(The latest version of this page is at Pattern Descriptions. An archived copy of this page is held at https://www.patternsofpower.org/edition02/6324.htm)
The operation of a representative democracy, in its ability to reflect the will of the people, is affected by the voting system. There are two main options:
· Electing a representative by the €˜first-past-the-post€™ system (electing the candidate who gets the most votes in a constituency) gives local accountability €“ people have someone to take up issues on their behalf €“ but it doesn€™t give balanced representation:
€’ Voters in marginal constituencies or €˜swing states€™ wield disproportionate power.[1]
€’ Other constituencies may be dominated by people who support a particular party (especially if the constituency boundaries have been gerrymandered: manipulated to protect a party€™s majority);[2] a large majority in a constituency can effectively disenfranchise those whose preferences are different.
€’ Parties can be elected with workable majorities even though they have received much fewer than half of the total votes cast.[3] The advantage of €˜first past the post€™ is that it can lead to stable and decisive governments, but if a government has a large majority it doesn€™t have to concede anything to the opposition.[4]
· Proportional representation (voting for a party, each of which has a regional list of candidates) can lead to the emergence of numerous parties. The representation is superficially balanced in terms of votes cast, but not in terms of the distribution of power:
€’ Small parties may wield disproportionate power in the bargaining to form a coalition, as in Israel for example.[5]
€’ Partners in coalition governments have to negotiate between themselves, so the resulting government policies will not align with any one party manifesto.
€’ The voters don€™t participate in coalition negotiations, which may be seen either as an additional refinement to widen a government€™s acceptability or as a dilution of the authenticity of its mandate. Nobody is disenfranchised but nor does anyone get exactly what they voted for.
€’ Coalitions tend to lack stability.[6]
Modifications can be made to these options,[7] but no system of voting can ensure that the aggregation of people€™s choices is directly and accurately reflected in government policy.
© PatternsofPower.org, 2014
[1] In a €˜first-past-the-post€™ voting system disproportionate political influence resides with constituencies which are classified as 'marginal' €“ where there is a balance of power such that different parties may be in the ascendancy from time to time. National policies might then be tilted on a tactical basis specifically to influence such constituencies, or politicians might resort to €˜pork-barrel politics€™ (3.3.7.1).
[2] The American elections for Congress have been made much less meaningful by the manipulation of constituency boundaries. On 10 November 2012, the Economist described the 2012 Congressional election in an article entitled Much ado about nothing, which was available in May 2014 at http://www.economist.com/node/21565993.
[3] For example, the Labour Party won 55% of the seats in the 2005 British election having received only 35.3% of the votes cast. The voter turnout was 61.2%, so Labour€™s votes only represented only 21.6% of the electorate €“ yet it had a comfortable overall majority in Parliament. These figures were published by the BBC on 24 June 2005, as a Full national scoreboard, and were available in May 2014 at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/vote2005/html/scoreboard.stm.
[4] Governments with large majorities can ride roughshod over all opposition, but when a government has a smaller majority it is more likely to be defeated by members of its own party on contentious topics, as with the Labour Party rebellions in its third term of office that led to the party being defeated several times. This was highlighted in a Channel 4 News article in May 2007, entitled Blair's revolting backbenchers, which was available in May 2014 at http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/politics/domestic_politics/blairs+revolting+backbenchers/508502.
[5] If proportional representation is taken to extremes it can lead to very small groups wielding disproportionate power. The religious right in Israel has ably demonstrated this: gaining exemption from military service for ultra-religious scholars, for example, and hindering peace negotiations. Israel€™s system has grave disadvantages, as noted by The Economist, The dysfunctional Jewish state, 3 April 2008:
€œVirtually every social group has its own political party, if not several. This means that none of the country's many ethnic and religious subsets is disenfranchised. But as a result all governments are unstable multi-party coalitions subject to perverse incentives that have more to do with politicians' careers than with the wishes of the electorate at large.€
A special report in the same issue, A systemic problem, goes into more detail. The two articles were available in May 2014 at http://www.economist.com/node/10960108 and http://www.economist.com/node/10909941.
[6] On 4 April 2006 Guido Tabellini and Tito Boeri wrote an article entitled Italy€™s return to political paralysis, which was available in May 2014 at http://www.voxeu.org/article/italy-s-return-political-paralysis. This article recorded the fact that €œThroughout the post-war era, until the early 1990€™s, Italian governments survived less than a year on average€ and referred to €œshifting coalitions and unstable governments€.
[7] The number of parties in proportional representation can be reduced by having a minimum threshold for support. This reduces both the advantages of more accurate representation and the disadvantage of unbalanced negotiations.
The €˜first-past-the-post€™ system can be modified by introducing the €˜Alternative Vote€™ or the €˜Single Transferable Vote€™, which have the effect of making a coalition more likely to be needed in a system with three or more parties. These options, as they would have affected the British election in 2010 and earlier, were described on the BBC website in in May 2014 at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8644480.stm.