoral systems by concentration measures; whether there are differences in this connection between the psychological and the mechanical effect; and, in the latter case, how to account for such differences. Before entering our own remarks, it is worth stressing that nothing is said on these topics by Taagepera and Shugart, or by their predecessor, Rae (1967: 53–8): all seem to believe that the concentration index, and the earlier fractionalization index, is an all-purpose measure.16 This, however, need not to be so since, in principle, measurement should be previously justified through substantive, qualitative, knowledge (Sartori, 1994: 35–6); and, in our view, the case in point falls short of the justification because what the index measures is not what is predicted by the electoral laws or, at any rate, not what is predicted by the psychological effect. Let us, then, move on to show why this is the case. From Duverger to the actual reformulations, the conceptualization of the psychological effect has never changed: strategic voting, and/or the entry/withdrawal decisions of political elites, lead to expected decreases/increases of the number of parties, and the most appropriate measure of such processes should obviously be able to catch them without, or with only minimal, distortions. As is equally obvious, ‘distortion’ here means any overestimate, or underestimate, deriving from assumptions extraneous to the theory to be tested, however reasonable and well founded these assumptions might be in the context of other theories or research interests. Now, the effective index (as well as whatever other concentration measure) reflects – we were saying – the conviction that parties with voting shares of 10 per cent, 25 per cent and 65 per cent are of very different weight, and that the difference must be discounted; but to discount the difference involves a gross distortion of raw data, i.e. the unweighted number: in our example, the latter number

144 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

is 3, but with the effective computation it decreases to 2; and the problem is that, in so doing, the concentration index ‘obscures the motives and actions of voters and political elites so that it becomes difficult or impossible to discern the effect of the institutional structure on these separate motives’ (Ordeshook and Shvetsova, 1994: 104). The obscuring is especially counterproductive for the comparison between the two main classes of electoral systems: in our example, the effective computation bars any test of whether PR fosters (and SMP hinders) the rational entry of, and the rational support for, parties scoring 10 per cent (or less) of the votes; as a result, the crucial Duvergerian divide is suppressed altogether, or at best severely underestimated; but one might also err on the opposite side, e.g. be induced to overestimate the majoritarian disincentives to fragmentation as will soon be shown (Table 8.10). These remarks suggest that motivations and actions of political actors are more properly grasped by taking account of ‘real’ parties (i.e. the parties competing at the given election), rather than parties ‘constructed’ through the weighting by relative sizes. To put it otherwise, the numbers that are being created and modified by voting choices and/or strategic entry/withdrawal are embodied in the raw, not the computed, measure; and, to be sure, strategic electors (and elites) take their information solely from the first measure, or from known, or approximately remembered, voting shares, which match this measure more than any statistical artefact. Accordingly, Duverger’s propositions should be tested on the voters/elites’ incentives/disincentives to support any single party, rather than on the latter shares of this support. This does not mean that shares, or the relative sizes, do not count at all (and indeed we ourselves propose a 2 per cent size threshold); but in the effective computation it is just size that determines whether smaller parties should be counted or not, and this ex ante suppression of part of the number’s variability is certainly misplaced: to re-emphasize the crucial point, it amounts to suppressing part of the ‘motives and actions of voters and elites’, i.e. of variability falling within the range of what should be explained by different systemic incentives/disincentives to strategic behaviour. How significant the variability’s suppression may become is shown by Tables 8.8, 8.9 and 8.10, whose figures specify the differences between the raw numbers (of main parties) and Taagepera’s effective numbers. As is readily seen, differences are quite systematic, and appear through whatever unit of analysis one might conceivably choose:17 be they the country, or electoral systems by election year, or the averaged values computed according to Lijphart’s definition. To begin with, the data listed in Table 8.8 are least relevant for our tests, as we will follow Lijphart’s

Redesigning Cases and Indicators

145

Table 8.8 Main parties minus effective number of electoral parties by countries and electoral formulae Countries Australia Austria Belgium Canada Denmark Finland France Germany Greece Ireland Italy Japan The Netherlands New Zealand Norway Portugal Spain Sweden Switzerland United Kingdom USA All All Majoritarians All PRs

N

Minimum

Maximum

Mean

24 19 20 20 24 18 18 16 11 18 19 27 19 21 16 12 9 19 15 17 31 393 128 265

−0.27 0.60 0.77 0.07 1.43 0.80 −0.42 0.46 0.27 0.18 −0.49 −2.78 0.23 −0.48 0.84 0.01 0.48 1.37 0.15 −0.33 −0.24 −2.78 −0.49 −2.78

2.04 2.29 3.31 2.35 5.77 2.87 4.76 3.19 2.94 3.05 5.06 3.22 4.21 3.14 3.51 2.02 2.82 3.43 4.21 0.88 0.03 5.77 4.76 5.77

0.58 1.10 1.95 1.05 2.97 1.63 1.54 1.62 1.40 1.33 2.83 1.46 2.24 0.88 2.40 1.17 1.40 2.04 2.62 0.44 −0.06 1.52 0.64 1.92

Sources: See Table 8.1.

research design; but they emphasize the extreme rarity of negative differences (7 out of 393) over the largest set of observations available, i.e. the ubiquity of variability’s suppression when one passes from the main to the effective parties. Though particularly strong when calculated between the highest figures, the suppression is anyway sensible through mean values, i.e. the crucial data for statistical analysis. This information by itself would lead one to expect outcomes’ distortions from a test of the psychological effect, but things turn worse with the means by electoral systems of interest here: by Lijphart’s definition, the average positive differences tend to grow, when calculated country by country (Table 8.9); and – true enough – they are quite systematically much smaller within the majoritarian sub-set than in the PR one; but the most telling comparisons are those one gets by aggregated sub-sets and time periods in Table 8.10: majoritarian systems 1990–2007, indeed,

146 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters Table 8.9 Main parties minus effective number of electoral parties by electoral systems and countries Electoral system

Minimum

Maximum

Mean

Australia

1 2 3

2 −0.08 0.23

2.27 1.63 2.04

−0.27 0.49 0.84

Austria

1 2 3

0.61 0.60 0.98

1.54 1.28 2.29

0.82 1.39 1.14

Belgium

1 2 3

0.86 0.77 1.97

3.31 1.55 2.22

2.03 1.16 2.1

Denmark

1 2 3

1.43 3.1 1.47

2.2 3.19 5.77

1.93 3.13 1.63

France 2RS

1 2

0.08 1.25

3.07 4.76

1.89 2.49

France PR

1 2 3

0.35 −0.42 1.35

0.49 −0.09 1.35

0.41 −0.26 1.35

Germany

1 2 3 4

3.19 2.69 0.46 1.13

3.19 2.69 2.24 2.86

3.19 2.69 1.19 1.76

Greece

1 2 3 4 5

1.26 0.32 0.42 0.27 2.34

1.26 2.26 0.42 0.45 2.94

1.26 1.29 0.42 0.36 2.5

1.5

0.45

2.31 2.83 1.84 1.87 4.50

2.31 5.06 4.38 4.69 4.50

2.31 2.23 3.19 3.01 4.50

1.03

3.22

1.66

−2.78 0.52 0.72

−2.78 2.84 2.28

−2.78 1.67 1.36

−0.49

Italy SMP Italy PR

1 2 3 4 5

Japan SMP Japan PR

1 2 3

(Continued)

Redesigning Cases and Indicators

147

Table 8.9 (Continued) Electoral system The Netherlands

1 2

New Zealand SMP New Zealand PR

Minimum

Maximum

Mean

0.84 2.02

2.26 3.01

2.45 2.20

−0.48

1.48

0.47

1.84

3.14

2.64

Norway

1 2 3

1.88 2.17 0.84

2.38 3.51 2.26

2.13 2.78 1.82

Sweden

1 2 3

1.57 1.58 1.37

1.57 1.82 3.43

1.57 1.7 2.25

Note: Unchanged entries concern systems in force at just one election. Countries which never changed their electoral system are not shown since their scores are already reported in the preceding table.

Table 8.10 Main parties minus effective number of electoral parties by electoral systems and time periods Electoral system Majoritarians

PRs

1945–1989 1945–2007 1990–2007 1945–1989 1945–2007 1990–2007

Minimum

Maximum

Mean

−0.27 −0.27 −0.13 −2.78 −2.78 0.37

1.89 2.49 2.72 3.95 4.5 4.5

0.69 0.86 1.12 1.65 1.81 2.03

peak to 1.12 mean suppressed parties from 0.69 in 1945–89, while the PR sub-set mounts from 1.65 to 2.03. In other words, it is not just that effective numbers systematically underestimate the raw numbers. The underestimation is also growing with time and, thus, the effective numbers end up with a twofold fault: an overall disproportionate blurring of the much larger party fragmentation occurred since the early 1990s; and the failure to catch the faster pace of fragmentation’s growth among majoritarian systems, with the related reduction of the distance between the two sub-sets. This information fully confirms the potential for minimization of the psychological effect carried by the effective numbers, and the need to counterbalance it. Here, this is done by comparing the latter’s results

148 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

with the main parties measure, i.e. parties with at least 2 per cent of the votes. Size threshold measures like this are by no means new, as they were successfully used by Ordeshook and Shvetsova (1994); the latter authors, however, put the threshold at 1 per cent, and we need now to justify the difference. To be sure, both figures are equally conventional, but our preference depends upon a general caution and a consideration more specific to Duverger’s theory. The general caution moves from the premise that we need a threshold in order to avoid falling into the mistake opposite to the effective computation, i.e. the over-evaluation of fragmentation that would follow from the inclusion of even the smallest and most ephemeral (or out of ‘equilibrium’) parties. Given the premise, the mistake is minimized if the counting is limited to parties that might be reasonably deemed able to generate systemically relevant psychological pressures, that is, parties of national relevance and visibility. Now, the 2 per cent criterion – we believe – satisfies the requirement more than lower figures, since the latter usually include local/regional parties, mostly known to some segments only of the electorate. To this, a specific consideration should be added, namely, that the numbers to be counted are those that fall within the ambit of validity of the theory to be tested; and this ambit – we already know – does exclude two main categories: first, non-‘rational’ actors, i.e. parties with little or no propensity to strategic entry/withdrawal, like the many ideological groupings (mainly of the confessional, far-right, and communist varieties) spread over the whole post-war period; second, politically homogeneous and territorially concentrated minorities, by definition incoercible by any electoral rule. Since these categories are growingly over-represented below 2 per cent, the Ordeshook and Shvetsova threshold looks far too permissive and, by the same token, our operationalization carries a more compelling theoretical and empirical justification. On the other hand, the operationalization in terms of raw numbers on electoral parties is not to be extended to seats, i.e. to parliamentary parties. The latter, indeed, are the indicator of the mechanical effect, that is, of the working of rules converting votes into seats; and the mechanical effect does typically impact on relative sizes, by (dis-)representing more or less heavily the given votes’ shares. Since the measurement’s target is this dis-representation, a concentration index is fully appropriate in the case in point, whereas the counting of the main parties sitting in parliament would be superfluous at best and confusing at worst.18 Through Tables 8.5, 8.6 and 8.7, then, we list only the effective parliamentary parties’ figures, and only these figures will be entered into the tests of Chapter 9.

Redesigning Cases and Indicators

149

Finally, the last columns of the same tables carry two indicators already provided by Lijphart (1994a: 72–4), and now updated: the frequency of single-party majorities, and the proportion of the latter which was ‘manufactured’ through the electoral rule by conversion from a plurality of votes. These indicators have not been discussed in the previous chapter, but they obviously operationalize the variable ‘composition of the government’ in Figure 6.1, and are as such strictly related to the party systems’ format and especially to the two-party/multi-party divide. In this connection, we remember that Sartori’s qualitative stipulation of two-partyism (Chapter 6) focuses on the crucial feature of winning an absolute parliamentary majority; and his formula, at any rate, does simply synthesize the whole tradition according to which two parties make a difference because they will be able to govern alone and to alternate in power. If so, it is worth measuring such an important property directly, rather than merely thinking of it as a probable consequence of party format and the underlying electoral rules. The two indicators, then, allow us to quantify the probability, i.e. the exact consequence of party format. This is in and by itself useful and, moreover, an unavoidable step when making some concluding remarks on the great systemic issues spelled out in Figure 6.1, i.e. the relationship between PR or majoritarian rule, on the one side, and accountability, responsiveness and democratic performance on the other; right now, however, we have to submit to empirical testing the laws and the hypotheses discussed so far.

9 From Theory to Evidence: Updating and Retesting Lijphart

9.1 Some preliminary findings The tests we are going to discuss here will be presented in two steps. We will start from basic comparative averages, and turn later to multivariate regression analysis. In both stages, the unit of analysis (i.e. electoral systems as defined by Lijphart) will be operationalized through the variables already specified in the previous chapters: the formula (majoritarian systems, or one or the other variety of PR); assembly size; and electoral effective threshold. The dependent variables, in turn, are the number of electoral parties (our indicator of the psychological effect), that of parliamentary parties (the target of the mechanical effect), and the latter’s expected consequences, i.e. the composition of government majorities. As concluded in Chapter 7, comparisons exclude the 2RS; but before leaving it, Table 9.1 reaggregates by the electoral system’s criterion some of Chapter 7’s information, and this information readily confirms French exceptionalism: though values do not match precisely the yearly data of Tables 7.1 and 7.2, main parties and effective electoral parties still outnumber the most fragmented PR systems; vice versa, the mechanical effect definitely looks ultra-majoritarian; but we have already seen that the difference between the electoral and parliamentary parties is inflated by the comparison of first round ‘census’ votes with second round seats; and, at any rate, even a ultra-majoritarian effect does not suffice to generate model Westminster governments: with its 34 per cent of single-party majorities, indeed, France approximates the average frequency of the least permissive (and most structured) PR systems (d’Hondt/LR-Imperiali), while lying well below the SMP/AV sub-set.1 We re-emphasize, then, that the 2RS idiosyncratic features require a sui generis classification, and that these features lend themselves to an 150

From Theory to Evidence Table 9.1

151

Parties and majorities by formulae, 1945–2007 means

Formula

SMP/AV 2RS d’Hondt/LR-Imperiali LR Droop/STV/SNTV/ Limited vote/Modified Sainte-Laguë LR-Hare/Sainte-Laguë

N

Main parties

ENEP

ENPP

Absolute majorities

Manufactured majorities

9 2 23 10

3.28 7.45 6.36 5.32

2.71 5.24 4.48 4.06

2.13 3.17 3.84 3.51

0.91 0.34 0.28 0.15

0.79 0.34 0.22 0.11

9

6.79

4.3

3.89

0.06

0

Note: Contrary to Lijphart (1994a: 96, Table 5.1), we have aggregated the Australian AV with SMP systems, and put the French 2RS in a separate cell. This choice is in agreement with Duverger’s classification, and follows our demonstration in Chapter 7 that 2RS is a very odd majoritarian system, both structurally and by its outcomes. The SMP/AV set, in turn, includes the data for the SMP components of the Japanese and the Italian mixed-member systems (Table 8.6); in turn, their PR counterparts have been listed, according to the relevant formulae, within the concerned sub-set. Sources: Lijphart (1994a: Chapter. 5); see Tables 8.1, 8.2, 8.5–8.7.

intensive, historical-qualitative, approach, rather than to large-N quantitative comparison. Vice versa, all remaining systems, be they SMP/AV or PR, are far more homogeneous,2 and may then legitimately be aggregated to answer our repeatedly asked questions. The first aggregations of Table 9.1 are based on the electoral formulae as listed in Tables 8.1 and 8.2. Formulae follow an order of decreasing disproportionality from majoritarian systems to the Hare and pure Sainte-Laguë methods.3 As made clear through the first part of the book, the ordering is largely shared by the literature, and its relevance for our purposes should now be equally obvious: decreasing disproportionality should match growing party numbers, as a result of either a diminishing incentive to strategic voting and/or strategic entry/withdrawal, or of increasingly permissive votes/seats conversion rules. As a matter of fact, these hypotheses are well confirmed by a comparison between Table 9.1’s first row and the following ones. No doubt, in other words, SMP/AV systems (psychologically) discourage third parties from running, and electors from voting for them, and minimize (mechanically) their share of seats; vice versa, all varieties of PR rule are marked by a more or less pronounced multi-partyism, or – differently put – make more room for entering the political marketplace. The votes/seats conversion rate, moreover, is equally graduated: the average ENEP-ENPP difference amounts to about −21 per cent among SMP/AV systems and decreases

152 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters Table 9.2 Parties and majorities by thresholds, 1945–2007 means Threshold

N

Main parties

ENEP

ENPP

Absolute majorities

Manufactured majorities

35 12.9–18.8 8–11.7 4–6 0.1–3.3

9 7 9 14 12

3.28 4.51 5.62 6.65 7.11

2.71 3.24 4.3 4.64 4.68

2.13 2.62 3.57 4.03 4.29

0.91 0.69 0.22 0.04 0.08

0.79 0.52 0.2 0.02 0.04

Note: See Table 9.1.

to the minimum (−9.5) with pure PR; but these comparisons by the rows are not equally well ordered if one focuses on columns and on the PR systems’ sub-set: though all concerned formulae have some reductive effect, the one which is supposed most disproportional (d’Hondt) shows figures of both ENEP and ENPP which are higher than those of the more proportional intermediate variety, and the latter’s main parties’ average (5.32) is more than one point smaller than d’Hondt’s 6.36. Thus, such results neatly contradict what was to be expected on the basis of predictions made by the laws listed at the end of Chapter 6. Expectations, though, might have been deceived not so much because disproportionality counts less than foreseen, but because formulae do not capture it with the needed exactitude. As shown by Tables 8.1 and 8.2, indeed, each proportional system has its own electoral threshold, and the latter is often very different, the same formula notwithstanding. The effective threshold, in other words, is a much more variable indicator of disproportionality, and if this variability were to mirror it more effectively than the formula, entering the new measure should lead to different, and probably better, findings. Accordingly, electoral systems have been redistributed by thresholds, following Lijphart’s cut-points among sub-sets (1994a: 98–100): since the estimated threshold of all SMP/AV systems is 35 per cent (Table 8.1), Table 9.2 re-enters the same sub-set data as the previous one, while PR systems are reaggregated according to the information of Table 8.2.4 As is readily apparent, results do considerably improve over the aggregations by the formula: even if the SMP/AV-PR gap looks smaller than that recorded with the latter variable, the hypothesis that the higher the threshold, the smaller the party format, is confirmed on all three indicators of the number.5 Moreover, thresholds (like the formulae) systematically reduce the number by row, i.e. when one passes from votes to seats, or from ENEP to ENPP; at odds with the formula, however, even

From Theory to Evidence

153

data by column are now correctly ranked: both the main and effective parties are at their lowest with majoritarian thresholds, while increasing monotonically with decreasing thresholds; and the fact that differences almost fade away when the last two rows are compared is compatible with the ineffectiveness of the related thresholds, which are clearly too low to activate more than a minimal effect, be it psychological or mechanical. As well as ordered, and matching the predictions, is the next indicator, i.e. the frequency of parliamentary majorities. The relevant hypothesis, namely, that such majorities are linked to a two-party format, was of course already confirmed by the breakdown by formulae in Table 9.1. All that remains to be stressed, then, is the almost perfect data fit of that hypothesis: 91 per cent of SMP/AV systems are governed by single-party majorities, and most of them (79 per cent) are ‘manufactured’ from relative majorities of votes. On the other hand, thresholds seem to point to other differences from the formula as long as PR systems are concerned: indeed, while according to Table 9.1 majorities’ frequency went from low to null within the sub-set, the highest PR thresholds score a strong 69 per cent, most of which (52) are manufactured majorities. These figures, to be sure, should not be overestimated, because they are in part inflated by Lijphart’s operationalization, and in part are fostered by factors other than the electoral rule.6 To put it differently, distance from the SMP/AV sub-set is in fact larger than implied by the second row of Table 9.2, though averages do not allow us to be precise as to how much larger.7 Be that as it may, the majorities’ frequency goes down to more plausible figures with thresholds within the 8–11.7 per cent range, and stands around zero in the two following rows, thus confirming the null effect of the most permissive PR systems. By and large, then, the foregoing is compatible with the literature’s main conclusions, and especially with Sartori’s argument that all electoral systems, the PR ones included, are more or less ‘strong’, or ‘weak’, i.e. more or less distorting. As the argument assumes, moreover, distortions essentially depend on the threshold’s level, while the third independent variable we mentioned at the outset (assembly size) does not play any significant role, and, accordingly, is not shown here (though it will be entered in the regressions of section 9.2). Both our positive and negative findings, at any rate, match those of Lijphart (1994a: 95–102), and the match is all the more of consequence as the cases and time periods on which we rely are very different, and the behaviour of our newly introduced dependent variable (main parties) fully supports the general framework: given such changes, indeed, matching findings could not have come about by chance and, at the very least, strengthen

154 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

the reliability of the approach we have chosen to retest. This said, however, we have also repeatedly announced remarkable differences from Lijphart, and they should now be spelled out systematically.

9.2 The strength of the psychological effect As we are going to show, the differences materialize through regression analysis, which takes us three steps ahead of the classifications of Tables 9.1 and 9.2. At odds with the latter, indeed, regression analysis allows us to catch the whole variability range of our indicators, which are all quantitative or, in the case of the formula, quantifiable.8 From previous tables, moreover, one can infer causal relationships, but not how much of one or the other dependent variable is explained, or predicted, by which independent variable. Finally, bivariate relationships between the formula, or the threshold, and parties, or majorities, are by no means robust and acceptable until they are corroborated by more complex multivariate tests. To meet these goals, we will enter in the next regressions the independent variables already used (formula, threshold), plus the assembly size;9 further below, our indicator of party system’s (de-)structuring (i.e. electoral volatility) will be added for the first time, and found to play an important explanatory role in the period 1990–2007. Since our preliminary aim is to retest Lijphart’s research, however, we have to start with the first columns of Table 9.3 that refer to the same years covered by his data (1945–90). The columns carry the estimated effect of threshold plus the assembly size on our population of cases, and show (in brackets) the most telling evidence of Lijphart’s corresponding regression, namely, the percentage variance of dependent variables explained by the independent ones.10 As is readily apparent, the r2 statistics point to a data fit of our regressions stronger, or much stronger, than Lijphart’s, whatever the indicator one looks at: indeed, variations of the effective number of parties accounted for by the electoral rules go to 24 per cent (as against 8 per cent) in terms of votes, and to 35 per cent (as against 28 per cent) in terms of seats, while the explained frequency of majorities peaks to 62 per cent (a jump of 20 points) and that of the manufactured ones to 46 per cent (from 41 per cent). Such a large efficiency improvement cannot but corroborate the research design’s choices we have theoretically justified in Chapter 8. Even though reducing the number of cases may constrain the scope of our generalizations, Lijphart’s assemblage of overly heterogeneous systems now looks more counterproductive, as it

Table 9.3

Threshold, assembly size and the party system, 1945–1990 (N 41) and 1945–2007 (N 51)

Independent variables

Main parties

Threshold b t

−0.01∗∗∗ (6.5)

−0.01∗∗∗ (6.59)

Assembly b t Constant Adjusted r2

0.01 (0.18) 0.78 0.52

0.01 (0.14) 0.82 0.46

ENEP

−.05∗∗∗ (3.68)

ENPP

−0.06∗∗∗ (3.67)

0.2 −0.37 (.31) (0.45) 3.86 5.7 0.24(0.08) 0.19

−0.06∗∗∗ (4.7)

Absolute majorities −0.07∗∗∗ (4.72)

−0.01 −0.41 (0.03) (0.62) 3.93 5.27 0.35(0.28) 0.29

0.03∗∗∗ (7.5)

0.03∗∗∗ (9.2)

−0.24 −0.21 (1.5) (1.49) 0.60 0.49 0.62(0.42) 0.64

Manufactured majorities 0.02∗∗∗ (5.37)

0.02∗∗∗ (7.6)

−0.24 −0.17 (1.39) (1.2) 0.59 0.39 0.46(.41) 0.54

Note: ∗∗∗ Significant at the 0.001 level. Two-tailed test, t -statistics in brackets.

155

156 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

is clearly this heterogeneity that contributes to predetermine the null, or much weaker, effects he finds; and, most remarkably, a questionable choice of cases is compounded by a faulty indicator of electoral parties: through both Lijphart’s and our data, indeed, the showing of the effective numbers compares very badly with the 0.52 r2 scored by the main parties, a record performance of great consequence.11 The first, and most obvious, consequence is that the premises, and the expectations as well, of our discussion in section 8.4 are fully supported by this performance: there is no doubt, in other words, that the most straightforward measure of strategic voting catches a large share of the variation hidden by Taagepera’s statistical artefacts. Moreover, the record data fit of this measure does nothing less than reverse Lijphart: the psychological effect turns from the weakest into the strongest explanatory factor, as the explained variance through main parties (52 per cent) largely beats not only the ENEP’s 24 per cent, but also the mechanical effect embodied in ENPP’s 35 per cent. All in all, then, our data point to a twofold difference: the electoral system counts more than supposed by our reference author, and counts mostly thanks to strategic voting and/or strategic exit/withdrawal. Though far from exhaustive as yet, this conclusion already marks a U-turn, and opens up new scenarios for scientific research and political debate; but this begs in turn the crucial questions: which variable, or variables, account for our new findings? And do the same variables exert the same influence through the whole time span covered by the research? This time, our answer largely matches that given by Lijphart, though with some important qualifications and integrations to be spelled out when post-1990 data are taken into account. At any rate, his research (1994a: 107–13) has already emphasized the major role of the electoral threshold, while the next variable in Table 9.3 (assembly size) was found to be of minor-to-no importance, or even counter-intuitive. Through our data, in turn, assembly size goes hand in hand with non-significant and small b coefficients, one of which (ENPP) carries the wrong sign.12 Vice versa, the threshold’s coefficients are systematically significant,13 with the right sign and, most important, of considerable strength: given the variable’s range (0.1 to 35 per cent), indeed, the maximal difference the coefficients make amounts to 3.5 main parties, 1.75 electoral effective parties, and 2.09 parliamentary parties; and 100 per cent of single-party majorities, or 70 per cent of the manufactured ones, fall within the most restrictive, that is, mostly SMP/AV, systems. These findings, moreover, are stable enough to hold even when the analysis is extended to 2007, as allowed by our database. Entering the

From Theory to Evidence Table 9.4

157

Assembly size, formula and the party system, 1945–2007 (N 51)

Independent variables

Main parties

ENEP

ENPP

Absolute majorities

Manufactured majorities

PR systems (dummy) b t

0.27∗∗∗ (5.26)

1.64∗∗ (2.91)

1.65∗∗∗ (3.46)

−0.70∗∗∗ (6.08)

−0.63∗∗∗ (5.74)

Assembly b t Constant Adjusted r2

0.02 (0.26) 0.44 0.34

−0.24 (1.39) 1.48 0.43

−0.2 (1.2) 1.25 0.40

−0.29 (0.34) 3.39 0.11

−0.32 (0.45) 2.89 0.17

Note: ∗∗ Significant at the 0.01 level; ∗∗∗ significant at the 0.001 level. Two-tailed test, t -statistics in brackets.

post-1990 elections, and electoral systems, to be sure, changes the data fit, or the efficiency, of the regressions, and the next section will extensively discuss why this is the case; but it does not change the explanans, nor its relationship to the dependent variables. More to the point, in the second column of Table 9.3 assembly size loses even more ground, as its sign is now wrong on both ENEP and ENPP, and some coefficients do worsen. At the same time, the threshold is confirmed as a significant and powerful predictor: among the indicators of the number, main parties remain the best one, with an unchanged coefficient and a related format reduction of 3.7 parties in systems at the 35 per cent threshold; majorities, in turn, are more significantly predicted than before,14 given the stronger t-test figures; and, mutatis mutandis, much the same conclusions are suggested by Tables 9.4 and 9.5, which follow once again Lijphart’s design in order to explore the explanatory power of another variable (the formula) already commented upon in Table 9.1. In tune with the averaged values of the latter table, regressions show that the formula is statistically significant, as could have been expected given its strong correlation with the threshold (see note 9); on the other hand, descriptive statistics signal a data fit much weaker than that recorded through the threshold, whatever the indicator considered. The latter, then, continues to perform best, and this primacy leads one to doubt the formula’s significance itself: indeed, if significance is a function of the mentioned correlation with the threshold, it could fade away as this relationship weakens; and since the weakening occurs within the PR sub-set (see note 9), a final test is provided by Table 9.5, where no collinearity problem bars the entering of all available independent

158 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters Table 9.5 Assembly size, PR formulae and threshold, 1945–2007 (N 42) Independent variables d’Hondt LR-Imperiali (dummy) b t Assembly b t Threshold b t Constant Adjusted r2

Main parties

ENEP

ENPP

Absolute majorities

0.05 (1.28)

0.55 (1.1)

0.42 (1.03)

0.09 (1.15)

0.11 (1.28)

−0.05 (0.54)

−0.82 (0.78)

−0.78 (0.92)

−0.21 (1.28)

−0.12 (0.68)

−0.01∗∗∗ (3.53) 0.94 0.19

−0.12∗ (2.3) 6.78 0.07

−0.13∗∗ (3.23) 6.3 0.16

0.04∗∗∗ (5.27) 0.37 0.44

Note: ∗ Significant at the 0.05 level; ∗∗ significant at the 0.01 level; level. Two-tailed test, t -statistics in brackets.

Manufactured majorities

0.03∗∗∗ (3.7) 0.16 0.28

∗∗∗ significant

at the 0.001

variables in the same equation and each of them can thus be estimated net of the competing ones’ effect. Inspecting the table leads to five main remarks: first, the irrelevance of assembly size is now strengthened by its wrong coefficient signs on all indicators of the party system’s format; second, the (positive) sign is equally wrong for the formula, as it involves more parties with the most disproportional systems; moreover, the formula’s significance disappears, i.e. it is totally absorbed by the threshold; the latter, then, once more proves to be by far the best explanatory variable; but its performance is downgraded by the regressions’ data fit, which is the poorest one found so far.

9.3 Declining data fit and the impact of volatility Taken together, the previous data fully confirm that only the threshold, and only the models in Table 9.3, effectively estimate the electoral system’s effects; but this conclusion, which we share with Lijphart, must be complemented by the remarkable novelty emerging from the updating of the database to 2007: indeed, it goes without saying that the 1945–2007 r2 values show a decreasing data fit of the electoral system’s variables: the related explained variance of main parties falls to 46 per cent (from 52), along with the 19 and 29 per cent (as against 24 and 35 per cent) of

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the effective numbers. Thus, even if figures are at any rate much stronger than Lijphart’s, the information they convey is comparatively restraining: during the last seventeen years, party systems have increasingly evolved independently from institutional constraints or, more to the point, from the threshold’s constraint. This information prompts several crucial questions and/or tasks. First, we should know more about the direction of the misfit, i.e. about whether the r2 decreases because variance is under- or over-explained, because the threshold predicts less, or vice versa more, parties than those really occurring, or newly created, through the relevant period. After answering this question, we should provide a reason for the unexplained party formats’ changes (or the lack thereof), thereby specifying the independent variable(s) that could account for them. This or these variable(s), in turn, will have to be entered into the statistical models with the aim of optimizing their efficiency. And if the new models really prove more successful than Lijphart’s best one (the threshold + assembly specification), the final step will be to ask whether and how their results do confirm, or disprove, or qualify, or modify, the working of the laws on electoral systems discussed in Chapter 6 and their systemic effects. While the last question will be dealt with in Chapter 10, the first one is answered by Table 9.6, which reassembles our three indicators of party format in order to allow us to detect their variations from the early 1990s on. These data differ from those listed in Table 8.4, in that they are broken down by country and electoral systems, i.e. by the same criteria adopted through regression analyses; but changing the aggregations’ units does not change the already verified results: as before, all figures grow strongly or, at any rate, much more than during the 1945–90 period (Lijphart, 1994a: 160–2, Appendix B); the numbers’ decreases (limited to four) are moreover partial decreases, i.e. concern one or the other indicator, with the sole exception of Spain; and these findings become all the more revealing when one adds that through 1990–2007 changes of the electoral rules have been quite rare: the latter have been reformed in six countries only (out of 21), with a changes total of eight; and, moreover, five of the enacted reforms have been restrictive, not permissive (see Tables 8.1, 8.2). Now, strongly growing party numbers and unchanged, or more restrictive, rules, cannot but translate into more parties than those accounted for by the electoral system (more precisely, the threshold) and, thus, into mistaken underestimates. If this is the mistake, though, we know how to obviate it or, at any rate, we have repeatedly presented, and justified, a plausible condition for the number’s growth – the party

160 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters Table 9.6 Number of parties, % change Countries Australia Austria Belgium Canada Denmark Finland France Germany Greece Ireland Italy Japan The Netherlands New Zealand Norway Portugal Spain Sweden Switzerland United Kingdom United States

Main parties

ENEP

ENPP

36.2 50 51.3 22.9 7.5 5.9 34.71 19.3 47.1 42.5 37.6 18.6 5.4 115.5 7.7 7.2 −24.1 44 −10.3 11.1 0

18.5 45 82.6 21.4 1.7 5.5 17.48 15.5 0 25.5 66.8 17.9 12.6 53.4 37.9 −16.2 −16.7 27 14.4 24.5 5.4

4.1 45.7 74.9 19 −3.4 0 −30.33 12.3 0 15.9 51.4 25.2 14.6 65.1 39.2 −17.7 −4.8 25.5 10.2 12.4 4.2

Note: All entries are differences between averaged post-1 December 1990 electoral systems and the averaged previous ones. Differences are expressed in percentage of the latter term. When needed, averages have been weighted by the number of elections held under a given system within the concerned sub-set. The figures for the Italian and Japanese mixed-member systems were computed from the results of PR arena.

system’s destructuring process. Summing up once again, our argument is that a destructuring process involves a weakening of electors’–parties’ bonds, and this weakening will translate into more frequent and stronger variations of parties’ support and more voters’ availability to join new political suppliers, quite independently from the electoral rules in force. This independence is the premise on which Sartori’s reformulation of Duverger’s propositions rests, namely, its stipulation that the reductive ability of the electoral system, and thus a small national party format, is minimized/maximized according to the party system’s destructuration/structuration (see Figure 6.2); but if destructuration is the problem, i.e. the factor which expansively counterbalances the threshold’s constraint, to enter it in the regressions should enhance the overall explained variance or, at any rate, improve the efficiency of the 1945–2007 equation.

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Table 9.7 Threshold, volatility and the number of parties, correlations by time periods Variables Threshold

Volatility

Years

Main parties

ENEP

ENPP

1945–1989 1945–2007 1990–2007 1945–1989 1945–2007 1990–2007

−0.724∗∗ −0.690∗∗ −0.625∗∗ 0.282 0.348∗ 0.539∗∗

−0.574∗∗ −0.483∗∗ −0.493∗∗ 0.176 0.273 0.381∗

−0.618∗∗ −0.559∗∗ −0.589∗∗ 0.047 0.191 0.350

Note: Pearson’s r. ∗ Significant at the 0.05 level; ∗∗ Significant at the 0.01 level. Two-tailed test. Main parties are expressed in log10 values.

To take into account the destructuration process, we can use its most important available indicator – electoral volatility – which has been presented already and justified at length. If our general hypothesis is correct, volatility should work the other way around than the threshold, i.e. it should correlate positively with the number of parties, but negatively with majorities.15 In a preliminary fashion, the relationship with the number may be grasped by comparing the two variables’ averages from Tables 1.1–1.3 and 8.4; but a more detailed and rigorous test is provided by Table 9.7. As can be seen, the Pearson’s r for volatility is positive, significant for one indicator out of three, and of rather modest strength through 1945–2007; but this overall behaviour results from a polarization: a sub-period (1945–89) of very weak and non-significant correlations is followed by the two-to-three times stronger, and significant (on main parties and ENEP), figures of 1990–2007.16 At the same time, the threshold slightly moves in the opposite direction: though always staying significant and carrying the right (negative) sign, its association invariably decreases and ends up in a figure which almost matches that of volatility on main parties for 1990–2007. These trends allow us to conclude that the data are compatible with a decreasing restrictive effect of the threshold and a growing permissive pressure of volatility; but in order to confirm and refine the conclusion, it is necessary to verify what happens when volatility is substituted for the ineffective assembly size in the regressions; more precisely, does the substitution provide or not an overall efficiency improvement of the latter? To answer this question, however, we cannot compare the new outcomes to those of our first 1945–2007 regression in Table 9.3, since entering volatility involves a reduction of the observations’ number, as

162 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

well as changing data for various electoral systems;17 thus, we have thoroughly recalculated both the traditional and the alternative models on the same modified data in Table 9.8.18 In compliance with our hypothesis, the alternative model provides an r2 figure remarkably higher than the threshold + assembly combination on main parties (0.51 as against 0.45), and the related coefficient for volatility is with the right sign and significant. If compared to the wrong and non-significant assembly coefficient, the performance of the new variable should not be overlooked; but, on the other hand, a note of restraint is in order: on all remaining dependent variables (including single-party parliamentary majorities), the two models provide much the same results, and both confirm that the by far more influential independent variable is always the threshold. Before subscribing to this conclusion, however, the correlations of Table 9.7 suggest a cautionary assessment of the consequences of the 1945–89 vs. 1990–2007 polarization. Given the polarization, indeed, one might conceivably ask whether the average 1945–2007 data do distort, or misrepresent, the facts, and whether a more convincing representation would not require empirical tests led by alternative hypotheses. More to the point, it is perfectly plausible that (a) volatility will make little or no difference when it is low, i.e. when it indicates strong, or sufficient, structuration; and (b) the difference will vice versa be maximized when a more or less advanced destructuring process is in course, whereby volatility can significantly interfere with the threshold’s impact. These hypotheses are implicit in Sartori’s theoretical framework and, if right, they should generate well differentiated regressions estimates: through 1945–89, estimates should not vary whatever the specification used (threshold + assembly, or threshold + volatility), while the opposite should happen during the following period. Due to our unit of analysis (the electoral system), the test requires running two distinct pairs of regressions,19 the results of which are reported in Tables 9.9 and 9.10. To begin with, the indifference to the volatility term through 1945–89 could not be more straightforward, both on descriptive and inferential grounds. Whatever the model’s specifications, r2 figures do not change, and, when entered, volatility performs more or less like assembly size: it is non-significant and provides low and often wrongly signed coefficients. In short, the very opposite of the information carried by Table 9.10, whose reading suggests three main points: first, the two regressions are neatly differentiated on all indicators of the party format, with a huge peak on the main parties; in other words, volatility becomes really discriminant through 1990–2007, i.e. it cannot be dropped out without a

Table 9.8

Threshold, assembly, volatility and the party system, 1945–2007(N 47)

Independent variables

Main parties

Threshold b t

−0.01∗∗∗ (6.33)

Assembly b t

−0.001 (0.02)

Volatility b t Constant Adjusted r2

0.84 0.45

−0.01∗∗∗ (6.23)

ENEP

−0.06∗∗∗ (3.74)

ENPP

−0.06∗∗∗ (3.45)

−0.92 (1.12) 0.009∗ (2.30) 0.74 0.51

6.90 0.22

−0.07∗∗∗ (4.58)

Absolute majorities

−0.06∗∗∗ (4.31)

−0.82 (1.18) 0.07 (1.52) 4.01 0.24

6.19 0.30

0.03∗∗∗ (9.30)

0.03∗∗∗ (9.13)

−0.11 (0.78) 0.03 0.80 3.90 0.29

0.26 0.65

Manufactured majorities 0.03∗∗∗ (7.93)

0.03∗∗∗ (8.02)

−0.16 (1.04) −0.001 (0.02) −0.004 0.64

0.36 0.58

0.01 (1.03) −0.11 0.58

Note: ∗ Significant at the 0.05 level; ∗∗∗ significant at the 0.001 level. Two-tailed test; t -statistics in brackets.

163

164

Table 9.9

Threshold, assembly, volatility and the party system, 1945–1989 (N 37)

Independent variables

Main parties

Threshold b t

−0.01∗∗∗ (6.04)

Assembly b t

−0.0006 (0.01)

Volatility b t Constant Adjusted r2

0.80 0.50

−0.01∗∗∗ (5.97)

ENEP

−0.05∗∗∗ (4.17)

ENPP

−0.05∗∗∗ (3.95)

−0.40 (0.71) 0.006 (1.42) 0.75 0.52

5.15 0.30

−0.05∗∗∗ (4.73)

−0.05∗∗∗ (4.6)

−0.5 (0.95) 0.02 (0.58) 4.0 0.30

4.99 0.36

Note: ∗∗∗ Significant at the 0.001 level. Two-tailed test; t -statistics in brackets.

Absolute majorities 0.03∗∗∗ (6.89)

0.03∗∗∗ (7.16)

−0.17 (0.98) −0.01 (0.43) 3.89 0.35

0.45 0.58

Manufactured majorities 0.02∗∗∗ (5.28)

0.02∗∗∗ (5.90)

−0.26 (1.42) 0.008 (0.87) −0.05 0.58

0.66 0.46

0.02 (1.84) −0.15 0.48

Table 9.10 Threshold, assembly, volatility and the party system, 1990–2007 (N 30) Independent variables

Main parties

Threshold b t

−0.009∗∗∗ (4.01)

Assembly b t

−0.09 (0.75)

Volatility b t Constant Adjusted r2

1.09 0.36

−0.007∗∗∗ (3.95)

ENEP

−0.07∗∗ (2.79)

ENPP

−0.07∗ (2.59)

−1.24 (0.83) 0.02∗∗ (3.09) 0.67 0.52

8.53 0.21

−0.08∗∗∗ (3.64)

Absolute majorities

−0.08∗∗ (3.46)

−0.85 (0.69) 0.13 (1.70) 4 0.27

7 0.31

0.03∗∗∗ (10.67)

0.03∗∗∗ (10.35)

−0.06 (0.40) 0.09 (1.42) 3.85 0.35

4.58 0.80

Manufactured majorities 0.03∗∗∗ (10.08)

0.03∗∗∗ (9.68)

−0.17 (0.70) −0.007 (0.83) −0.01 0.80

0.15 0.78

−0.002 (0.22) −0.07 0.77

Note: ∗ Significant at the 0.05 level; ∗∗ significant at the 0.01 level; ∗∗∗ significant at the 0.001 level. Two-tailed test; t -statistics in brackets.

165

166 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters Table 9.11 Main parties by highest/lowest threshold and volatility Years

Independent variables

Max

Min

Difference

1945–1989

Threshold Volatility Threshold Volatility Threshold Volatility

2.84 5.76 4.5 11.24 3.02 6.77

6.26 4.38 7.83 4.2 6.66 4.49

−3.42 1.38 −3.33 7.04 −3.64 2.28

1990–2007 1945–2007

Note: Max and Min refer to the highest and lowest values taken by the independent variables in the concerned period. Cells contain the corresponding numbers of parties, as well as the difference between the latter’s extreme values.

significant loss of data fit and explanatory power as well; accordingly, the threshold’s explanatory monopoly in Table 9.9 turns into a constrained role or, more precisely, a role that, though stable in absolute terms, loses ground in relative terms. The last point – a crucial one – is best emphasized by the impact of threshold and volatility on the most effective indicator of the party system’s format – main parties. In Table 9.11, this impact has been computed as the maximal difference b coefficients make, given each variable’s range: controlling for volatility, the threshold reduces the number of parties by more than 3 units, whatever the considered span of time. As a matter of course, this is by no means a modest impact; but while it is constant, volatility steps in with growing weight, given its very dynamic behaviour: controlling for thresholds, the 1990–2007 volatility’s maximal permissive pressure makes for 7 more main parties, while the corresponding 1945–89 figure is +1.38, i.e. more than five times lower! And this polarization, of course, is once again hidden, rather than revealed, by the overall, 1945–2007, +2.28.20 If this result cannot be doubted as long as the best indicator of the number of parties is concerned, the same conclusion would not seem to extend to the dependent variables that we have as yet scarcely commented upon, i.e. the frequency of single-party majorities. In 1990–2007, these variables’ variance is explained at very unusual levels (80 and 78 per cent, respectively), but volatility does not make any difference compared to the traditional model’s specification with assembly size; and it does not make any difference because all the explainable is explained by

From Theory to Evidence

167

the threshold or, more precisely, by an unprecedented concentration of majorities within the sub-set at the 35 per cent threshold, i.e. the SMP/AV systems.21 On the other hand, the regressions certify the concentration, but they do not really account for why it occurs or, at any rate, why its most important component occurs. Obviously enough, the question concerns the determinant of the huge growth of explained variance in comparison to the 1945–89 regressions; but if this determinant is taken into account, volatility recovers a key role. The point here is that the r2 growth is essentially, if not exclusively, due to an abrupt change within the PR sub-set:22 until the late 1980s, indeed, about half (14 out of 30) of these systems generated various proportions of single-party majorities, which accounted for 37.8 per cent of the overall 37 observations; but the proportion decreases to 3 out of 23, i.e. just 13 per cent, within the sub-set, and 10 per cent of the total population, through 1990–2007.23 This collapse, in turn, is the indicator of the decline of the historically predominant parties of several countries (Austria, Japan, Ireland, Norway, Sweden), whose party systems had previously been exceptionally structured. With the onset of the destructuring process, in other words, these parties lost their majorities and, since the latter were usually very slim, a micro-growth of volatility sufficed to cause the macro-effect, i.e. the disappearance of single-party governments. This causal sequence, however, is precisely what escapes, or at least is blurred by, the regressions; they ascribe the macro-effect to the threshold, as the variability’s range of the latter is large enough to accommodate it, while the micro-growth of volatility is by definition of too small a range to be recorded. In short, even though volatility and majorities are correlated, and the correlation is negative,24 the econometric tool estimates its (low) strength, not its decisiveness, and mistakenly downgrades the variable’s relevance. This discussion confirms how useful and how compelling, is Sartori’s warning about the worth of qualitative and contextual analysis: thanks to the above argument, indeed, we can now generalize the role of volatility. As it is the first time that this role has been discussed, the following step is to integrate it within the ongoing debate on electoral systems and electoral laws. The relevant questions are, first and foremost, of the theoretical variety: what does our contribution confirm, what does it change – and how – of the analytical frameworks put forward by Duverger, Sartori, Lijphart and others? Given both the confirmations and the changes, what follows for how electoral rules perform their representational tasks, i.e. grant the accountability, the responsiveness and

168 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

the representativeness of democratic elites? Third, how is the ‘manipulative’ capability of these rules affected by our findings? Which new challenges do the majoritarian or PR formulae have to cope with, and how favourable/unfavourable is their outlook? Finally, provided that reforms are in order to improve such outlook, is the traditional approach by electoral ‘engineering’ the best suited one? All this will be answered in the next chapter.

10 Systemic Consequences, Past and Future

10.1 The threshold: a constrained continuity The tests of Chapter 9 have confirmed a cornerstone of the laws on electoral systems (i.e. the threshold’s role), but have also introduced a new explanatory variable (volatility), that brings significant qualifications and adjustments to that role. Such qualifications and adjustments, in turn, are of no small consequence for the laws themselves, for the prospects of political engineering and for the theory and the practice of democratic representation. The following pages will focus on the salient facets of these consequences and the new challenges they pose to the working of electoral rules. Dealing with these topics requires a synthetic assessment of our findings. If the latter are convincing, the first conclusion to be drawn is quite obvious: electoral rules (i.e. the threshold) do affect (psychologically) the parties’ vote and (mechanically) their seats’ shares, as well as the composition of parliamentary majorities. The psychological effect, in particular, is exceptionally strong, since it is certain that voting behaviour is affected by many other factors: be they long-term, like cleavage structure and party identification, or short-term (the campaign’s impact, candidates’ personalities, and so on).1 Given so many competing variables, the fact that our regressions explain from 46 per cent to 52 per cent of main parties’ variance reliably suggests that the threshold is one of the most powerful individual conditions of electoral party systems’ format.2 Thus, the ‘especially weak’ relationship found by Lijphart (1994a: 141) is disproved, and the disproval speaks of course against the theoretical, methodological and operational choices that supported this claim. As we have seen, these choices include a much too heterogeneous population, which bars controlled comparisons, and a measure of the dependent 169

170 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

variable (the effective number of parties) particularly unsuited to (or suboptimal for) testing the laws on electoral systems. Accordingly, our modification, and/or integration, of both choices turns into significance previously null findings, and does markedly improve on Lijphart’s best outcomes themselves: r2 and b coefficients’ figures for mechanical effects and for the frequency of single-party majorities are quite unambiguous in this connection. The empirical success of these modifications and integrations obviously feeds the expectation of further discussion and future research;3 but this is all the more so for the next, and by no means least, factor emphasized through the book, i.e. the impact of the party systems’ destructuration process. As argued at length, the factor is crucial from a theoretical point of view, since systemic structuring is the condition needed to ‘project’ the local format of the competition to the national level, i.e. to set up the object itself of whatever macro-sociological generalizations on electoral systems; and relevance peaks up empirically since the early 1990s, given the strong acceleration of systemic destructuring documented by volatility’s rates. This notwithstanding, up to now both the concept and its most typical indicator had surfaced only through Sartori’s reformulation of Duverger’s propositions and Fisichella’s historical-comparative work, but were almost ignored by quantitative, large-N literature and research.4 The real novelty of this book, then, is the filling of the lacuna through a step-by-step research strategy that has allowed us to sort out, and to estimate, a decreasing reductive impact by the threshold all along an increasing permissive effect of volatility: in short, more parties at unchanged thresholds due to unprecedentedly high volatility rates. To be sure, this is far from nullifying the electoral rules’ influence, nor does it bring us back to Lijphart’s restrained findings: as we have just said above, our estimates are much stronger, whatever the data set or the span of time concerned; and, at any rate, the reductive effect of the threshold is constant when looked at in absolute figures (see Table 9.11). Precisely because it is constant, however, the effect is out of step with the growing permissive pressure of volatility, i.e. its weight decreases in relative terms; and the relative weight’s loss, moreover, might well be underestimated by our indicator, as net total volatility is a defective measure of destructuration, and just one measure among others.5 Be that as it may, our data are more than enough to mark a turning point or, more cautiously, a shift within the overall balance of forces affecting the party systems’ format: more to the point, if it goes without saying that the threshold pertains to the format’s institutional conditions,

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171

volatility embodies fragmentation pressures arising mainly, if not solely, from socio-cultural-political processes, and the latter seem now to be gaining the upper hand.6 Besides being of interest in and by itself, this shift should be duly taken into account because of its plausible influence on what we have termed the ‘systemic’ consequences of majoritarian or PR rule (see Figure 6.1). More or less comprehensive discussions of these consequences are usually appended to the literature’s main contributions, and go often hand in hand with experts’ evaluations of the opportunities, constraints, and the probable outcomes, of more or less ambitious reforms, be they hypothesized, recommended or already enacted (Lijphart, 1994a: Chapter 10; Sartori, 1994; Gallagher, 2005b). Following the tradition, we will shortly review these discussions in section 10.2, and will spell out the specifications and the adjustments suggested by our original findings in the next one.

10.2 Accountability, responsiveness, representativeness: the classic debate In Figure 6.1, the overall account of electoral rules’ effects ends up with two cells which ask quite ‘grand’ questions: how do rules affect democratic performance, or democracy’s ‘quality’? If the democratic principle stipulates that those in power be accountable, as well as responsive, to the electorate, to what extent (if any) are the two stipulations fulfilled by majoritarian or proportional leadership’s selection? And which relationship links the two properties above to the third one (representativeness)? The short conclusion we will draw here is not suited for a systematic discussion of such questions, the debate on which is of long standing. According to the debate’s main trends, however, we may deal at least with its least controversial topic, with a related, and more challenged, inference and – finally – with the most typically normative issue, i.e. representativeness. The least controversial topic concerns systemic accountability:7 especially when the relevant argument is spelled out by referring to pure electoral rules, the overwhelming consensus among scholars of all leanings is that governments are subject to the most compelling constraint to ‘account for’ their behaviour by majoritarian systems, be they of the SMP or the AV variety.8 The accountability requirement, indeed, implies a neat identifiability of political options and the voters’ opportunity to eject from power unaccountable governments, both of which are

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all the more probable the more two-partyism and single-party majorities are approached. Given that our own research confirms, and indeed strengthens, the already known association of the latter features with SMP/AV rules, we cannot but subscribe to the derived conclusion, and do emphasize that PR systems fall far apart on this property. An emphasis is in order because there are authors who, though admitting some differences, tend to downplay them, arguing that ‘there are examples of coalition bargains between parties being struck before the election, so voters know what they are voting for’ (Farrell, 2001: 155). This, and the likely reasoning are by no means convincing, because they confuse the theoretically predictable, and empirically corroborated, effects of the electoral system with specific circumstances, by definition unpredictable and to be explained by multiple ad hoc causes. This is precisely the case of the non-majoritarian example that most approaches the model UK premiership system, i.e. the German Kanzlerdemokratie. Contrary to the model, indeed, quite unique historical-political conditions have uniquely moulded the latter party system, and especially the features that have made it significantly accountable in the past (Sartori, 1994: 104–8); but as these conditions and their effects are on the wane, Germany is re-entering the PR standard of fragmentation, post-electoral coalitions and relatively weak premiers.9 An even more telling story is told by two sub-sets of countries including, on the one hand, the predominant party systems (Ireland, pre-1996 Japan, Norway, Spain, Sweden) and, on the other, the MMM systems (1994–2001 Italy, post-1993 Japan, pre-2005 Russia). Within the first sub-set, the appropriate identifiability of political option derives from the peculiar type of systemic structuring, or the predominance of a single party. Precisely because of predominance, on the other hand, identifiability does not match ejectability, except in case of critical elections; but critical elections, in turn, are at odds with predominance and, since they have long since become the rule, another virtuous PR model has come to an end.10 What is left, then, is the mixed-member variety, which Shugart and Wattenberg (2001c: 583–4) dubbed conducive to accountability thanks to a presumed inbuilt incentive to institutionalize competition between two stable multi-party blocs. This may be so, but not on the evidence they quote: indeed, two out of three cases (Italy and Russia) have not withstood the stability test (and this was one of the reasons why they were abandoned), whereas what holds together the Japanese bipolarism is more the (declining) LDP predominance than the very questionable cohesion of the Social Democratic, Communist and Komeito oppositions.11

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We re-emphasize, then, that majoritarian systems are quite unique in terms of accountability, as recognized, at any rate, by the most unconditional admirer of PR rule (Lijphart, 1994a: 144); but his admission is immediately followed by an important, indeed overwhelming, reservation: ‘Greater accountability does not directly translate into greater responsiveness to citizen interests. There is no evidence that coalition cabinets in multi-party systems are less responsive than one-party majority cabinets; on the contrary, coalition cabinets are usually closer to the centre of the political spectrum – and hence closer in their policy outlook to the average citizen – than one-party cabinets representing either the left or the right.’ This remark leads to the second facet of the debate on the consequences of electoral rules, whose discussion involves three main issues. The first issue is that objections like the one by Lijphart imply that to be submitted to the accountability constraint would not make much significant difference in terms of elites’ behaviour, i.e. would not suffice to grant the latter’s congruence with the voters’ preferences. If so, however, it becomes difficult to draw a conceptual boundary between the democratic theory of elections and elections in non-democratic settings (that do not make a difference whatsoever). This is precisely why the Schumpeterian tradition maintains that the two concepts are firmly connected or, more to the point, that ‘systems of electoral accountability strive to achieve systematic responsiveness through the mechanism of periodic re-election, making the official’s continuing tenure in office subject to the votes of the electorate’ (Goodin, 2000: 3).12 To secure a response, in other words, is the inherent, necessary, requirement of democratic accountancy and, even though its optimization depends upon multiple conditions,13 there is little doubt that (majoritarian) electoral rules are among the most important ones. Be that as it may, the substance of Lijphart’s reasoning deserves a more straightforward examination, since it poses a much more specific relevant question. Coalitions generated by PR systems, he maintains, excel in consensus management because they govern from the centre and, in so doing, tend to respond to the most widely shared social demands. This remark should be discussed in two stages, as it is of both theoretical and empirical import. In the theoretical perspective, what is true is rather the opposite, since ‘there is broad agreement that the (typically two) candidates competing under single-member plurality face strong electoral incentives to adopt centrist positions, while the (typically many) candidates or lists competing under proportional representation face strong incentives to disperse across the ideological spectrum’, or even to ‘stretch’

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it in order to secure a niche to occupy (Cox, 2000: 236; Sartori, 1976: Chapters 6, 10). Moreover, the history of electoral systems abundantly proves the entrenchment of PR and multi-partyism in the most fragmented and/or conflict-ridden societies, rather than in the context of Lijphart’s ‘consensus democracies’.14 To be sure, this circumstance may be, indeed has been, fortunate, since PR is an effective method to keep fragmentation and its conflict potential within a range manageable by democratic means; but a welcome peculiarity of the electoral system at hand is not to be mistaken as the proof of a superior status vis-à-vis majoritarian rule. Indeed, Sartori retorts (1994: 72), ‘Lijphart’s argument can be turned around all the way’; but without going so far an in-between solution would probably be most reasonable and justifiable: the apt answer to whomever wanted to contrast a ‘gentle’ PR rule to ‘conflict maximizing’ majoritarianism is that ‘consensus management is the very essence of any and all democratic governance, and that there is no a priori reason for holding that the Westminster model cannot handle the consensus-conflict maze as well as’ the opposite one. Much the same stance is advisable if the topic of ‘good’ government is dealt with on empirical grounds, i.e. by asking which consequences electoral rules might have in terms of public policy. In this connection, the debate focuses on governments’ effectiveness, on their ability to satisfy material demands of growth, employment, stable prices, low public deficits, and the like. More than anywhere else, methodological caution is imperative here: to put it in the boldest terms, nobody should claim that majoritarian, or PR, rule has a direct influence on what the elites in power do, or fail to do, and – least so – on the outcomes of whatever decision or non-decision. Any influence could not but be at best indirect and more or less heavily mediated, or even distorted, by actors and events taking place over and above the national deciders. More to the point, especially since the mid-1970s, exogenous shocks, international, and/or supra-national authorities, and transnational market forces have interfered systematically with the macro-economic policies of industrial democracies; and these policies, at any rate, have to be implemented within overly complex, multi-level institutional contexts, whose global reach far exceeds, and surely overwhelms, the single contribution of the electoral rule. Confronted with such a problem, one might try to sort out the single contribution, and the solution usually proposed is to submit to a generic ceteris paribus clause the many potentially relevant ‘noisy’ variables. Whatever the worth of the procedure, the outcomes are curiously subject to change with the researchers’ academic background: while

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economists tend to believe, and purport to prove, that PR and coalitions are less effective (as they generate more public expenditure and debt, less growth and more inflation), the mainstream view among sociologists and political scientists is that governments’ responsiveness to the problems of economic management are in the long term quite similar, irrespective of the electoral system.15 Since the debate is marred by methodological and substantive unresolved issues, as well as by some extra-scientific bias, we will take here the latter position and retreat then on to the only, or at any rate the safest, relevant difference: whatever the ability to meet the responsiveness requirement, democratic elites are more promptly and unambiguously accountable for their (perceived or real) success or failure under majoritarian rule. Even if agreed upon, however, the difference must be weighed against the costs of majoritarian rule in terms of representativeness, i.e. the third dimension of democratic performance in Figure 6.1. Before concluding our assessment, then, we have to confront this last dispute, or trade-off, which is indeed the most classic and the oldest, as well as the one most loaded with normative premises. Matters of fact, in other words, are far from decisive here, partly because the facts themselves are more ambiguous than not. Take, for instance, the much praised merit for fostering electoral turnout which is credited to PR systems: though most studies stress that the latter are largely ahead of majoritarian countries (Lijphart, 1994b: 6–7, 2000; Matland and Studlar, 2004), our own database points to a null match: if observations are updated to 2007, and if two hugely deviant cases are excluded, average post-war turnout attains 81.8 per cent in majoritarian systems, as against 82.4 per cent in the PR sub-set.16 According to other studies, PR leaves more room for the representation of women and minorities, be they confessional communities, racial or cultural segments;17 and this ability is typically ‘highly valued’ by supporters, ‘arguing that it enhances regime legitimacy and citizen satisfaction with democracy’; but ‘proponents of single-member plurality are more likely to put relatively little value on descriptive representation, arguing instead in favour of the representation of ideas and values (and defending the notion that such representation is, at least in principle, disconnected from the identity of representatives)’ (Cox, 2000: 237). Once again, moreover, this clearly normative disagreement cannot be ended by the evidence at hand: the effect of PR on gender discrimination, for instance, is quite relative and difficult to assess, since ‘it is clear that many other factors are at work, given the large variation within both categories . . . No one would suggest that the high levels of female representation in Scandinavia and The Netherlands, for example, are caused

176 Elections, Electoral Systems and Volatile Voters

simply by the electoral system’; the latter’s impact is heavily mediated, to say the least, by ‘political culture’ (Gallagher, 2005b: 555). And the reference to cultural factors suggests a further – and crucial – note of caution: although no one questions the symbolic value of descriptive, or sociological, representation, it does not follow by itself that improving the latter is relevant for what really matters, i.e. for advancing the minorities’ rank-order in the socio-economic hierarchy. More to the point, it is well known that the Anglo-Saxon majoritarian systems match the Scandinavian models in terms of gender parity of participation rates in the labour market, while other proportional systems, in Austria, Belgium, The Netherlands, and all southern European countries, lie well behind, irrespective of how many women sit in representative assemblies. From this point of view, the topic of representativeness and its consequences would probably deserve a thorough reassessment or, at any rate, further, and more in depth, research. Be that as it may, it is unlikely that additional empirical evidence will end the dispute between different positions which – as we have said – are basically rooted in normative premises and as such lack (or perhaps are altogether uninterested in establishing) common parameters on which to assess the comparative merits, or the lack thereof, of majoritarian and PR rule. In short, the mother of all questions (Which is best?) cannot be answered irrespective of the values held by supporters of both sides, and of the goals supported by those values. That this is so, is indeed recognized by scholars of all leanings,18 and up to this point our contribution should be intended as nothing more than a personal journey to an (almost) universally shared conclusion. If the shared conclusion is added to the one summarized in the previous section (electoral systems do affect the party systems’ format and the composition of governments), a further logical step follows: as always, the literature will continue to provide reform proposals aiming at improving democratic performance or, more to the point, those aspects of democratic performance that proponents believe improvable through majoritarian, or PR, rule.19 Here, we will not discuss any such proposal, nor will we submit new ones; but our new findings carry implications that are worth specifying since they might be useful to the would-be reformers, whatever their preferred option.

10.3 Volatility, electoral engineering and political entrepreneurship The topics we are going to deal with concern both majoritarian and PR systems, and all derive from the growing fragmentation of party systems

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fostered by electoral volatility. To be sure, this growth would not seem at first sight to have any large-scale consequence within the majoritarian sub-set: as shown by our data, the cornerstone of the Westminster model – single-party majority governance – remains intact and its preservation bears witness to the threshold’s strength, i.e. its continuing ability to convert a plurality of votes into parliamentary majorities. At the same time, however, the greater the fragmentation, the lower the percentages the threshold has to convert and, thus, the more disproportional the votes/seats ratios (Farrell, 2001: 165–6). The information available from our database is unambiguous: through the post-war period, votes’ percentages of single-parties in power follow an overall negative trend in the five concerned countries (see Figure 10.1); and the trend accelerates strongly if a special case (the US) is excluded20 (Figure 10.2). The related correlation coefficients (Pearson’s r) are −0.406 and −0.641 respectively, while averages suggest the usual contrast between times of lower or higher volatility: up to the end of the 1980s, single-party majorities were supported by more than 48 per cent of votes (or more than 46 per cent, without the US); from 1990, they fall slightly under 45 and 42 per cent respectively: a loss of more than 3–4 points. The decrease is not weighted for the concomitant decline of electoral turnout: that would abruptly steepen it; but what is shown is more than enough to downgrade any accountability merit of majoritarian rule and to allow for gloomy predictions. Quite obviously, unprecedented low rates of support cannot but weaken the legitimacy, and even the effectiveness, of single-party governments; this weakening, at any rate, has surely played a role in the transition which brought New Zealand to adopt PR; elsewhere, it has at least translated into growing public favour towards the enactment of provisions that might rectify such hugely disproportional outcomes (Farrell, 2001: Chapter 2); and even though wholesale reforms are not devised as yet, less visible, but at any rate significant, changes are taking place here and there in all concerned countries through ‘reforming from below’: from the drastic regionalization of the Canadian party system, to the moving away from SMP in many British sub-national administrations, the future of the Westminster model is far from safe (Gallagher, 2005b: 566; Dunleavy, 2006; Chapter 3, this volume). Proportional rule, vice versa, seems to be in perfect health: in one or the other variety, it is by far the most widespread formula and the growth of fragmentation is in and by itself a structural incentive to its consolidation and to its expansion, or even to the expansion of its purest

178

60

50

40 Observed Linear 30 1940

1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

2010

Figure 10.1 Electoral support for single-party parliamentary majorities, SMP/AV systems, 1945–2007

52 50 48 46 44 42 40 38 36 34 1940

Observed Linear 1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

2010

Figure 10.2 Electoral support for single-party parliamentary majorities, SMP/AV systems, excluding US, 1945–2007

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variants (Lijphart, 1994a: 52–6; Blais and Massicotte, 1997; Colomer, 2005: 16–18; Chapter 2, this volume). This may please, indeed, does please, the most unconditional supporters, but also leaves room for, and should be tempered by, more neutral remarks. Though in ways that differ from majoritarian systems, the growth of fragmentation has a price, because it has destroyed, or more or less severely harmed, all historical models of ‘working’ multi-partyism: it is worth re-emphasizing here that the once most accountable model (the German one) is in crisis since the growth of party numbers to five and the decrease of the overall strength of the two largest to a post-war minimum; a reasonable approximation (the predominant party system) survives uneasily in Japan thanks to the support of SMP rule, but is extinct in Ireland, Norway and Sweden; and the early ‘stable and efficient’ consociational models were ironically the first ones to fade away following the late 1960s crisis of the parties that had created them. The previous consociational systems, moreover, are the best available examples of the worst consequences of a growing fragmentation. To profit most from it are by definition non-established, and antiestablishment, parties, which tend to shift the system’s political equilibrium from the coalitions governing from the centre praised by Lijphart to alternatives far more radical than those ascribed to majoritarian systems: apart from Belgium, which is the unrivalled leader of this trend and will perhaps succumb to it, let us remember the ‘earthquakes’ caused by Haider in Austria or Fortuyn in The Netherlands; and let us add that in the ‘quiet’ Scandinavian context populist parties, left socialists, radical greens, and the far right, controlled at the most recent elections 14 per cent (Sweden), 30 per cent (Denmark) and 32 per cent (Norway) of the popular vote.21 In short, fragmentation and polarization are related to such a degree that one cannot but admit the urgency of reforming the very proportional rule which some propose as an unconditional remedy to the majoritarian systems’ shortcomings. Unfortunately, however, the urgency seems to match the difficulty of the task: whatever the systemic problems created by fragmentation, the political actors it allows to prosper are in place and it is easy to predict that they will oppose a strenuous, and probably insuperable, resistance to significant rule change. Within the given, highly volatile, context, moreover, ‘significant’ means nothing less than a large change, or at any rate change on an unprecedented scale: more to the point, if the number of German parties has risen to five with a 5 per cent threshold, what legal (or effective) barrier would be needed to curb the ten or eleven Belgian and Italian parties, or the eight

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to ten that crowd the scene in Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands or Sweden? The answer – we believe – would be puzzling, if not altogether unproposable, even for the most willing and optimistic reformer;22 but even if electoral engineering were allowed to step in, the real problem is that it would not be able to succeed alone. No electoral engineering would succeed because symptoms should be treated by acting on their causes, and our research has shown that the 1990s fragmentation is not due to the electoral rules but to the volatility arising from parties’ and party systems’ destructuration. The point deserves special emphasis since it is usually missed: the standard example is Colomer (2005: 18), who explains the growing fragmentation with ‘coordination failures to form just a few candidacies, as well as with the initiative of would-be leaders giving new political saliency to different issues and promoting corresponding new political alternatives to the electorate’. Now, coordination failures do not explain anything, they are just a tautological redescription of what is to be explained; and in section 8.3 we have demonstrated that the initiative or, at any rate, the success of whatever would-be leader is the consequence, rather than the cause, of the electorates’ propensity to cut their bonds with their previous leaders and parties and to realign with new ones. If this is true, two caveats and a reversal of priorities follow. First, even though our data revalue the threshold which was under-evaluated by Lijphart, future manipulations of the very same tool might generate more erratic and unforeseeable consequences if non-structured, or destructured, parties cease to accomplish – or are only partially able to accomplish – the crucial task of nationalizing the effects of enacted reforms. Second, the destructuration process is the signal of a critical parties–society relationship, and this crisis makes electoral engineering both a less effective and a potentially double-edged weapon: on the one hand, a restrictive reform could contain the crisis, though at the price of artificially prolonging the viability of less and less legitimated actors; on the other, more permissive rules will accommodate the challengers of the political establishment, thus favouring processes of turnover and renewal, but also feeding a more disintegrating and chaotic competition. Especially where these risks might look unacceptably high, the appropriate way out could then be the reversal of priorities, i.e. a turn from merely technical engineering to political entrepreneurship. More to the point, if destructuration is the problem, the most straightforward and potentially effective answer is a creative initiative aiming at re-establishing the electors–parties trust relationship, as well as the latter’s linkage function which is the very foundation of democratic

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representation. To be sure, this is easier to say, and to prescribe, than to put to work, since political entrepreneurship is both complex and scarcely codified, i.e. drastically different from the relatively simple and standardized reforms of electoral systems; but our cases include at least one country whose cues deserve to be mentioned and followed with some attention. The country at hand is Italy, one of the Western democracies most heavily destabilized by persistently high volatility rates since the early 1990s (Pappalardo, 2006). The phenomenon, and the ensuing, extremely critical, systemic consequences, have of course been discussed at length, and in part dealt with, on engineering grounds; through the political and academic debate, reform proposals have piled up tirelessly, and two major new electoral laws have been effectively enacted and applied. Almost fifteen years later, however, the overwhelming consensus is that little has been accomplished and, as a matter of fact, the system has been persistently plagued by over-fragmentation, chaotic inter-party relationships, chronic cabinet instability and ineffectiveness. The most recent events, though, might point to a changing strategy, or, more properly, to a reversal of priorities. Faced with an endless impasse, indeed a worsening spiralling of systemic problems and failing therapies, the main parties have given up waiting for an almighty electoral reform and started to promote the much wanted rationalization/concentration/coordination processes by political initiative: unprecedented fusions, or confluences, among centre/left parties, immediately followed by the same move on the right, have bred the first post-war two-bloc competition between reasonably homogeneous forces. New procedures of leadership selection from below have been promoted, or are under way, to fill the party–society gap and to secure the legitimation and power resources needed for representative and effective governance. At the 2008 early elections, moreover, this strategy brought about an overwhelming mass consensus: two newly unified parties (the Freedom’s People and the Democratic Party), plus some minor allies, have captured more than 85 per cent of the popular vote, while a splinter centrist formation has been severely sanctioned and the far left and far right have disappeared altogether from parliament. As a result, fragmentation has receded to an unprecedented historical low, and a new centre-right government backed by a comfortable majority is now confronted by a cohesive loyal opposition, which looks in principle willing and able to play its critical role as well as to cooperate in the thorough redesign of the country’s institutions. To be sure, the whole process is still at an early stage, and it would thus be premature to draw any concluding assessment as to whether

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and when the reforms needed to consolidate the mentioned political advances will take place. Be that as it may, the Italian experiment aptly fits the interpretative framework proposed in this book: reviving the political-entrepreneurial initiative means recognizing that electoral engineering no longer suffices or, at any rate, that the latter’s effectiveness is affected by the good health of representative actors more than the other way around. Sartori’s reformulation of Duverger’s propositions fully embodies this concept through its emphasis on party systems’ structural consolidation. This book – we believe – has proven its empirical import. And the present Italian scenario might be a working operative counterpart. All in all, it seems that the whole range of both standard scientific canons and practical relevance might be said to be satisfied, and this cannot but confirm the worth and the usefulness of research within the field: though ‘mature’, indeed, it has once again provided new, and – we believe – insightful, information.

Notes 1

What Democratic Elections Are, and What They Are Not

1. These are Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States. As explained below, three more recent democracies (Greece, Portugal and Spain) are also included. These countries match the population of Lijphart’s (1994a) research, with some exclusions that are spelled out and justified in Chapter 8. 2. For these, and other, inclusions, see Amorim Neto and Cox (1997); Norris (1997); Blais and Dobrzynska (1998); LeDuc et al. (2002); Mainwaring and Zoco (2007). 3. Lipset (1960); Rokkan (1970); Dahl (1971a). 4. Dahl (1971: 1–3); Linz and Stepan (1996: 3–15); Diamond (1999: 10–12, 2002: 213). 5. Another exception, though surely very minor, is Mauritius. 6. O’Donnell (1997); Joseph (1999); Puddington (2008). 7. See Barkan (2000), and the literature he quotes. 8. These exclusionary mechanisms do not necessarily entail low levels of electoral turnout, as the latter is often quite high in poor countries and, at any rate, higher than in some industrial democracies. Illiterate voters, however, are more mobilized than participating, and, moreover, it should be clear that both the reasons for, and the meaning of, abstention are radically different in Africa or Asia and the US or Switzerland. 9. Gallagher (2005b: 546–7) is one of the authors who consider ‘India a powerful exception to Duverger’s law’; and, moreover, he rejects Sartori’s opposite view as an example of ad hoc exclusion of a disturbing case. As we will see through the book, however, both statements are surprisingly inaccurate. 10. Linz and Stepan (1996); Ágh (1998); Grassi (2002). 11. On Latin American perspectives, see Diamond et al. (2000); on postcommunist regimes, Linz and Stepan (1996); Grilli di Cortona (1997, 2003). 12. Sartori (1968: 281–93, 1994: 37–8); Chapter 6 this volume. 13. Sartori (1994: 91–7); Diamond et al. (2000: 25–9); Mainwaring and Torcal (2006). 14. Mainwaring and Zoco (2007: 166); Lane and Ersson (2007: 100). Though their operationalizations and conclusions are quite different, and cannot be compared with ours, these works share the point of interest here, namely, the gap between structured and unstructured systems. 15. This is much the same stance perceptively taken by Moser (1999, 2001: 4): ‘Electoral system effects typically found in established democracies may not hold . . . in countries with weakly institutionalized party systems.’ 16. According to Lane and Ersson (2007), the gap with post-communist countries could be closed by convergence to a mid-point, as there are signs of decreasing volatility in the East, whereas it is increasing in the West. This may be true 183

184 Notes

17.

18. 19.

20. 21.

2

and, at any rate, the increase is fully documented by our own data below; for the time being, however, average differences are still large enough to bar inter-area comparisons. See Pennings and Lane (1998); Dalton and Wattenberg (2000); Karvonen and Kuhnle (2001); Dalton (2002); Luther and Müller-Rommel (2002); Mair (2002). The figures are Pearson’s r and both are significant at the 0.01 level, two-tailed test. More precisely, the relationship is mediated through the incentive PR formulae give to multi-partyism, which, in turn, fosters volatility. See, for example, Bartolini and Mair (1990: 130–45). We return to the number of parties/volatility relationship in Chapter 8. See Franklin et al. (1992); Dalton et al. (2002); Mair (2002). See, however, the literature quoted in note 17.

Electoral Systems in Contemporary Advanced Democracies

1. We should also note that the most debated option for PR was the single transferable vote (STV), which was later to be adopted by Ireland in 1918, after having been discussed in a bill – subsequently defeated – in the Westminster parliament, in the same period (Hart, 1992). 2. The activities of several pressure groups were instrumental in achieving the adoption of PR, especially in Belgium. In Antwerp, a conference in 1885 debated Thomas Hare’s proposal of the single transferable vote (STV) and d’Hondt list system (the latter took its name from the civil law professor Victor d’Hondt, a prominent figure in the debate on electoral systems). 3. The cumulative vote (which is largely a remnant of the past, and was used to elect the Illinois state legislature from 1870 to 1980) is a multi-member majoritarian system. The voter has as many votes as there are seats to be filled. With three seats at stake, the elector may choose one of the following three options: give one vote to each of three candidates, give 1½ votes to two candidates (partially cumulative), or give all three votes to a single candidate (totally cumulative). The three seats go to the three most voted candidates. The blocked vote (used in Fiji, Bermuda and Mauritius among others) is a variant: the principle remains the same, but it is not possible to give more than one vote per candidate. In electoral systems that employ the limited vote, voters have fewer votes than there are seats to be filled. Candidates are ranked by the total number of votes received and the top candidates are then selected for election until the constituency seats are filled (still used today for the election of the Spanish Senate and, until 1993, for local elections in Italian municipalities with populations of less than 5,000). Finally, electoral systems that use the single non-transferable vote are similar except that each voter is only allowed to cast one vote in the multi-member districts. The candidates with the most votes are elected until the constituency seats are

Notes

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10. 11. 12.

13.

185

filled (the system was adopted in Japan until the 1994 electoral reform, see Chapter 5). There are also qualified majority systems that specify a particular percentage of the vote that a candidate must win in order to be elected in the first round. For example, candidates had to win 40 per cent of the vote to be elected in the first round in Lebanon in 1951, or in presidential elections in Costa Rica. The supplementary vote, currently adopted for the election of the London mayor, can also be considered a variant of the alternative vote. In this system, however, voters can only order two candidates, not all candidates as in the alternative vote. Two thirds of the 21 nations in our analysis have a two-house system (14). In seven cases, the second house is elected directly by the citizens, in three the election is a mixed type (partly directly elected, partly by the sub-national legislative assemblies), while the remaining four are elected indirectly (Patterson and Mughan, 2001). In Italy’s two-house parliament, the two branches are on a par in that both houses of parliament have the same functions. As will be shown in subsequent chapters, however, the effect of the size of the assembly on the number of parties is practically zero, essentially because the largest assemblies are elected with majoritarian systems whose high thresholds penalize, or eliminate, the minor parties. See also the study by Monroe and Rose (2002), which shows the urban/rural disparity in district magnitude. This factor, which is independent of malapportionment (which also acts in favour of rural districts) is more important than usually thought, and it shows a clear disadvantage towards large parties with a predominantly urban base. But such partisan intentions do not always have the expected results. In 1973, in Ireland, the redrawing of district boundaries by the minister James Tully of the Fine Gael–Labour coalition ended up damaging his side, to such an extent that the term tullymandering was coined to describe a similar boomerang reform. By definition, there is only one level of seat allocation in single-member constituency systems. This peculiarity of the Greek system is repeatedly mentioned by Lijphart (1994a). The Swedish system has a similar mechanism. It should also be noted that the calculation of the average district magnitude in multi-tier systems is more complicated. There are different views on which is the best measure to adopt. In our analysis we follow Lijphart’s suggestion to calculate the magnitude in each component of the electoral system. See more on this in Gallagher and Mitchell (2005a), appendix C. Note that Lijphart, in a later analysis (1999), makes use of a new formula for calculating the effective threshold (75/M + 1), in response to criticisms by Penadés (1997). We have preferred to use the original formula for two reasons: the greater possibility it gives of comparisons with other analyses by Lijphart (1994a); and the substantial irrelevance (differences in the order of 1 or 2 per cent between the two formulae) for the overall effects of the electoral systems. For more detailed analysis of the subject, see the appendices of Gallagher and Mitchell (2005a).

186 Notes 14. The least square index is calculated as follows (see appendix C in Gallagher and Mitchell, 2005a: 603): LSq = v((sigma(si − vi )2 )/2); thus, spelling it out step by step: (i) for each party, take the difference between its percentage share of the seats and its percentage share of the votes; (ii) square each of these values; (iii) add these squares; (iv) divide the resulting total by 2; (v) take the square root of this number. 15. Sartori presents two specific rules for determining the relevance of a particular party. The first rule argues ‘a minor party can be discounted as irrelevant whenever it remains over time superfluous, in the sense that it is never needed or put to use for any feasible coalition majority’. In this sense a party should not be counted for classification purposes if it fails to exhibit coalitional potential. The second rule argues that ‘a party qualifies for relevance whenever its existence, or appearance, affects the tactics of party competition and particularly when it alters the direction of the competition’. Here a party is not counted for classification unless it demonstrates blackmail potential. In Sartori’s view, a party only needs to exhibit one of these qualities to be considered relevant. 16. Technically, this operation is carried out by calculating the inverse of the sum of the squares of the percentage of the vote obtained by each party in the case of Nv, or of the percentage of seats obtained for Ns. See on this appendix B of Gallagher and Mitchell (2005a: 598–9): ‘effective number is indicated as N (Nv indicating the effective number looking at the system in terms of votes, known as the effective number of elective parties; NS being the figure when we calculate on the basis of the seat distribution, the effective number of legislative parties). This is calculated as follows:

Nv =


1 (Pv )2

Thus, spelling it out step by step: (i) calculate each party’s proportion of the total votes; (ii) square each of these values; (iii) add these squares to produce a sum of the squares; (iv) take the reciprocal of this sum, in other words divide 1 by the sum of the squares.’ 17. The construction of the index is described in Bartolini and Mair (1990: 20–1). The formula is the following:

Total Volatility =
|Pi . . . nt − Pi . . . nt + 1|/2 where P is the percentage of votes for parties ‘i’ to ‘n’ in elections ‘t’ and ‘t + 1’. 18. See Bartolini and Mair (1990). The volatility so calculated, total or interblock, is called net volatility to distinguish it from the intention to change found by opinion polls, which is labelled gross volatility in the literature.

Notes

3

187

Majoritarian Systems

1. New Zealand adopted SMP until the 1993 electoral reform (see Chapter 5). Majoritarian systems are also used – among the countries whose parliamentary elections are analysed here – for the direct election of heads of state or government in Austria, Finland, France, Ireland, Portugal and, again, the US. 2. In some districts, particularly bizarre situations can sometimes occur. The winning candidate in the Kerowagi constituency in Papua New Guinea, in 1997 won with just 7.9 per cent of the vote, meaning that 92.1 per cent of the constituents voted for someone else! (Cox, 1997: 85). 3. This is the case, in the UK, of the two main regionalist parties. In the last elections (2005) the Scottish National Party got respectively 0.9 per cent of the seats with 1.5 per cent of the votes; the Welsh Plaid Cymru respectively 0.5 per cent of the seats with 0.6 per cent of the votes. So, regionalist parties get fairly well represented. 4. According to Sartori, in order to have a two-party system: ‘(I) over time two parties recurrently and largely outdistance all the others, in such a way that (II) each of them is in a position to compete for the absolute majority of seats and may thus reasonably expect to alternate in power, and (III) each of them governs, when in government, alone’ (1994: 39). 5. For a more detailed list of ‘advantages’ and ‘disadvantages’ of plurality see Reynolds et al. (2005: 36–43). 6. A recent analysis has argued that plurality endangers the prospects for successful transition: ‘If the party system is poorly entrenched, and/or geographically heterogeneous, single-member electoral regimes lead to regional fragmentation, which often allows a single party to benefit exclusively from the “large party effect”. One-party dominance hinders democratic consolidation and the formation of an effective national party system that would faithfully represent the diverse groups in society. While single-member laws can generate modest-sized balanced party systems, this outcome must be seen as a special case, dependent on relative organizational parity among parties and a certain balance of party support, both of which are characteristic of the established democracies of the West. Neither of these conditions is likely to obtain when mass enfranchisement precedes the introduction of a competitive party system, nor in cases where a party system develops in a newly formed state’ (Birch, 2005: 295–6). 7. The great majority of countries in the world that today use SMP are former British colonies (see Blais 2000, 2008). 8. In the last fifteen years, the Liberal Democrats have displayed a careful targeting of the marginal constituencies that has allowed them to reduce their underrepresentation (see Table 3.1). In the 2005 election no seats were awarded to the fourth party (the United Kingdom Independence Party), which nationally got 2.2 per cent of the votes, or to the sixth most voted party (the Greens, the fourth party in London; see Dunleavy and Margetts, 2005: 858). Both parties were penalized by their lack of territorial concentration. 9. It is highly likely that SMP plays a crucial role in ‘penalizing the growth of new and extreme parties’, as in the case of the extreme right (Ignazi, 2003: 183; contra see Carter, 2005). However, in the 2005 election, the British National Party candidate came third in the district of Barking, just 27 votes

188 Notes

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

short of the second place. Therefore, it remains to be seen whether SMP will be a permanent barrier against the surge of anti-immigrant parties in high immigration areas such as Barking and other East London districts. In New Zealand a similar outcome was instrumental in giving birth to the reform process in the early 1980s, after two consecutive elections, in 1978 and 1981, brought about a similar outcome (see Chapter 5). This gave new centrality to the so-called West Lothian Question, which was raised ‘when the then MP for West Lothian, Tam Dalyell, pointed out that with devolution Scottish MPs would still be able to vote on legislation relevant to England in the House of Commons, but English MPs would have no say on issues devolved to the Scottish Parliament’ (Johnston et al., 2002: 160). The doyen of British electoral studies, David Butler, at the age of 25 had analysed this dynamics with application to the 1950 elections, in an anonymous contribution to The Economist. He also had the chance of presenting it to Winston Churchill in person, as recalled by himself in Butler (1998). As for the issue of women’s representation, we should not forget that parties’ choices in the candidate selection process play a decisive role in determining the number of women in parliament. Currently, at Westminister, women representation varies from as low as 8.6 per cent in the Conservative Party to a quasi ‘Scandinavian style’ value of 27.5 per cent in the Labour Party. This was mainly due to the use of all-women shortlists to select women in many seats where both male and female incumbents were retiring (see ERS, 2005). The case for proportional representation has very deep roots in Britain (Catterall, 2000). In the 1880s it was the British Proportional Representation Society which gathered some consensus towards the possible adoption of the single transferable vote as a form of PR (Hart, 1992; Bromund, 2001). The Electoral Reform Society, founded in 1884, also shares this aim. Gianfranco Baldini had the opportunity to visit and exchange many ideas at the ERS, during the campaign for the 1992 British election, for the preparation of his first degree dissertation. See ‘Democratic Deficit’, The Economist, 28 October 1995, pp. 46–8. More recently, in the immediate aftermath of the 2005 election, The Independent dedicated an entire page to denounce the unfairness of the system, launching a campaign for the introduction of proportional representation (see Dunleavy and Margetts, 2005). The proposal, called ‘alternative vote top-up’, called for the vast majority of MPs to remain elected in single-member constituencies (using the Australian form of preferential voting often called the alternative vote (AV), in which voters rank candidates in order of preference), while 15–20 per cent of MPs would be elected from party lists in a way that would attempt to compensate for the party disproportionality arising from the AV part of the system. Besides a record high disproportionality, the 2005 elections saw, among other scores: a record low of votes for the winning party, and a record high of minority winners inside the districts. We should also note that in England Labour obtained 35.4 per cent of the votes and 54.2 per cent of the seats, the Conservatives respectively more votes – 35.7 per cent – but just 36.6 per cent of the seats (see Dunleavy, 2006: 323).

Notes

189

18. We do not aim here at a thorough description of how the electoral system operates inside each country. This topic is covered in detail by, among others, Bowler et al. (2005) and Massicotte (2005). 19. In the event of a tie, the House of Representatives would be called to decide, via a system by which each state has one vote. In four cases (1824, 1876, 1888, and again in 2000 with George W. Bush) the president was not the candidate who scored the majority of the popular votes. 20. Among the many arguments for change, critics of SMP also underline the problem of redistricting and gerrymandering (Hill, 2001). See also www.fairvote.org for an illustration on some of the main distortions of SMP, under the headings of the ‘Dubious Democracy’ programme. In 2000, Fairvote Canada was also set up: www.fairvotecanada.org 21. According to Reynolds et al. (2005: 52): ‘Two-round systems are used to elect 22 national legislatures and are the mot common method used worldwide for the direct election of presidents.’ 22. Seventeen elections were held during the French Third Republic, between 1871 and 1936. In fourteen cases (one of which was in multi-member constituencies) there was no threshold for the access to the second round, and even candidates not present at the first round could compete. In the remaining three elections SMP was used (Cole and Campbell, 1989). 23. Should only one candidate obtain more than 12.5 per cent, the second most voted candidate is also admitted to the second round. 24. The range goes from just 1.3 per cent of the seats assigned to majority firstround winners in 1997 (when the success of the Front National contributed to the defeat of the right in the three-party contests of the second round, the so-called triangulaires: see Parodi, 1997; Grunberg, 2000) to as many as almost 23 per cent with the elections that brought about more clear victories: 1968 and 1981 (see Table 3.3). 25. A term limit was introduced in France only in 2008. 26. The electoral system came under new attack from the centrist party under the leadership of former UDF leader François Bayrou, who obtained a brilliant 18.6 per cent of the votes in the 2007 presidential elections, but whose new-born party, the Mouvement Démocrate, was almost wiped out from parliament at the following legislative elections (see Table 3.3; for more details see Baldini and Lazar, 2007). The Comité Balladur on institutional reforms, which reported to the President of the Republic Nicolas Sarkozy in October 2007, proposed, among other reforms, the introduction of a ‘dose’ of PR for the election of the Assemblée National. 27. Voters have to register and to attend the polling station. So there is compulsory registration and compulsory voting. The latter is reported as having favoured the Labor Party, since most apathetic voters tend to be younger and less educated, two factors usually associated with the Labor electorate (McAllister, 2002: 386). However, this mechanics is more than balanced by the recurrent bias towards the Liberal Party. In nine out of the 21 post-war elections the latter party was able to gain more seats than Labor with fewer votes (Farrell and McAllister, 2006: 81). 28. Recent research has convincingly shown the relevance of competitiveness for turnout (Franklin, 2004). We shall not return to this matter, already explored in a previous contribution (Baldini and Pappalardo, 2004) where we have

190 Notes shown that, by excluding the two outliers in the majoritarian and PR families (respectively the US, given the peculiarities mentioned in this chapter for the different cost of voting on the one hand and Switzerland, a polity where elections usually play a limited role in determining government composition, and all major policy issues are subject to referendums), no major differences can be detected between the two groups.

4

Proportional Systems

1. The only countries included in our study not analysed in the Gallagher and Mitchell book are: Greece, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland. Regular election reports in journals such as Electoral Studies, West European Politics, Representation or Parliamentary Affairs, to name a few, usually give some information on the respective electoral systems. 2. Later renamed ‘consensual democracy’ (Lijphart, 1999). 3. This was not the case in other non-European countries, such as Lebanon, Cyprus, Fiji and Malaysia. 4. In Table 4.5 only the votes for the major regionalist party, the Catalan moderate Convergència I Unió, are displayed. Since 1977 other important parties have obtained seats, including the Basque Partido Nacionalista Vasco and many others (see De Winter et al., 2006). 5. In 1923, the Acerbo law, which gave 65 per cent of the seats to any party obtaining at least 25 per cent of the votes, contained much more than a ‘majority bonus’. The fascist government majority in 1924 was not really fabricated by the law, as the coalition led by the fascist party was already able to win 61 per cent of the votes. However, given the context of growing limitations of political freedom for any opponents of Mussolini, who was to take up his dictatorial powers in January 1925, the Acerbo law was all the more associated with the status of a dangerous and undemocratic precedent. Left-wing parties used this example of the huge ‘majority bonus’ to fiercely protest against the De Gasperi/Scelba law, approved exactly 30 years later, after the return to democracy. 6. Italy is unique also because of its (redundant) uniform bicameral structure, whereby governments need a majority in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. The latter’s system ‘looked quite different, but in reality was very similar in its effect’ (Katz, 2001: 99, for more details). The system for the Chamber utilized two thresholds: to take part to the national distribution of votes, a party needed to obtain at least one full quota in the districts and 300,000 votes at the national level. 7. The votes used to calculate the attribution of the majority bonus comprise those from all Italian regions, with the exception of the tiny region of Valle d’Aosta. The seats for each coalition are then distributed proportionally, not only to lists that have gained more than 2 per cent of votes, but also to the first-placed list among those that have failed to reach the 2 per cent threshold. 8. The exceptions to this rule are the regions of Molise (where the two seats are distributed ‘proportionally’, which in practice means one to the centre-left and one to the centre-right), Valle d’Aosta (where the one available seat is assigned according to a plurality formula), and Trentino-Alto Adige (where

Notes

9.

10.

11.

12. 13.

5

191

six seats are allocated using the single-member plurality system, and one is awarded to the best-placed loser). In the period 1951–2002 the two major parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, the only two main parties in Europe not competing on a left–right basis, have obtained a positive score between 1 and 7 in the votes–seats ratio (Farrell, 2001: 141). A caveat should be made at this stage. STV has been accused of being vulnerable to non-monotonicity and even ‘quasi-chaotic’ (Dummett, 1997). These critics also refer to the fact that redistribution of surplus votes takes place randomly, by taking the ‘last package received’ by the candidate (Gallagher and Mitchell, 2005a, appendix A: 595–6). Although a test has proved that this random procedure has not made any major difference, bringing the possible distortion of the final outcome close to one chance in a hundred (Gallagher and Unwin, 1986), critics maintain that the procedure can possibly have some negative consequences. Non-transferable votes in the table indicate the numbers of non-expressed preferences after the count which has determined the election or the exclusion of a the candidate indicated at the top of each column. For more details on the EP elections see Lodge (2001, 2005); Farrell and Scully (2005). Lijphart analyses also the dimension of the assembly as a relevant variable. In contrast, we have not selected this topic for careful exploration, as we find its effects largely irrelevant. To all the relevant variables like formula, M and so on, one should obviously add the level of structuration of the party system, as clarified in Chapter 1.

Mixed-member Systems

1. In particular, Chiaramonte objects to the inclusion of Israel (direct election of the prime minister) among the mixed systems as well as the exclusion of systems that use different formulae in different parts of the country (what Massicotte and Blais (1999) define as coexistence systems), such as the Panamese system. 2. This, indeed, was the case of the system applied in Mexico between 1988 and 1991 or currently used in Cameroon and Chad; see: Shugart and Wattenberg (2001a: 14). No system belongs to the empty cell in the table. 3. It should be remembered that in Central and Eastern Europe the most adopted variant of mixed systems has been the MMM. It is also true, however, that the German model played some role in the general idea of mixing up single member districts with the PR principle. 4. Until 1987 the d’Hondt system was used. 5. Surplus seat number has recently increased: the CDU/CSU got 12 of the total 17 seats assigned in the eleven elections that took place until 1989; in 1990 all the six surplus seats went to CDU/CSU and again in 1994, 12 out of 16 to the same party and the remaining 4 to the SPD; the latter was then able to benefit from all the 13 surplus seats in 1998 and 4 out of 5 (the other being assigned again to the CDU) in 2002 (Roberts, 2003; Saalfeld, 2005). The two parties got respectively 9 and 6 surplus seats in the 2005 election.

192 Notes 6. Only for the first federal election after reunification, in 1990, was the 5 per cent threshold relaxed and applied separately in the former territories of West and East Germany. 7. Brettschneider and Gabriel (2002) have also revealed the substantial ‘nonpersonalization’ of the German vote for what concerns the chancellor candidates when compared to the equivalent roles in the United States or Great Britain. 8. The same notion of ‘mixed-member-proportional system’ was coined by the Royal Commission (Lundberg, 2007a). 9. Notice also that Japan is the only democratic system where no ballot paper exists, as voters simply write down the name of the favoured candidate and place their paper in the two booths, one for each component of the system (Reed, 2005). 10. See D’Alimonte (2005) for more details. In 2001 the centre-right set up these fake lists in all the 26 constituencies, whereas the centre-left did so in 18 constituencies (Chiaramonte, 2002). The systematic use of the liste civetta impeded the attainment of the ‘plenum’ of 630 seats for the parliament elected in 2001: only 618 seats were assigned, as Forza Italia ran out of candidates after the use of the liste civetta (ibid.). 11. In Italy referendums cannot propose a new law. They can either be abrogative of previous legislation or confirmative (if a constitutional change is implemented without an enforced majority by both chambers). 12. Playing somehow with the word, as matto in Italian means crazy. 13. Calderoli admitted, during the campaign for the 2006 election, that the law was a ‘porcata’, literally a pig’s dinner, deliberately created in order to make more difficult the centre-left victory in the following election.

6

Electoral Rules: How Effective and Why

1. We especially refer to Lavau (1953) and Mackenzie (1957), on the one hand, and Riker (1982), on the other. At any rate, the quite rigid ‘scientist’ stand taken by the latter author appears untenable to Sartori himself (1984). 2. Cox (1997: Chapter 2) denies that this is the case, and in a later work Duverger (1984) himself takes the same position. 3. See, for example, Key (1964: 229ff.); Lipson (1953); Hartz (1955). 4. Campbell (1958: 30–2); Grumm (1958); Meisel (1963); Lipson (1964); Lipset and Rokkan (1967); Rokkan (1970); Von Beyme (1985). 5. In particular, indexes of ethnic heterogeneity are especially problematic as they rely upon cleavages that are, more often than not, politically quiescent. One is thus led to the paradoxical conclusion that SMP systems are more deeply divided than PR ones and yet have many fewer cleavages (Ordeshook and Shvetsova, 1994: 118). Besides implying an unwarranted overstatement of the SMP rule’s ability to counteract social fragmentation, this paradox shows how wrong it is to take ethnic heterogeneity as a proxy for social diversity at large, as assumed by Amorim Neto and Cox (1997: 166, footnote 21). Indeed, the indicator tends rather to understate the PR systems’ social diversity as much as it overstates that of SMP systems. 6. Issue dimensions are considered ‘highly subjective’ by the very same authors who use them (Taagepera, 1999: 546), while data for heterogeneity indexes

Notes

7. 8. 9.

10. 11.

12. 13.

14. 15.

16.

17.

18.

193

do not match electoral years and are usually extrapolated from much fewer observations taken on the occasion of national censuses. The correlations by r2 are 0.001 vs. 0.17 in Ordeshook and Shvetsova (1994: 111, table 1), and 0.01 vs. 0.61 for Amorim Neto and Cox (1997: 164, table 2). See the references given in note 7, and Taagepera (1999). Volatility does match the electoral years by definition, and its calculation is based on Pedersen’s (1979) generally uncontested formula. Moreover, in Chapter 8 we will show how a potential charge of ‘endogeneity’ may be dismissed. Here we don’t deal with abstentionism, a topic to which a chapter was devoted in a previous book. See Baldini and Pappalardo (2004). This blurring amounts to neutralization of the mechanical effect in the case of the American two-partyism, which is fully ‘manufactured’ by psychological anticipations. On this important, though often overlooked, topic, see Sartori (1984). Be that as it may, complexities are surely multiplied in mixed systems (Italy and Japan, according to the stipulation adopted here), since these are by definition pervaded by contradictory logics, and a proportionate, confusing conundrum of psychological and mechanical impulses. It should thus be clearly recognized that there is no optimal way to deal with these systems, and least when a comparative quantitative approach, like the one pursued in the next chapters, is adopted. That said, in the ensuing statistical analysis Italy’s and Japan’s proportional and majoritarian arenas have been treated as if they were different systems, and classified accordingly; but, though convenient for our research purposes, this choice does not purport to be the only possible, or always the most recommendable, one. See Palfrey (1989) and, on the M+1 rule, Cox (1997). Thus, for Sartori the multiplying effect is partly due to a logical fallacy; but it results also from a historical misunderstanding, i.e. the concurrence of the introduction of PR and the enlargement of suffrage (with the latter being the real cause of the growth of the number of parties). This counting excludes the smaller countries, i.e. those with fewer than five million inhabitants. Many of these topics are stressed by the sociological literature quoted in note 4, while party identification and the short-term influence of electoral campaign and personalities were put forward by the ‘Michigan school’ and the rational choice approach respectively. For a recent summary account, see Miller and Niemi (2002). The adverse effect of transitions and fluid polities on strategic behaviour and the number of parties recalls the positive role of systemic structuring that will be spelled out in section 6.6. Though conscious of its role, Cox fails to recognize that variable as a condition for the validity of Duverger’s propositions. As we shall see, this is a crucial difference from the view we take here, following Sartori. Cox exemplifies by mentioning the electoral system of the State of New York, whose version of SMP rule allows for cross-endorsement and, then, for the persistence of multi-partyism. We refer to countries like Austria, Malta and Ireland, which have combined PR representation and a two-party format for a long time. The underlying cause is an especially strong systemic structuring, as spelled out in Sartori’s proposition 1.1 quoted in section 6.6.

194 Notes 19. A case in point is the Italian transition 1994–2001, whose growing multipartyism following the introduction of SMP rule was taken by some scholars as proving the latter’s ineffectiveness. Elsewhere, though, we argue at length that what really caused this ineffectiveness was the lack of Cox’s prerequisites. See Pappalardo (2000, 2001), and Chapter 7, this volume. 20. Besides Cox see, among others, Galbraith and Rae (1989); Heath et al. (1991); Blais and Nadeau (1996); Evans et al. (1998). 21. The obvious candidates are strongly ideological parties and/or those that represent sub-cultural, ethnic-linguistic, racial, identities. The elites’ misperceptions and miscalculations in a fluid situation are well portrayed by Gunther (1989) in his account of the Spanish democratic transition. 22. This is confirmed by our own data (Tables 8.6, 8.7), though it is to be stressed once again that the mixed systems adopted in the two countries (and especially the Italian version) carry proportionate ambiguous incentives that hinder any straightforward causal imputation. 23. Obviously enough, such analyses are beyond the scope of comparative quantitative research of the kind that will be proposed here; but the qualitative in-depth exploration of single cases is often an unavoidable premise for the reformulation, and the correct application, of large-scale generalizations. 24. See Sartori (1984: 17); Taagepera and Shugart (1989: 123); Benoit (2006: 75). 25. The same conclusions are drawn, through a slightly different pathway, by Leys (1959) and Wildavsky (1959). Leys tried then to elaborate an alternative solution, but the supporting argument is shown to be inconsistent by Cox (1997: 182–3). 26. We limit our comments to the self-declared most important conditions put forward by the author. A few others discussed by Cox in Chapter 10 are either auxiliary or case-specific, and cannot be dealt with here. 27. Standard regression techniques can check for some broad tendency towards less or more parties, i.e. can test to what extent the theoretical equilibrium numbers are approximated, but are unable to predict these numbers as such. This can only be done by the ‘qualitative’ path taken by Sartori, as specified below in the text. 28. The criterion of systemic relevance applies also to multi-party systems, through Sartori’s notions of coalition and blackmail potentials (1976: 119–25 and 300–19). As said, though, these are qualitative criteria that cannot as such be captured by any quantitative analysis (see note 27). Thus, they are forcibly dropped from the statistical tests of Chapter 9, though we fully agree with the view of Taagepera (2007: 63–4) that the ideal measure of the number of parties should incorporate them in an appropriate (but as yet unavailable) operational form. 29. In the case of Australia, this stipulation additionally requires counting the Liberal and Country-National parties as a single unit. Since these have been permanent electoral and political allies through the whole post-war period (and back common senatorial candidates that form a single parliamentary group), we consider the choice fully appropriate and will follow it in the empirical tests of Chapter 9. 30. In principle, this conclusion implies that the Canadian case should be excluded from comparative tests, as it doesn’t fit a theoretically justified

Notes

195

condition for the proper operation of SMP rule. Given the small number of countries belonging to the class, however, we have preferred to keep it in the aggregate statistical analyses. It should be remembered, then, that our tests will be performed under an unfavourable condition. As such, their already rather strong results should be considered a restrained, or conservative, assessment of the impact of electoral rules. 31. We have anticipated in Chapter 1 the unstructured status of the Indian party system, which is of course much more pronounced than is the case of Canada. This, and the fact that the very placement of the country within fully-fledged mass democracies may be questioned, explains why we will not enter it in our empirical tests.

7

The French 2RS

1. We need to stress that the following analysis does not concern the presidential election system, whose rules (top-two majority runoff) and whose target (a monocratic position) make it very different from legislative 2RS and, at any rate, irrelevant for our purposes. As a consequence, we do not agree with Cox (1997: Chapter 6), who ‘generalizes’ from the first to the second system, and we maintain that the underlying target of our criticisms is precisely this deductive generalization. 2. On the legal thresholds of the 2RS, see Chapter 3. Here, we refer to the second round ‘effective’ threshold, i.e. 35 per cent, or 37.5 per cent, of the votes, according to the versions adopted by Lijphart and in this book (see Chapter 3). Other authors, from Taagepera and Shugart (1989), to Ordeshook and Shvetsova (1994), prefer to ‘convert’ the threshold into district magnitude (M), which is an equivalent measure and raises much the same problems we will discuss throughout the chapter. 3. Duverger’s generalization might be countered with the objection that it is based on just the French case, and that to assume that the shape of the party system is due to the 2RS method of election is unwarranted since ‘it is difficult to disentangle effects characteristic of France from those inherent in the [electoral] system itself’ (Birch, 2003b: 325). This may be so, but while we lack truly convincing explanations in terms of some feature of French ‘national character’, or political culture, the theoretical statement quoted in the text has raised such a large debate as to deserve further attention and systematic comparisons to crucial alternative generalizations put forward in the literature. 4. Alliances, in turn, differentiate the 2RS from PR, that is, they are its specific consequence, as rightly stressed by Duverger; and it is precisely this consequence that fosters party fragmentation. 5. More precisely, the practice of choosing common candidates before the first round has been the norm almost since the beginning of the Fifth Republic within the centre-right, while the opposite camp generalized it much later. See Habert et al. (1993); Perrineau and Ysmal (1998, 2003). 6. On the topic of seats concentration, see section 7.3. 7. See Chapter 6, note 13. 8. Though the two attempts utilize wholly different approaches, what they have in common is a micro (i.e. district-level) analysis. From this point of view, the

196 Notes

9.

10.

11.

12.

13. 14.

15.

16.

main theoretical problem they share (a problem that concerns both rounds’ thresholds) is the non-transferability of the district-level format of competition to the national party system format; and as we already said, and will further discuss in the next section, this non-transferability is ‘endogeneous’, that is, due to the coalitional incentives generated by the electoral rule. As such, it cannot be obviated by the ‘exogeneous’ solution (i.e. the party system structuration) provided by Sartori himself and extensively discussed in Chapter 6. These parties’ dis-representation, Fisichella (2003: 333) maintains, ‘does not follow a linear trend’, though ‘the Radicals and other French centre-left groups have frequently scored a favourable record’. This example undoubtedly points to the excellent bargaining skills of the involved parties, but quite apart from it, Fisichella’s generalizing premise does suggest an outcome that, through ups and downs of under- and over-representation, could well end up in the medium-to-long term with much the same ‘non-excessive under-representation’ admitted by Sartori. We should recall that M, i.e. the average district magnitude, is the basic figure on which the electoral effective thresholds are computed, and on which their predictive power rests. See Chapter 2. In Cox’s supporting example (1997: 125), four first round candidates are credited with the following votes shares by surveys: L – 31 per cent, A – 25 per cent, B – 15 per cent, R – 29 per cent. In such a situation, the centrist candidates A and B will be forced to coalesce, and/or their electors will have to vote strategically for one of them, to maximize the centre’s chance of entering the second round and getting the seat. Thus, Cox concludes, Duverger’s contention that the system fosters fragmentation is wrong. As is immediately apparent, however, it is equally easy to ‘prove’ that fragmentation will as inexorably follow from alternative combinations of candidates/votes shares. Thus, the only way to get out of an endless dispute is to provide a theoretical justification in support of the one or the other view; but our discussion below will show that it is Duverger, not Cox, who provides such a justification. We emphasize the theoretical requirement because in ‘practical’ (i.e. empirical?!) terms Cox (1997: 124, 137) is as convinced as Sartori that the number of parties is difficult to predict in 2RS; and this admission, we would like to add, is by itself one more reason for distrusting Cox’s proof and the deductions therefrom. See Habert et al. (1993); Perrineau and Ysmal (1998, 2003). Cox treats strategic voting and strategic entry/withdrawal separately or, at most, as functional equivalents which alternatively step in to compensate the deficits of rational behaviour by the elites or the electors. To be sure, the ceteris paribus clause which has to be satisfied in order to secure consequentiality is quite exacting: it includes the theoretical and institutional conditions specified by Cox himself and party system’s structuration, both discussed extensively in Chapter 6. These conditions, however, are generally present in consolidated democracies, with one exception (the Italian MMS experience), which likens it to the 2RS in some respects. We will return to this point in the next section. These indicators of the number of parties are extensively discussed in Chapter 8.

Notes

197

17. See, for instance, Lijphart (1994a: 21). 18. Disproportionality, measured as the largest votes/seats percentage difference, amounts to 10.9 per cent (9.8) in SMP/AV systems, to 3.6 per cent (2.9) in PR systems, and to 16.8 per cent (16.5) in the French 2RS. These figures are 1945–2007 means and, in parentheses, medians, of the 21 democracies studied here. On the dis-representation of single French parties, see Chapter 3, this volume. 19. The heterogeneity of the 2RS, and thus, the unsuitability of any computation using the votes of the first round and the seats of the second, is rarely remembered, but has been well known for a long time. See Bon (1978: 177) for an argument somewhat different from, though overlapping with, our own. 20. See section 7.4. 21. Indeed, extremist, or anti-system, parties are normally absent, or irrelevant, in single ballot majoritarian systems; but for a sui generis case (Italy 1994–2001), see section 7.4. 22. Besides being problematical, the comparison is superfluous, as seats concentration in single ballot systems is clearly stronger than in the 2RS case (Table 7.2), thus confirming the expectation of non-majoritarian effects of the French system; what remains to be shown, though, is how much the latter’s effects approach those of PR, and this is done in Table 7.3. 23. Thresholds are computed as explained in Chapter 2. Since computing has been based on election years, however, the resulting figures differ from, and cannot be compared with, the data of Chapter 9, which are averages for ‘electoral systems’ as defined by Lijphart (1994a) and discussed in Chapter 8. In our calculations, priority has been given to the need to secure a sufficient number of observations for, as well as maximizing the range of values within, each class. In this sense, we define the outcome as a plausible one, though other criteria for classification would of course be legitimate. 24. While the legislative French 2RS is unique among consolidated democracies, the presidential model is diffused in several other countries, and if one counts the non-consolidated systems, extends to 15 (of a total of 25) systems having a directly elected head of state. 25. The first relevant remark one may think of is that a consolidated practice of electoral alliances secures a kind of ‘cohesive fragmentation’ within both left and right blocs, while PR makes for a much looser, or no, coordination. The crucial coordination agency, however, is surely the presidential institution: the top-two runoff method, the large discretional power accruing to the position, and the growing personalization of elections it allows for, have indeed maximized the bipolar structure of competition in legislative voting, have displaced the majorities’ centre of gravity from parties to the president, and, more recently, have started processes of concentration and electoral-political fusions that some believe might lead to ‘bipolar two-partyism’ (Grunberg and Haegel, 2007). Once again, then, we have to emphasize that our statements only apply to the effect of legislative 2RS and are, moreover, essentially retrospective statements; thus, they do not exclude more comprehensive, and more prospective, approaches. 26. The notion of an anti-system party is due to Sartori (1976: chapter 6). The more recent terminology (Sartori, 1994: 67–8) is partly a specification, partly an update, of the previous one.

198 Notes 27. As already remarked, Cox (1997: 90–2) attributes the survival of multipartyism in the State of New York to a variety of SMP that allows for the cross-endorsement of candidacies and, thus, fosters exchange and mutual support processes analogous to those familiar in the 2RS; he refers, though, only to the number of parties in general and does not specifically deal with the fate of the anti-system sub-set. 28. In most, if not all, of these systems, two-partyism, or moderate multipartyism, has notoriously preceded the introduction of the electoral rule (see Chapter 6, section 6.5), no relevant anti-system party has ever prospered, and cross-endorsement is officially forbidden in national elections; at the same time, though, we have remarked that only the US fully complies with the institutional requisites for the validity of Duverger’s law and has as such the only true two-party system. 29. We set aside here other minor far left parties (Italian Communists and the Greens), the Northern League, and the far right. Their overall decline is noted in Pappalardo (2006).

8

Redesigning Cases and Indicators

1. Compared with more disaggregated analyses, averaging variables’ values, and taking these averages as the observations, may artificially inflate r2 and t-statistics, as well as cause other econometric problems. Though conscious of such problems, and thus of the need for caution when interpreting statistical results, we think that a theoretically rigorous research design should be given priority over technical shortcomings. 2. In this connection, we stress once again that an ‘equilibrium’ (i.e. stable) number of parties (and not whatever number at whatever time point) is precisely what Duverger’s propositions and all their later reformulations do predict. 3. See note 1 and, concerning the problems with Lijphart’s data, Ordeshook and Shvetsova (1994: 101–3). The most notable of these problems is that some systems containing a single, or very few, elections, are given the same weight as others whose data are averaged through the whole post-war period. Though there is no optimal solution to this imbalance, the latter is reduced in our data set by the elimination of some of Lijphart’s cases (see section 8.2) and by the exclusion from our final regressions of the first single-election systems of four countries which (re-) democratized since 1945 (Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan). 4. In order to save space, the tables show the variables that will be entered in the statistics of the next chapter, but omit average district magnitude (M), on which the calculation of the effective electoral threshold rests. See Chapter 2. 5. With some smaller variations that are mentioned in the notes to the tables. Moreover, we remember that, in order to maximize results’ comparability and cumulative knowledge, the effective threshold is operationalized here according to the formula adopted by Lijphart (1994a). This formula is slightly different from a later one (see Chapter 2), but a test on our data showed no significant outcome variation and thus no influence on the conclusions that will be drawn in the next chapter. Note that the Lijphart himself (1994a:

Notes

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

199

182–3, note 29) declares having compared the two operationalizations with much the same results as ours. Indeed, this would be Nohlen’s view, as we know from the previous chapter that he is an advocate of the crucial role of social cleavages as against electoral rules. In an effort to maximize the independence of cases requirement, Lijphart (1994a: 114–17) replicates shortly its main statistical analyses on a 50 per cent threshold of electoral system change. Overall findings did not change from those resulting from the 20 per cent classification; but this check will not be proposed here since we work on a smaller number of cases than Lijphart’s (see section 8.2). This is all the more so as changes have been multiplying and amplifying in Latin American new democracies and the post-communist political systems since Nohlen’s writing. It is worth specifying that Israel combines its extreme fragmentation with pure PR rule, and thus could seem to provide a crucial test of Duverger’s hypothesis; it is precisely in such cases, however, that contextual anomalies should be weighted most carefully to avoid over-confident, as well as deceiving, conclusions. More precisely, Lijphart’s cases total is 70, while ours is 54 (including the splitting of the Italian and Japanese mixed-member systems into 2 SMP and 2 PR units). Lijphart, though, excludes from his tests the 1951–6 French system (see Table 8.2), which he finds exceedingly complex for an unambiguous classification, and we follow his advice here. Consequently, we are left with 53 cases, further reduced to 51 through the elimination from regression analyses of the two 2RS (Table 8.1), which were shown unsuited for comparison in Chapter 7. Anyway, the 2RS consequences are individually singled out in Table 9.1. The most recent literature includes Roberts and Wibbels (1999); Tavits (2005); Lane and Ersson (2007); and Mainwaring and Zoco (2007). All these authors share with the seminal works quoted in the text the basic hypothesis that the more numerous the parties, the greater the voters’ room for changing from one party to another. As usual as well, this hypothesis is statistically tested without any examination of the timing of change of the party system format, a fact that, in turn, requires explanation (see below). Since we will argue that the plausible explanation (or one of the plausible explanations) of that timing is volatility itself, it is quite clear that what we have here is a classical case of inadequate (or faulty) theoretical justification for treating the number of parties as the independent variable. If the independent variable lacks adequate justification, however, to enter it as such into a regression equation amounts to a spurious, or a pseudo-, test. In short, then, the correlations which the mentioned literature purports to find between the number of parties and volatility do not demonstrate anything or are, at best, theoretically ambiguous and inconclusive. Be that as it may, more doubts arise because these researches rely exclusively on the ‘effective’ number of parties, a measure that grossly underestimates systemic fragmentation (see section 8.4); and, finally, the associations found between this indicator and volatility are at best weak, or disappear altogether according to the model’s specification (Mainwaring and Zoco, 2007: 164–7; Lane and Ersson, 2007: 101–3). This is

200 Notes

12.

13. 14. 15.

16.

17.

18.

9

confirmed by our data (see below) and induces both Mainwaring and Zoco and Lane and Ersson to emphasize other explanations of volatility, some of which appear much more plausible than the number of parties and might be compatible with our argument; but we have already said that we don’t need to discuss the determinants of volatility here. These results are by election year and were computed with the log10 values of the main parties variable. In the next chapter (Table 9.7), the post-war data are broken down by electoral systems, sub-periods, and the effective number of parties’ indicators. Although some variation emerges, the best Pearson’s r remains a far from perfect 0.54. Moreover, tests made with lagged data were inconclusive: volatility and the following election’s party number score a 0.34 r, whereas parties on lagged volatility gave a 0.36. Though both with the right sign and significant at the 0.01 level, results like these merely emphasize the limits of econometric tests alone and the need for theoretical interpretations of the kind proposed here. See Chapter 9, Table 9.6. See the literature quoted in Chapter 1. This point is forcefully made by Ordeshook and Shvetsova (1994: 103–4), whose argument is fostered here by our evidence, as well as improved by some operational variation to be specified below. Besides the critical argument developed here, the measure has repeatedly come under attack. See, for example, Dunleavy and Boucek (2003) and, for an overall synthetic assessment, Gallagher and Mitchell (2005a: Appendix B, 598–606). Finally, Taagepera (2007: 57–64) himself recognizes several shortcomings, though maintaining the superiority of the effective number out of its high operationality and its proven connection to institutional factors. This connection, however, is at least partial and tenuous according to our data (see Chapter 9); and, moreover, even the strongest empirical fit would not suffice to legitimate the use of a theoretically unsuited indicator. This is not surprising, since the effective and the raw numbers would coincide only if all parties scored the same percentages of votes, and such a distribution is of course of no empirical interest. In a reverse guise to the effective number of electoral parties, the raw number of parliamentary parties overestimates the seats’ fragmentation; and if the counting were limited by a threshold, one could end up with more parliamentary than electoral parties. This is often the case with our 2 per cent criterion, but may also occur with the 1 per cent proposed by Ordeshook and Shvetsova (1994: 104, note 2). It is clear, then, that the resulting calculations would be more or less heavily flawed.

From Theory to Evidence: Updating and Retesting Lijphart

1. This is all the more so since the 34 per cent average hides the disproportionate contribution of the 1988–2007 elections, whose score (40 per cent) largely exceeds the 1958–81 29 per cent. In other words, absolute majorities became more frequent only recently, and especially since the enactment of the 1993 reforms that have greatly eased the bipolarization of inter-party competition

Notes

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7. 8.

9.

10.

201

and the aggregation of ‘presidential’ majorities; but this has little to do with the electoral system as such. See Elgie (2005); Grunberg and Haegel (2007). Though the SMP systems are grouped with the Australian AV and the SMP components of the Italian and the Japanese mixed-member systems, we maintain that comparability remains a reasonable assumption within the sub-set; but see our own reservations in note 11 of Chapter 6 about the limits of the artificially construed Italian and Japanese observations. Note that the classification is slightly different from that of Lijphart since its cases did not include any example of pure Sainte-Laguë, whereas we have to take account of the present New Zealand system. Due to their variations through time and cases, the PR thresholds’ cutting points are not exactly the same as Lijphart’s (1994a: 99); but this does not entail any difference of results. This is so in spite of the fact that the three lower thresholds’ groupings comprise two countries (Belgium and Switzerland) with an abnormally high number of regionally based parties. Since these cannot be restrained by any electoral rule according to Sartori’s no. 2 law (see Chapter 6), the concerned systems should in principle be excluded from the test. A data check without these systems, however, showed a reduction of party numbers and some small changes of the differences among the rows, but no alteration of their rank-ordering. So, the exclusion would not affect the conclusions suggested by the table. One problem with this indicator is that it is expressed in frequency values and that the same frequency (1, i.e. 100 per cent of the time) is then given to several single election PR systems and to the usually multi-elections majoritarian systems. As a consequence, the association between independent and dependent variable is overestimated in the first case and underestimated in the latter. Moreover, our discussion in section 9.3 will make it clear that what really accounts for the formation of single-party majorities in the PR sub-set is party systems’ structuration, rather than the threshold or whatever other feature of the electoral system. For more reliable estimations, see the regression analyses in section 9.3. The formula was quantified by a dummy: following Lijphart, majoritarian formulae are given a 0 value as against 1 for PR formulae in Table 9.4; within the PR sub-set (Table 9.5), the most disproportional d’Hondt and Imperiali formulae are 1 and all the remaining ones 0. As formulae are highly correlated with thresholds, they cannot be jointly entered in the regressions of Tables 9.3 and 9.4 due to the collinearity problem (Lewis-Beck, 1980: 60). On the other hand, all our three independent variables are used in Table 9.5, as the problem does not concern estimates restricted to the PR sub-set. To be sure, Lijphart’s r2 values are not strictly comparable with ours, given that they concern different samples. To refer to those values, however, allows at least emphasizing the contrast between his inconclusive results and our rather strong findings. Though in an admittedly loose sense of the word, this is a sui generis comparison which contributes to strengthen the plausibility of our research design’s and operational choices; but it goes without saying that these choices’ worth rests mainly, if not solely, on the theoretical and empirical justifications given in the previous chapters.

202 Notes 11. It is worth stressing that our results match those of other works employing the raw number of parties indicator: besides the already mentioned Ordeshook and Shvetsova (1994: 121), see the findings of the research on electoral participation by Blais and Dobrzynska (1998). As these authors draw much the same conclusions as ours through different operationalizations of the indicator, and on different samples and different time periods, it is unlikely that the match is casual. 12. The irrelevance of assembly size is mainly due to the fact that some of the largest parliaments are elected by SMP rule; so, contrary to the standard hypothesis, they contain less parties than smaller parliaments elected by PR formulae. 13. Note that our data achieve statistical significance through a two-tailed test, whereas Lijphart (1994a: 107–17) adopts the looser one-tailed procedure. 14. As for the majority variables, their rather different outcomes are discussed at the end of the section. 15. A negative correlation is to be expected because volatility fosters fragmentation, and fragmentation will in turn make single-party majorities more difficult to attain. Note, however, that this presupposes an appropriately high volatility level, i.e. one that fully applies to the 1990–2007 period. It is then unsurprising that the correct sign appears in the related regression (Table 9.10), whereas Tables 9.8 and 9.9 report wrong (positive) signs which point to a meaningless impact of weaker volatility levels. 16. It will be remarked that the cutting point here has slightly changed from that of the previous tables, since we have added the 1990 year to the most recent time sub-set. We made this change for three reasons: first, entering volatility requires a thorough recalculation of the data set (see note 17) which exempts us from the constraint to follow Lijphart’s periodization (and of course rules out comparability with his results from now on); second, adding one year to the 1990–2007 regression allows us to maximize the number of observations available in our smallest sub-set (see Table 9.10); finally, and perhaps most importantly, 1990 is one (out of just two) year of under-average volatility within the period (see Table 1.1) and, since we want to highlight the impact of the variable’s growth, entering more unfavourable data is a conservative strategy that should minimize undue overestimations of our results. 17. The missing cases are 4 single-election systems (Germany 1, Greece 1, Italy 1, Japan 1) for which no reliable volatility data can be calculated. Moreover, we have thoroughly recalculated all independent and dependent variables of all multi-elections systems whose first post-war election’s volatility was equally unavailable (i.e. Austria, Belgium, Finland, Great Britain, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain). 18. We have also tested for the joint impact of threshold, assembly and volatility, but the results did not differ from the more parsimonious models presented here. 19. Using electoral systems as observations involves cutting points that give a total of 67 cases for the 1945–89 + 1990–2007 sub-sets, as against the 47 for the whole of 1945–2007. Hence, the unavailability of a single equation. 20. This substantive reading of coefficients, on the other hand, is not matched by the statistical tests, as the latter show that the threshold’s significance extends quite strongly to all indicators, whereas volatility attains it only

Notes

21.

22.

23.

24.

10

203

in relationship to main parties; but the meaning of significance tests is theoretically at least dubious when the observations do not form a sample in the technical sense of the word (Wonnacott and Wonnacott, 1969); and since this is the case at hand, we consider our remarks more safely informative. More precisely, the 35 per cent threshold makes a difference of frequency of 89 per cent compared to the minimal one, whereas the largest gap accounted for by volatility is less than 15 per cent. Another factor is the resilience of the SMP threshold, i.e. its ability to manufacture absolute single-party parliamentary majorities out of the winner’s decreasing votes shares due to the growing fragmentation fostered by volatility. This topic, and its implications for the working of electoral systems and their very legitimacy, will be treated in Chapter 10. These numbers are rather gross approximations, since they are not weighted for the frequency of majorities, nor their duration through shorter or longer strings of elections; though the weighting would surely widen the distance between PR and majoritarian systems, however, this is immaterial to our argument. The correlation is −0.248 with absolute majorities and −0.251 with manufactured majorities.

Systemic Consequences, Past and Future

1. See Miller and Niemi (2002). 2. This is all the more so as other works taking account some of these factors (e.g. Ordeshook and Shvetsova, 1994; Amorim Neto and Cox 1997) fully confirm the primacy of the threshold; on the other hand, regression results will of course vary with the entry of additional models’ specifications. 3. This wish is shared by Arend Lijphart: in a personal communication, he maintains that our main parties measure would be used along with the effective numbers if a new edition of the 1994 book were to be devised. 4. As already mentioned in Chapter 6, a partial exception is Cox; but while admitting its role in principle, he fails to operationalize systemic structuring in his own empirical research work. 5. Indeed, net volatility captures just the minimal amount of electoral interparty movements; survey-based movements (or gross volatility) are much larger, but data availability is limited and its reliability doubtful. Besides that, the literature provides a variety of organizational indicators of the decline of mass parties that could, and ideally should, be entered into a composite index of destructuration. Our results should encourage further research work in this field. 6. As said in Chapter 6, section 6.2, volatility is our proxy for the (decline of) social cleavages, or at least the electorally relevant behavioural correlate of such decline. 7. We emphasize the ‘systemic’ qualification to distinguish accountability as discussed here from the wholly different matter of personal accountability. On the latter, see, inter alia, Gallagher (2005b: 557–62).

204 Notes 8. Lijphart (1994a: 144); Farrell (2001: 153–6); Gallagher (2005b: 572–5), and his quoted bibliography. 9. Though lower than the proportional average, the German system’s fragmentation is now consolidated at five (as against the traditional three) parties; and the present, unexpected SPD/CDU-CSU government might be the first of a series of post-electoral (though probably smaller) coalitions with proportionately weakened premiers. 10. Quite unsurprisingly, the passage has been abrupt in countries with the most proportional systems (Norway and Sweden), where predominance was mainly replaced with the least accountable formula (minority government). 11. See Chapter 5 for full details on these systems. As explained there, Shugart and Wattenberg add Germany and New Zealand to the MMS, while we think they are to be classified within the PR family. Whatever the classification, however, we have just noted that stable pre-electoral bipolar alliances have recently come to an end in the first country, and they never materialized in New Zealand. 12. On the Schumpeterian tradition and its critics, see Pappalardo (2005). 13. Other channels and tools conducive to systemic accountability are listed by Goodin (2000). 14. See the classic Lipset and Rokkan (1967), and the early Lijphart himself (1968). 15. The economists include Roubini and Sachs (1989a, 1989b) and Siniscalco and Tabellini (1993); among sociologists and political scientists, see Rose (1992); Castles (1994); Lijphart (1999: 258–300). 16. The deviant systems to be excluded are the US and Switzerland, and the reasons explaining why this is the case are spelled out in Baldini and Pappalardo (2004: Chapter 5). 17. Lijphart (1994b); Norris (1997, 2004: 179–208); Gallagher (2005b: 555–7). 18. See Lijphart (1994a: 144); Cox (2000); Gallagher (2005b: 575). 19. Farrell (2001: 164–8) and Gallagher (2005b: 566–71) give comprehensive accounts of experts’ reform recommendations. 20. In the US, the party system format is notoriously protected from third party competition by a host of institutional and extra-institutional entry barriers that do not exist in any of the other majoritarian systems. Thus, their exclusion from the calculation of the aggregate trend gives a more faithful picture of the rate of falling support, and increasing disproportionality, in the latter sub-group. 21. These conclusions match the position taken by Mainwaring and Zoco (2007: 157–8) on the dangers of voters’ and party systems’ instability, and disagree with the overly optimistic stand of Lane and Ersson (2007). 22. To be sure, reforms are on the agenda in several countries, as mentioned in Chapter 4; but the fact that (aside from Italy and Japan) no major one has been enacted, bears witness to the complexity of the task.

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Index NB: Page numbers in bold refer to figures and tables threshold, party system and 155: volatility 163, 164, 165, 166 Australia 112 as advanced democracy 20, 38 alliances and 128 alternative vote (AV) in 27, 53–5, 56 House of Representatives 49 Austria 113, 167, 176, 179 proportional system (PR) in 64–7 AV see alternative vote (AV)

Aarts, K. 40 abstention, rates of 128 accountability 171–9 -mandate theory 18 Acerbo law 190n Adams, John 18 ‘additional member system’ 81 Africa 6, 7 Ágh, A. 10 Alexander, J. 50 Alliance (UK party) 43 alliances 128 mechanisms, multi-partyism and 120 opportunities, 2RS and 118, 121 alternative vote (AV) 150–1, 156 accountability 171 in Australia 26–7, 38, 53–5, 56 comparisons 55, 57, 58–9 criticisms 40 electoral support 178 in Ireland 26–7 Jenkins Commission and 45 manipulation and 135 thresholds 152–3 ‘top-up’ 188n two-party format and 114 ambit of validity 4, 9, 115 Amorim Neto, O. 116 Anckar, C. 137 Andeweg, R. B. 65 anticipations, 2RS and 118 anti-party systems 127–9, 129 apportionment 30 Argentina 110 Asia 6, 7 assembly size 29–32, 150 formulae, party system and 157 proportional system (PR) in formulae, threshold and 158 statistical manipulation 135

Bagehot, Walter 18 Baimbridge, M. 76 Baldini, G. 53, 69–70 Balkan countries 9 ballot, dividual 28 ballot structure 27–9 Baltic democracies 9 Bangladesh 7 Bardi, L. 137 bargaining practice 117, 120 Barkan, J. D. 7–8 Bartolini, S. 11, 34, 117, 137–8 Bayrou, François 189n Belgium 79 consociational systems and 179 gender parity and 176 proportional system (PR) in 20, 64–7 reforms in 135–6 Benoit, K. 99, 102 Bentham, Jeremy 54 Berlusconi, Silvio 71, 92 Birch, S. 83, 100 Blackburn, R. 41 blackmail 2RS and 118 multi-partyism and 120 potential 186n 218

Index Blais, A. 17, 22, 39–40, 81, 116, 179 Blau, P. 44 block vote 26, 38, 184n blocking effect 113 Blunt, C. W. 54 Bogdanor, V. 98–9 Boix, C. 20, 77 Bouissou, J. M. 88 Bowler, S. 47 Brazil 110 Britain see United Kingdom (UK) British colonies, former 187n British Columbia 48 British Proportional Representation Society 188n Bundestag 84 Butler, D. H. 44 Calderoli law (2005) 70 Calderoli, Roberto 92 Canada as advanced democracy 38 alliances and 128 malapportionment and 31 multi-partyism and 112–13 regionalization 177 single-member-plurality (SMP) in 45, 46, 47–9 Caramani, D. 41 ‘categorical’ ballot papers 27 CDU/CSU (Germany) 86 census, first round of voting as 117, 124 Center for Voting and Democracy 47 Central Europe 9, 10 Chamber of Deputies (Italy) 70–1, 90, 91, 92 change, stability and 130, 131, 132–3, 134–6 Chiaramonte, A. 18, 80, 81, 93 Christian Democratic Party (DC) (Italy) 69 Citizens’ Assembly 48 classification 81–3, 186n theory 22–3 ‘Clean Hands’ judicial investigations 70

219

cleavages 137 closed-list systems 28, 67 coalition bargains 172 cabinets 173 effectiveness of 175 governments 79 potential 124, 186n responsiveness and 174 ‘cohesive fragmentation’ 197n Colomer, J. M. 79, 99, 179–80 advanced democracies and 17, 19–20, 22, 23 Commission of the Electoral System (New Zealand) 87 Communist Party France (PCF) 50, 52, 128–9 Italy (RC) 92, 128–9 Japan 172 Comparative Study of Electoral Systems 86, 94 comparisons 126, 136–7 compensatory seat system 81 compensatory tiers 31 competition, direction of 186n compulsory voting 189n concentration index 143–4 of majorities 167 processes 181 conceptual issues 4–6 Congress (US) 45 consensus democracies 174 Conservative Party Canada 47 United Kingdom (UK) 43–4 consociational systems 179 democracy, model of 64 consolidation 5 of party system 9–10 constituency 30 coordination failures 180 processes 181 ‘correctional’ system 81 corrective tiers 31 Costa Rica 110, 136 countervailing effect 114

220 Index Cox, G. W. 4, 11, 23, 28, 174 electoral rules and 98–9, 101, 105–7, 110–11, 111–12, 115 French 2RS system and 116, 118–22, 125, 128 crisis, of parties–society relationship 180 cross-endorsing of candidates 125 ‘cube law’ 44 cumulative vote 26, 38, 184n Curtice, J. 43–4, 83 Dahl, R. 5, 7 D’Alimonte, R. 70, 92 Dalton, R. J. 67 Darcy, D. 76 de Gaulle, General Charles 38, 49–50, 52 De Winter, L. 65 de-freezing 137, 140 delegate-trustee theory 18 democracies consensus 174 consolidated, volatility trends 11–15, 13, 14, 15 theories of 19 democracies, contemporary 16–37 analysis, dimensions of 23, 24–5 assembly size/district magnitude/seat allocation 29–32 ballot structure 27–9 disproportionality/parties/volatility 33–5 electoral systems, main features 36 electoral thresholds 32–3 formulae 26–7 historical perspective 19–23, 21 non-list typology 29 representation 17–19 Democratic Party (Italy) 181 Denemark, D. 87 Denmark 22, 76, 179–80 Derville, J. 50 desertion, rates of 128 d’Estaing, President Valéry Giscard 52 destructuration process 160–1, 170, 180

d’Hondt system 61–2, 65, 67, 89, 90, 150, 152 Diamond, L. 6, 8 direction of competition, party relevance and 186n disincentives 144 disproportionality 151 democracies and 33–5 in France 53 in Ireland 72 in Spain 67 in United Kingdom 41, 43 ‘distortion’ 143 district magnitude (M) 29–32, 33 Ireland 72 Italy 70 Spain 67, 69 dividual ballot 28 Droop system 64, 73 Duma (Russia) 93 Dunleavy, P. 45, 177 Duverger, M. 10, 19, 23 critics of 100, 102–4 ‘Duvergerian equilibrium’ 103, 106, 121 Duverger’s law 9, 34, 104–7, 109–10, 111–12, 114 Duverger’s propositions 144, 148, 160, 170, 182 electoral rules and 98–100, 102–4, 108, 113 French 2RS system and 116–18, 125–6 majoritarian systems and 39, 41, 49, 52 thresholds and 118–22 ‘earthquake elections’ 66, 179 Eastern Europe 81, 83 Eckstein, H. 99 effective number of parties electoral (ENEP) 151–2, 156–7 index 34 parliamentary (ENPP) 151–2, 156–7 effective threshold 32 electoral Act (1429, UK) 41 electoral engineering 176–82, 178 see also manipulation

Index Electoral Reform Society (ERS) 43, 45, 188n electoral rules 97–115, 180 accountability, responsiveness, representativeness and 171–7 Duverger and 98–100, 102–4, 108, 113 effects of 98 endogeneity 97–100 institutionalists v sociologists 100–2 mechanical effects 108–11 Sartori’s projection argument 111–15, 113 strategic voting conditions 104–8 electoral systems classification 16 defined 17 main features 36 typology 113 Elgie, R. 50, 53, 117 endogeneity, problem of 97–100 entrepreneurship, political 176–82, 178 equilibrium Duverger’s 103, 106, 121 party systems 10 solution 122 state 112 Erststimme 84 Estado des Autonomias (Spain) 67–8 ethnic factors censuses 8 heterogeneity 101 minorities 31 Europe 176 European Parliament (EP) 73, 74, 75, 76–7, 137 exchange mechanisms multi-partyism and 120 opportunities, 2RS and 118 votes 69 exclusiveness 22 executive elections 111 exhaustiveness 22 Fabbrini, S. 47 fake lists (liste civetta) 90, 92, 192n

221

Farrell, D. M. 18, 116, 172, 177–8 majoritarian systems and 44, 54 proportional systems (PR) and 73, 74, 76 feeble/strong sub-systems 119–20 Fianna Fáil 73 Fifth Republic (France) party format 123–7 Finland 27, 76, 135, 180 proportional system (PR) in 20 ‘first-past-the-post’ see single-member-plurality (SMP) system Fisichella, D. 18, 99, 110–11, 170 French 2RS system and 118–20, 126, 127–8 Fortuyn, Pim 66, 179 Forza Italia 92 four-step democratization process 19 FPÖ (Austria) 65 fractionalization index 143 fragmentation 171, 179–81 2RS and 196n cohesive 197n ‘fragmented bipolarism’ 70, 92 of party systems 177 France 20, 26, 49, 58, 135, 150 majoritarian system and 38 malapportionment and 31 pre-1958 proportional (PR) systems 123 see also two-round system (2RS), France Franco, Francisco 67 ‘free and fair’ elections 5 Freedom House 4–5, 7 Freedom’s People party (Italy) 181 freezing/defreezing, cleavage-based parties 137 frequency of changes 135 Front National (FN) (France) 52–3 fundamental changes 134–5 Gallagher, M. 10, 171, 176, 177 advanced democracies and 17, 23, 27–8, 32, 34 proportional systems (PR) and 61, 72–3

222 Index Gasperi, Alcide de 69 Gaullist movement 50 Germany 81–2, 172, 179 as advanced democracy 19, 28, 32 mixed-member (MM) system in 44, 83–4, 85, 86 seats at Land level 84 Gerry, Elbridge (Governor of Massachusetts) 30 gerrymandering 30, 40, 55 Golder, M. 23, 39, 80 Goodin, R. E. 40, 173 government composition 18 decisions 18 single-party 167 Great Britain see United Kingdom (UK) Greece 9, 31, 79 Grilli di Cortona, P. 10 Grumm, J. C. 99 Grunberg, G. 52–3 ‘habituation’ 6 Haegel, F. 53 Hagenbach-Bischoff system 64 Haider, Jorg 65, 179 Hamilton, Alexander 20 Hamilton (Hare) system 64, 65, 84 Hanson, Pauline 55 Hare (Hamilton) system 64, 65, 84 Hart, J. 18 Heath, A. 9 Hermens, F. A. 19 Hermet, G. 5 Herrmann, M. 86 heterogeneous systems 154, 156 highest average formula 61–4, 62 Hill, S. 47 historical perspective, democracies 19–23, 21 Hooghe, M. 65 Hopkin, J. 67 House of Commons 41 House of Representatives Australia 49, 53 United States of America 45

Hugues, C. 54 Huntington, S. P. 4–6 Iceland 136 Imperiali system 64, 150 incentives 144 India 6, 9, 113, 137 institutional factors 140 conditions 170 determinism 99 institutionalists vs sociologists 100–2 inter-disciplinary integration 101 Ireland 31, 113, 135, 167, 173, 179 presidential election system 27 referendums 73 single transferable vote (STV) in 72–3, 74 isomorphism, structural 116 Israel 199n ‘issue dimensions’ 101 Italy 79, 82, 172, 179 advanced democracy and 19, 22 majority bonus in 69–72 mixed-member-majoritarian (MMM) system in 89–90, 91, 92, 93 referendums in 192n reforms in 134–5 single-member-plurality (SMP) and 69 under-representation 128–9, 129 volatility rate and 181 Izquierda Unida (IU) (Spain) 67, 69, 77 Japan 22, 38, 167, 172, 179 mixed-member-majoritarian (MMM) system in 87–9 reforms in 134–5 Jefferson (d’Hondt) method 61–2, 65, 67, 89, 90, 150, 152 Jefferson, Thomas 20 Jenkins Commission 45 Johnston, R. 44 Jones, M. P. 48 Kanzlerdemokratie 172 Karl, T. L. 8 Katz, R. S. 20, 47, 70, 134 Kelsen, Hans 19

Index Klingemann, H. D. 83, 86 Knapp, A. 50 Kolodny, R. 47 Komeito (Japan) 172 Kreuzer, M. 83 Laakso, Markku 34, 143 Labour Party Australia 54 New Zealand 87 United Kingdom 43–4 largest remainder formula 61–4, 63 Latin America 7, 9, 10, 81, 83, 110, 114 Lavau, G. E. 98 law 16–17 Lazar, M. 53, 88 LDP party (Japan) 88–9, 172 legal thresholds 32, 67, 68 legislative elections 111 Leys, C. 109 Liberal Party Australia 54 Canada 48 Germany 86 Liberal Democrat Party (UK) 43–5, 187n Lijphart, A. 4, 101 advanced democracies and 14, 16, 23, 32–3, 34 French 2RS system and 116, 125 mixed-member systems and 86, 88 proportional systems (PR) and 61, 64 quantitative tests and 130, 134, 136–7, 143–5, 148 systemic effects and 169–71, 173–5, 176, 179–80 updating 152–9 limited vote 26, 38 Linz, J. J. 6 Lipset, S. M. 11, 137 Lipson, L. 54 list systems 26, 27, 44, 84 liste civetta (fake lists) 90, 92, 192n local bi-partyism, SMP system and 109 Lodge, J. 76

223

lottery principle 19–20 LR-Imperiali 150 Lundberg, T. C. 44, 48, 87 Luxembourg 136 Mackenzie, W. J. M. 98 macro-equilibria 11 Mainwaring, S. 48 Mair, P. 11, 34, 137–8 majoritarian rule representativeness and 175–6 responsiveness and 174–5 strategic voting and 106–7 systemic effects 171 majoritarian systems 38–59, 104, 113, 177–9 2RS and 123–4 accountability 172–3, 178–9 advanced democracies and 17, 22–3, 26, 27 alternative vote (AV), Australia 53–5, 56 classification 37 comparisons 55, 57, 58–9 continuity/changes 131 defined 49 mixed-member- (MMM) 87–9, 89–91, 91, 93 plurality system 39–41 thresholds and 153 two-round system (2RS), France 49–50, 51, 52–3 United Kingdom and 41, 42, 43–5 variables and 131, 141, 145 volatility and 140 majority bonus 69–72, 71, 90 principle 19–20 malapportionment 30–1, 40, 43 Malta 72, 113, 136 Manin, B. 19 manipulation electoral systems as 97–9 SMP/AV systems 135 threshold 116–18, 118, 119, 180 Marsh, M. 74 Massicotte, L. 16, 81, 116, 179 Matland, R. E. 176

224 Index ‘Mattarellum’ 92 maximum threshold 33 Mayorga, R. A. 83 McAllister, I. 54 McLean, I. 17–18, 43–4 McMillan, A. 43 mechanical effects 102–3, 108–11, 118, 123–5, 143, 153 Mexico 110 Mill, John Stuart 17 minimum threshold 33 Ministry of Justice (UK) 40, 44 minorities 31, 40 Mitchell, P. 17, 23, 27–8, 32, 44, 61 Mitterand, President François 52, 71 mixed-member (MM) systems 44, 48, 80–94 in Austria 65 classifications in 81–3, 82 continuity/changes 132–3 in Germany 83–4, 85, 86 in Italy 69 -majoritarian (MMM) 82, 135: accountability and 172; in Italy 89–91, 91; in Japan 87–9; in Russia 93 in Netherlands 66 in New Zealand 86–7 variables 132–3, 141 Muller, W. C. 65 multi-member districts 30 multi-partyism 8, 149, 174, 179 2RS and 116, 118, 120–1, 123 blocs 173 majoritarian systems and 104 proportional (PR) systems and 103–4, 151 Sartori and 111, 112–13 multiple tiers allocation 31 multiple-round elections 49 multiplying effects 104, 193n Nagel, T. 87 National Front (France) 128–9 national parties 11, 110, 111, 137 Duverger and 109 systems 122 National Party

Australia 54 New Zealand 87 nationalizing, reform effects 180 Netherlands 27, 79, 176, 179–80 proportional system (PR) in 64–7, 66, 76 single national constituency 31 neutralization process, thresholds and 125–6 New Zealand 38, 112, 178 as advanced democracy 22, 28, 31 alliances and 128 mixed-member (MM) system in 82, 86–7 reforms in 134, 135 Newell, N. J. 54 Nohlen, D. 32, 100, 134, 136 nominal ballot papers 27 non-list typology 29 see also single transferable vote (STV) Norris, P. 9, 40, 88 North America 20 see also Canada; United States of America Norway 22, 167, 172, 179 NPD (Germany) 84 number of parties 112, 199–200n by electoral formulae 119 by threshold 119 change and 160 French 2RS 118 majoritarian systems and 104 mechanical effects and 108 proportional (PR) systems and 104 strategic behaviour and 107–8 variables: dependent 141, 141, 142, 145, 146, 147–9, 147; independent 138, 140 volatility, threshold and 161 see also effective number of parties number of seats see seat allocation One Nation Party (Australia) 55 ‘open-list’ proportional (PR) systems 28 Ordeshook, P. C. 116, 131, 144, 147–8 ordinal ballot papers 27

Index ‘overhang’(surplus) seats 84, 191n ÖVP (Austria) 65 pacts, electoral 117 Pakistan 7 Pappalardo, A. 69, 92, 181 Pappi, F. U. 86 ‘parallel’ system 89 Parodi, J.-L. 117–18, 121 Parti Communiste Français (PCF) 50, 52, 128–9 Parti québécois (Canada) 47, 48 Parti Socialiste (PS) (France) 52 partial compensation 90 parties centralization and 109 disproportionality and 33–5 lists 27 main 139, 145, 146–7, 166 majorities and 151, 152 predominant, decline of 167 relevance of 186n –society relationship crisis 180 systemic structuring of 113–15 systems 9–11: typology 113 see also effective number of parties; number of parties ‘partitocracy’ 69 Pasquino, G. 19, 69 PCE-Izquierda Unida 67 Pedersen, M. 34, 138 Pereira, P. T. 19 personalization 51, 84, 86 Philippines 110 Pitkin, H. 18 plurality see single-member-plurality (SMP) system polarization 179 political crisis (Japan/Italy) 88 poor countries, participation/competition 7–9 ‘Porcellum’ 91 Portugal 9 Powell, G. B. 18 PP (Spain) 67–8 predominant parties, decline of 167 preferential voting 27, 66, 69, 90, 105 see also alternative vote (AV); single transferable vote (STV)

225

presidential voting in France 195n in Ireland 27 presidentialism 110 principal-agent theory 18 Prodi, Romano 71 Progressive Conservative Party (Canada) 48 proportional repêchage 93 proportional representation (PR) 60–79, 136, 150–2, 167 2RS and 116–18 advanced democracies and 17–18, 22–3, 26, 27–8 in Austria/Belgium/Netherlands 20, 64–7, 66 change from 2RS 135 closed-list 28 continuity/changes 132–3 district magnitude and 31 electoral formulae 61–4, 62, 63 in Europe 20 European Parliament (EP) elections 74, 75, 76–7 formulae, assembly size, threshold and 158 France and 52–3 Italy and 128–9 list 28, 44 majority bonus in Italy 69–72 multi-partyism and 103–4 non-list, in Ireland 72–3, 74 party systems and 113–14 in Spain 67–9, 68 strategic voting and 107 systemic effects 177–9 systemic structuring and 114–15 variables and 132–3, 142, 145, 147 volatility and 140 in Western Europe 78 proportional representation (PR) rule accountability and 172–3 representativeness and 175–6 responsiveness and 174–5 systemic effects 171 proportionality 84 general criterion of 29 principle 19–20, 70

226 Index Przeworski, A. 18 PSOE (Spain) 67–9 psychological effects 143, 153, 169–70 of electoral rules 102–3, 107, 108 French 2RS system and 118, 123–5 Puddington, A. 4 Putin, President Vladimir 93 ‘quadrille bipolaire’ 52 qualified majority systems 185n ‘quality’ of democracy 172 Rae, D. 112, 130, 143 advanced democracies and 17, 23, 27–8, 34 rank-order systems 49 rationalization processes 181 Reed, S. R. 89 Reeve, A. 18 referendums Ireland 73 Italy 90, 92, 192n Reform bills (UK) 41 Reform in the West (Canadian party) 47, 48 reforms 134–5, 135–6, 178, 181–2 nationalizing effects of 180 Reif, K. 74, 137 relevance, of parties 186n representation 17–19 theories of 18 under- 43, 53, 128–9, 129 representativeness 171–7 Republikaner party (Germany) 84 research, comparative, 2RS and 126 responsiveness 171–7 ‘Reversal of Duverger’ (Colomer) 99 Reynolds, A. 39–40 Riker, W. H. 99, 103, 112 Rokkan, S. 11, 18–19, 20, 137 Rose, R. 5, 8, 16, 23 rules see electoral rules Russia 172 mixed-member-majoritarian (MMM) system in 93 Rustow, D. A. 6

Saalfeld, T. 84 safety net 89, 90 Sainte-Laguë systems 62–4, 87, 151 Samuels, R. 31 sanction-selection theory 18 Sartori, G. 88, 92 electoral rules and 97–9, 100, 104–5, 107, 109–11 French 2RS system and 126, 127 Lijphart and 153, 160, 162, 167 projection argument 111–15, 113 quantitative tests and 134, 137, 138, 143, 149 systemic effects and 170–2, 174, 182 thresholds and 118–22 Scandinavia 64, 176, 179 Scarrow, S. 83 Scheiner, E. 89 Schmitt, H. 74, 137 Schumpeter, J. A. 19, 173 scorporo 90 scorporo totale 90 Scotland 43–4, 83 Scully, R. 44, 74, 76 seat allocation in Germany 85 highest average formula 61–4, 62 largest remainder formula 61–4, 63 levels 29–32 ‘seat bonus’ 67, 84 in Spain 68 surplus seats 84, 191n seat linkage 82 ‘second order’ elections 74, 76 features 137 ‘second vote’ 84 Senate Australia 53 Italy 71, 90, 91, 92 United States of America 31, 45, 47 Shugart, M. S. 3, 143 advanced democracies and 23, 27, 32 mixed-member systems and 80, 81–3, 86, 93–4, 172 Shvetsova, O. 116, 131, 144, 147–8 sincere voting 103, 117, 121

Index single-member districts (SMDs) 26, 30, 41 Italy 90 single-member-plurality (SMP) system 38, 39–41, 150–1, 156 2RS and 123 accountability 171 advanced democracies and 17–18, 22, 26, 37, 38 Canada and 112 comparisons 55, 57, 58–9 electoral support 178 India and 137 Italy and 128–9, 129 Japan and 179 manipulation and 135 North America and 45, 46, 47–9 strategic voting and 120–1 structuration and 113 thresholds 152–3 two-party system and 99, 103, 114 United Kingdom and 41, 42, 43–5, 178 single non-transferable vote (SNTV) 38 in Japan 88 in Netherlands with mixed system 66 single-party majorities 148, 153, 166–7, 178, 172 electoral support for 177–8, 178 single tier system, Spain 67 single transferable vote (STV) 26, 27, 184n in Australia 53–4 in British Columbia 48 in Ireland 72–3, 74 SMP see single-member-plurality (SMP) system Snyder, R. 31 Social Democratic Party (Japan) 172 sociologists vs institutionalists 100–2 Southern Europe 9, 176 Soviet Union 9 Spain 9, 27, 32, 79, 159, 172 malapportionment and 31 proportional system (PR) in 67–9, 68 proportionality and 76

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SPD (Germany) 86 SPÖ (Austria) 65 stability, change and 130, 131, 132–3, 134–6, 137 statistical manipulation 135 Stepan, A. 6 strategic voting 86, 117, 119, 120–1, 124, 144, 156 conditions 104–8 strong/feeble sub-systems 119–20 structuration 9–11, 111, 113–15, 137–8 Studlar, D. T. 176 successful parties 139–40 supplementary vote 185n surplus seats 84 number of 191n survey, first round of voting as 117, 124 Sweden 167, 172, 179–80 as advanced democracy 20, 22, 32 ‘swindle law’ 70 Switzerland 28, 64, 135 systemic effects 169–82 accountability, responsiveness, representativeness 171–7 thresholds 169–71 volatility, electoral engineering and entrepreneurship 177–82, 178 systemic relevance 194n systemic structuring 9–11, 111, 113–15, 137–8 systemically relevant parties 112 Taagepera, R. 23, 34, 101, 116, 143, 156 Thies, M. F. 89 Thomassen, J. J. A. 64 thresholds, electoral 32–3, 177, 180 assembly size, party system and 155: volatility 163, 164, 165 French 2RS system and 116–18, 123–5 main parties by 166 manipulated 116–18, 118, 119, 180 neutralization 125–6 of exclusion 33 of representation 33

228 Index thresholds, electoral – continued parties and majorities 152 proportional representation (PR) formulae, assembly size and 158 qualification 118–22 systemic effects 169–71 updating Lijphart and 150, 152–3, 157 variables and 135, 148 volatility, number of parties and 161 tullymandering 185n 2RS see two-round system (2RS) two-house system 185n two-party system 104, 112–14, 124, 136, 149, 172, 187 constituency level 109–10 SMP and 99, 103 in United Kingdom 111 two-round system (2RS) 26, 38, 40 in Australia 54 change to proportional (PR) systems 135 in Europe 20 multi-partyism and 103 two-round system (2RS), France 38, 49–53, 51, 116–29 anti-party systems 127–9, 129 comparisons 55, 57, 58–9 Fifth Republic party format 123–7 manipulated threshold 116–18, 118, 119 threshold qualification 118–22 ‘two-tier electoral system’ 81 ‘two-turnover’ test 6 Überhangmandaten (surplus seats) 84, 191n UCD (Spain) 67 unanimity principle 19–20 under-representation 43, 53, 128–9, 129 ‘unfree elections’ 5 Union pour la Démocratie Française (UDF) 52 unit of analysis 130–1, 162 United Kingdom (UK) 38, 58, 111, 112

as advanced democracy 17, 20, 26, 31 alliances and 128 proportional systems (PR) and 72, 76 single-member-plurality (SMP) and 41, 42, 43–5, 78 United States of America (USA) 31, 38, 58, 73, 136, 177 alliances and 128 electoral rules and 104, 110, 112 presidential elections 47 single-member-plurality (SMP) in 45, 46, 47–9 useful vote 103, 105 Van der Kolk, H. 64 variables 150 dependent 141–5, 145, 146, 147–9, 147: majoritarian systems 141; mixed-member (MM) systems 141; proportional systems (PR) 142 independent: majoritarian systems 131; mixed-member (MM) systems 132–3; proportional systems (PR) 132–3 Venezuela 110 volatility 170–1, 176–82, 178, 180, 181 democracies and 33–5 impact of 162, 166–8 as independent variable 137–41, 139 index 34–5 main parties by 166–7, 166 net 203n thresholds: assembly, party systems and 163, 164, 165; number of parties and 161 trends 11–15, 13, 14, 15 vote linkage 82 votes/seats ratio 108–9, 124–5, 143, 151, 177 Vowles, J. 87 Wales 43–4, 83 Ware, A. J. 18

Index Ware, W. R. 27 Wattenberg, M. P. 32, 47 mixed-member systems and 80, 81–3, 86, 93–4, 172 Weaver, R. K. 48 Webb, P. 43, 67 Webster, Daniel 20 Webster (Sainte-Laguë) method 62–4, 87, 151 Wessels, B. 83, 86

West Lothian Question 188n Westminster model 150, 177–8 Wildavsky, A. 109 women, under-representation of 40 Ysmal, C. 50 ‘zombie’ (Japan) 89 Zweitstimme 84

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