Replacing FPTP

Federalism-E ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-38
Author(s):  
Alberto Di Candia

Canada’s use of the First-Past-the-Post electoral system has been defended due to its simplicity, constituency representation, and inherent stability. Arguments have been raised, however, that the system does not sufficiently represent Canadian demographics in parliament, it renders opposition parties ineffective, smaller parties have trouble or are unable to win seats in parliament, and regionally-concentrated parties are encouraged over national based ones. It has been suggested that adding an element of proportionality would address some of these issues. This paper seeks to consider this claim by examining the political outcomes of proportional electoral systems. The literature review outlined that the use of proportional systems increased descriptive as well as geographic representation, and was positively linked to voter turnout.

2012 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 855-877 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie J. Rickard

There is general agreement that democratic institutions shape politicians’ incentives to cater to certain constituencies, but which electoral system causes politicians to be most responsive to narrow interests is still debateable. Some argue that plurality electoral rules provide the greatest incentives for politicians to cater to the interests of a few; others say proportional systems prompt politicians to be relatively more prone to narrow interests. This study suggests that both positions can be correct under different conditions. Politicians competing in plurality systems privilege voters with a shared narrow interest when such voters are geographically concentrated, but when they are geographically diffuse, such voters have greater political influence in proportional electoral systems. Government spending on subsidies in fourteen developed countries provides empirical support for this argument.


Significance Jockeying ahead of the elections has stalled decision-making on critical economic policies. While the political class is mired in internal debate, citizens are growing increasingly angry at politicians they hold responsible for deteriorating economic conditions. Impacts Political infighting will further alienate Tunisians leading to low voter turnout. Labour unions will attempt to influence political outcomes by organising (or threatening to call) strikes. Nidaa Tounes and leftist parties may stoke identity and security issues to attack their opponents and mobilise voters.


2020 ◽  
Vol 83 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-16
Author(s):  
Alessandro Chiaramonte

The history of Italy is plenty of reforms of the electoral system. Many are those implemented since the country’s unification: from the majority system to the limited vote, from proportional representation to the majority premium in the liberal era; and, again, in the Republican era, the return to proportional representation and then the use of mixed systems, combining PR with plurality or majority premium. And many other are the reforms which, discussed and sometimes even approved, as in the case of the italicum, have remained dead letter or never saw the light. What explains this Italic obsession with the electoral systems? Why have their reforms been on the parties’ and governments’ political agenda for so long? The goal of this article is to answer these questions. In the end, electoral reforms have played as instruments of coordination and adaptation in the political strategies pursued by the parties in specific time periods and also as substitute instruments of institutional engineering in the absence of broader agreements on major constitutional reforms.


2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 336-352 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Stockemer ◽  
Rodrigo Praino

While existing studies have shown that more attractive candidates running for office have an electoral advantage, very little has been written on how this advantage relates to different institutions. We theorise that formal institutions mediate the positive effect from which attractive candidates benefit. More in detail, we focus on the type of electoral system, hypothesising that physical attractiveness plays a more important role in majoritarian, first-past-the-post systems than in list proportional systems. We test this stipulation using the German federal elections’ two-tier electoral system, together with data collected in Australia on the physical attractiveness of German federal election candidates in 2013. A series of bivariate and multivariate statistics show that physical attractiveness is a significant factor explaining a candidate’s likelihood to win in the FPTP tier, but not in the list proportional representation (PR) tier.


Author(s):  
Nathan Allen

This chapter examines the evolution of the Indonesian electoral system and its effects on political outcomes. Although Indonesia has repeatedly chosen to conduct elections using proportional representation, electoral rules have changed considerably over time. The chapter traces two trajectories of reform in the post-Suharto era: one restricting opportunities for small parties and the other restricting the power of party leadership. Efforts to shape party system outcomes using electoral rules have succeeded in some areas, particularly in preventing the formation of regional partisan cleavages. Yet the proliferation of political parties in the face of reforms meant to consolidate the party system underline the limits of institutional design.


2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 987-1000
Author(s):  
Brendan J Connell

Abstract Conventional wisdom dictates that democracies are reliable in upholding their international commitments. However, this assertion is at odds with democratic behavior in sovereign borrowing where democracies have sometimes imposed considerable losses on foreign creditors. Why do some democracies choose to renege on extremely large portions of their sovereign debt during economic crisis? This article argues that costs incurred by creditors are dependent on how the borrowing state's electoral system aggregates competing domestic economic interests. Internationally oriented economic interests prefer to minimize creditor losses since sizeable debt reductions are more likely to compromise access to foreign credit. Conversely, workers and domestic-oriented economic interests prefer to maximize losses faced by foreign creditors in order to ease the costs of austerity at home. By shaping the political incentives of policymakers, I argue that democracies with candidate-centric electoral systems should be associated with sovereign defaults that are less costly for foreign creditors. Under these electoral systems, governments hold incentives to cater primarily to internationally oriented economic interests that are best able to overcome the costs of collective action. Statistical evidence from 53 sovereign debt restructurings between 1978 and 2012 supports the main argument.


2010 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 341-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jay K. Dow

This study evaluates the extent of party-system extremism in thirty-one electoral democracies as a function of electoral-system proportionality. It uses data from the Comparative Studies of Electoral Systems project to estimate the extent of party-system compactness or dispersion across polities and to determine whether more proportional systems foster greater ideological divergence among parties. Electoral system characteristics most associated with party-system compactness in the ideological space are investigated. The empirics show that more proportional systems support greater ideological dispersion, while less proportional systems encourage parties to cluster nearer the centre of the electoral space. This finding is maintained in several sub-samples of national elections and does not depend on the inclusion of highly majoritarian systems (such as the United Kingdom).


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-38
Author(s):  
Akhtar Hussain ◽  
Sikandar Hussain Soomro ◽  
Zohra Khatoon

Electoral systems are set of rules and procedures which determine how voters cast their votes and how the votes are converted into representative seats. Beyond this, each electoral system has its own impact on how the political system functions. From this perspective, the author has tested the discontents of the Pakistani electoral system, the first-past-the-post (FPTP) taking the election data of 2002, 2008, 2013 and 2018. The research finding showed that the FPTP electoral system is ill devised to the Pakistan’s current needs and realities. In view of such discontents, there is a genuine concern of reforming the Pakistan electoral system. The question remains, however, which electoral system best suits the Pakistani situation from the bulk of alternatives? The current paper is an attempt to build a case for introducing reforms with a focus on how to translate the votes into seats in a more representative way. For this purpose the article in its first part deals with the problems the FPTP is having in translatingthe votes into seats. In the second part data from the last four general elections are analysed to show how some of the parties having more votes and less seats and vice versa. Building the argument on this analysis the recent concerns shown by the politicians and critics of the present system are supported to build a strong case for the decision makers to bring in such changes in the system where minimum of the votes are wasted so that a true representative democracy is established in Pakistan.


2006 ◽  
Vol 39 (7) ◽  
pp. 905-927 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank C. Thames ◽  
Martin S. Edwards

The increasing use of mixed-member electoral systems has led to an explosion of research attempting to specify their effects. Yet there has been no work on the economic policy effects of such systems, even though this has been a significant subject of debate for scholars analyzing other electoral systems. An analysis of mixed-member system policy effects is problematic, given the wide variation in institutional rules among different systems. This article attempts to determine whether the institutional differences between mixed-member majoritarian (MMM) and mixed-member proportional (MMP) systems lead to differences in policy outputs. The political economy literature finds that government expenditures are positively correlated with electoral system proportionality. Our statistical analysis of government expenditures in 17 mixed-member systems between 1990 and 2000 shows that MMP systems, which are more proportional than MMM systems, are correlated with higher levels of government spending. Thus the MMM-MMP distinction produces significant policy differences.


Author(s):  
Francesco Clementi

En los veintiséis años que caracterizan a las seis últimas legislaturas italianas (1994-2020) ha habido una intensa actividad político-institucional, acompañada de una fuerte modificación del sistema de los partidos políticos. En este contexto, el sistema electoral y sus continuas modificaciones con nuevas leyes electorales ha influido fuertemente en la forma de gobierno, marcando su dinámica, tanto directa como indirectamente. Sin embargo, el rápido cambio de los diferentes sistemas electorales en los últimos años no ha estado acompañado de reformas parejas en el texto constitucional, produciéndose una asimetría en el funcionamiento de los nuevos sistemas electorales que se iban adoptando gradualmente, que los hacía sustancialmente incompletos, incoherentes y, en definitiva, frágiles. Todo ello ha terminado degradando el sistema a ojos de la ciudadanía. Las presentes notas tienen por objeto poner de relieve las transformaciones que se han producido sobre el sistema electoral, tratando de subrayar las dificultades de su consolidación, en el marco de la llamada Segunda República (1994-2020) y de su nuevo sistema de partidos políticos.In the twenty-six years that characterize the last six Italian legislatures (1994-2020) Italy has seen, from the political-institutional point of view, an intense activity that was accompanied by a very similar vitality of the political party system. In this context, the electoral system and its continuous modifications with new electoral laws has strongly influenced the form of government, marking, by the decisive conditioning factor that represents the party system, its dynamics, both directly and indirectly. However, the rapid change of the different electoral systems in recent years has not been accompanied by an equal change in the constitutional text, so there has been an asymmetry in the functioning of the new electoral systems that were being adopted gradually, making them substantially incomplete, inconsistent and ultimately fragile. Faced with an immutability of the constitutional system, this continuous mutability in the electoral system has not only made the whole political-institutional system very weak, but also degraded it in its function in the eyes of the voters, as it seemed a clearly inefficient tool with respect to the needs of the constitutional system. Therefore, the present contribution aims to highlight the transformations that have taken place on the electoral system, trying to underline the difficulties of its consolidation, within the framework of the so-called Second Republic (1994-2020) and its new system of political parties.


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