Comparative Analysis of Democratization prof. Fulvio Venturino

1. Comparative Analysis of Democratizationprof. Fulvio Venturino Comparative Politics Principles of Democracy and Democratization Chapter 7: Electoral Systems

2. Elections for what? • Elections are used to choose • heads of state • heads of government • members of the legislature

3. What is relevant in an electoral system? • the electoral formula • the district magnitude • the ballot structure • the electoral thresholds

4. Types of electoral formulas • Plurality (FPTP): the candidate who receives the most votes, but not necessarily the majority of the vote, wins the election • Majority: candidates win the office in a single round of voting by gaining a majority of the ballots cast; if this is not the case, a runoff round is held at a subsequent date with the top two finishers running • Proportional Representation (PR): the proportion of a party’s seats in the legislature reflects the strength of the party in the electorate

5. District magnitude • Single-member district • Multi-member district • Multiple districts • Single national district

6. Ballot structure • Choosing candidates • closed party list systems • open party list systems • Choosing parties • categorical systems • ordinal systems

7. Electoral thresholds • Thresholds qualify parties to obtain representation in the legislature. They are an increasingly common way for PR systems to limit the entry of minor parties into legislatures • 2 percent: Israel • 5 percent: Germany and Belgium • 10 percent: Turkey

8. So what? • Plurality systems involve • winner-takes-all formula • small district magnitudes • categorical ballot structures • Proportional representation systems involve • proportional formulae • large district magnitude • categorical ballot structures (on occasion ordinal ballots, as with STV

9. The effects of electoral systems • The scholarly work on the effects of electoral systems has focused on • the relationship between electoral rules and the ideological polarization and size of political party systems • the tendency of electoral systems to impact voter turnout and citizen participation • the potential for electoral systems to affect the course of democratic development

10. The effects on party system • Plurality systems provide for incentives for political moderation in the party system and the political system generally • Plurality systems tend to reduce the number of parties and hence promotes governmental stability

11. The impact on voter choice and turnout 1 • Plurality systems encourage strategic voting, where voters prevent their least preferred choice from getting elected • Many voters under such conditions vote against their least preferred candidates, as opposed to voting for their most preferred • This ‘voting against’ behavior makes voters susceptible to negative campaigning

12. The impact on voter choice and turnout 2 • Under PR there is a greater likelihood of electoral success for minor parties • Hence voter efficacy (the sense that one’s vote counts) and the incentives to cast ballots should increase • Thus, voter turnout is generally much higher in countries that use PR systems when compared to countries that use FPTP electoral rules

13. Electoral systems and democratic transition • Many potential cases to test these theories • post-communist states in Central and Eastern Europe • post-authoritarian countries throughout Africa, Latin America, and Asia • countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan

14. The relevance of electoral engineering for transitions • Encouragement of women’s representation • Promotion of interethnic accommodation in ethnically divided societies • Improvement of the citizens’ satisfaction with the political system

15. The case of Alternative Voting (AV)

16. AV logics

17. AV in practice

18. The advantages of AV • supporters from one ethnic group may choose moderate candidates associated with the other ethnic group ahead of radical candidates associated with their own ethnic group • candidates seek second preferences votes outside their own ethnic group, thus they have an incentive to adopt conciliatory or moderate stances on ethnically divisive issues • AV provides an incentive for parties to make post-election deals on divisive issues