There is a definition of Democracy that states it is; “necessary correspondence between acts of governance and the equally weighted felt interests of citizens with respect to those acts”. The mechanism that ensures the correspondence between governments and citizens is the democratic election identified by Ian Budge in his Direct Democracy paper of 2008. In other words; "We can vote you out".
Elections have been taking place for centuries; however, they may not have been democratic. On Wednesday October 16, 2002 it was reported that Iraq`s Saddam Hussein received 100% of the vote in a referendum asking should he rule for a further seven years.
Democratic elections operate differently where individuals or parties vie with each other for a share of the electorates vote. Generally the candidate with the most votes wins the election. The vote is carried out by secret ballot and the individual can vote freely without fear of recrimination. The style of democratic election varies from jurisdiction, essentially there are two types “Majoritarian” and “Proportional”.
Majority electoral systems
Majority systems of democratic election contain three main types of electoral system. These systems use single seat constituencies. Majority systems are also known as Plurality systems.
· Single Member Plurality (SMP) also known as “first past the post”.
Two jurisdictions using this system are the UK and the US. There is one seat on offer. A candidate receiving one vote more than the opposition is enough to win the seat. When John F. Kennedy was elected President of the USA in 1960 he received 49.7percent of the vote, however, Nixon received 49.5percent of the vote. Therefore the elected President of the US represented half the population.
· Second Ballot System
This system is traditional to France. There are potentially two rounds of elections. The first round asks the citizens to vote on their candidates using the “first past the post” system. Should no clear winner emerge from this round the citizens are asked to return to the ballot box to decide on one of two candidates in another “first past the post” election.
· Alternative Vote System (AV) or Supplementary Vote (SV)
This voting system is used by the Australian House of Representatives and in the UK for the London Mayoral election. Each voter is asked to rank the candidates in preference 1, 2, 3 etc for the AV method and one supplementary vote for the SV method.
Proportional electoral systems
Proportional systems of democratic election contain three main types of electoral system. These systems are generally multi-seat constituencies.
· Additional Member System AMS
This system is in use in Germany, Italy and both the Scottish and Welsh parliaments. A proportion of seats are filled using FPTP, and using single member constituencies. The remaining seats are filled using a “Party List” system.
· Single Transferable vote system STV
This system is in use in the Republic of Ireland and the Northern Irish Assembly. There are multi-member constituencies and electors are asked to vote in order of preference. Candidates must reach a quota to be elected. The first preferences are counted and if a candidate is not elected the second preferences are counted and so on.
· Party List System
This is in use in Israel, Belgium, Luxembourg and the EU Parliament. There is one large multi-member constituency. Electors vote for parties, the parties are allocated seats in proportion to the vote received. In some instance a “threshold” may be put in place in an effort to exclude small extremist parties.
Each system has distinct advantages and disadvantages. How does each system affect the number and type of political party within each jurisdiction?
Political parties vary widely in ideology and structure but all political parties have some chief functions. Generally political parties provide a method to structure the political system and to lower the cost of democracy. They also provide an institutional link between the formal world of politics and government to the man on the street.
Due to the nature of each electoral system the structure and number of parties presenting themselves for election vary throughout jurisdictions. Maurice Duverger summed this up in his 1972 paper titled Factors in a Two-Party and Multiparty System, and since that paper a law in Political Science emerged; known as “Duverger`s law”. Simply put it states that plurality systems favour two parties (US and UK), Double Ballot systems favour two parties with alliances (France), and proportional systems favour multi-party constituencies (Republic of Ireland).
It can also be seen that plurality electoral systems produce strong governments whereas proportional systems produce weaker governments in coalition with one or more parties. In Ireland from 1948-1997 there was a total of 16 Governments, 10 of these were majority governments with six being minority. It has been suggested that Ireland will never see a single party in power ever again. The trend since 1997 has been for coalition governments and this trend is likely to continue. In Britain with the plurality system, coalition and minority governments can occur but are very rare. There is a coalition in government today, but previously the most recent British coalition was in 1935, excluding the period during WWII.
Democracy has been expanding throughout the world in recent times. In Africa for example, former authoritarian government parties competed in elections at the beginning of democracy. The previous dominant party took most of the seats at the election. This was a result of opposition parties in authoritarian times being weak and disorganised. This continued through to the first stages of democracy. When democracy was establishing the dominant party would insist on a majority system. Thus ensuring they remain in power for a substantial period of time; until the opposition parties were effective enough to challenge that power at the ballot box.
Within a proportional system, it is also possible for a dominant party to hold onto power. Russia`s Kremlin recently increased the threshold within their proportional electoral system to seven percent. A ban was put in place for small parties to form coalitions. The television network gave blanket coverage to the United Russia party. The United Russia party does not participate in TV debates; however, the propaganda was so powerful that 8percent of the population believe that they had seen the party win TV debates.
Proportional electoral systems are adopted by jurisdictions with a balanced number of ideologies and/or minorities. These systems are better at translating the moral equality of the citizenry into political equality of the elected representatives.
Should democracy emerge where there are more than two ideologies of approximate equal size then any party striving for power will not look for a plurality system to be adopted. These parties will prefer to share power and battle it out at the polls for seats.
The same can be said for a jurisdiction with one dominant party with support of approximately 50 percent and two smaller parties with support of approximately 25 percent each. Proportional electoral systems are beneficial for multi party systems. Plurality electoral systems are beneficial for two party systems.
However you feel about voting in elections, remember that abstaining from voting will disenfranchise you from the democratic process. The electoral system that exists in any jurisdiction was selected for a reason. It could have been selected to keep the dominant party in power. It may have been selected for more than one party to share power. It may exist to diminish minority representation. Either way we should all question how our democratic system works and why it works. The citizen with a vote is something politicians should fear.
A fully referenced copy of this article is available on request.
