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3 December 2005

The Mixed Electoral System: Are rumors of its death greatly exaggerated?

In the last decade, the electoral system of choice for dictatorships turned democratic and for established democracies undergoing reform has been one that combines majoritarian and proportional institutions in a single election. Since 1990, "mixed electoral systems" have spread to dozens of countries and sub-national units on every populated continent. While the dynamics that led to their adoption differed considerably, mixed systems were invariably heralded by their proponents as election rules that would combine the most beneficial consequences of both majoritarian and proportional institutions while tempering their well-known shortcomings. A similar optimism also characterizes prominent scholarly work on the subject. Shugart and Wattenberg (2001) unambiguously state that the mixture of majoritarian and proportional institutions offers "the best of both worlds," in part because of its anticipated moderating effects on national party systems.

Whether or not mixed systems have fulfilled their promise - to combine the best of the majoritarian and proportional worlds - has been the subject of a lively debate in recent years (to engage in shameless self-promotion, the book I co-wrote on the subject - "Mixed Electoral Systems: Contamination and Its Consequences" - will be published by Palgrave next week). Nonetheless, while mixed systems may have been considered an optimal solution to the challenges faced by institutional designers throughout the 1990s, political elites have frequently had second thoughts about their introduction. Mixed systems have been abandoned in Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia and Ukraine. Russia may soon follow. In Italy, Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia is a Senate vote away from replacing the mixed system with a particularly disproportional kind of proportional representation. It may well be that these changes are purely “outcome-contingent� - or exclusively based on the intent of manipulating the rules to ensure more favorable outcomes. However, if mixed systems are really the best of both worlds, it is curious that their reforms have generally been so smooth and their defenders so few. Everything is not for the best – so it appears – in this best of possible worlds.

Posted by Federico Ferrara at December 3, 2005 3:45 PM

Comments

Japan switched in 1993-94 from PR to a mixed system. There is always some talk of going back. Mostly it depends on if the ruling coalition's main party--LDP--needs the smaller party, which benefits from PR, to go along with a policy it may not otherwise support. If they need the smaller party's support, they bring the possibility of a switch back on the table. Switching back is a carrot that the LDP offers its coalitional partner for obedience. Now, the LDP has a clear majority, so switching back is no longer taken seriously. It is interesting how these coalitional politics influence electoral reform.

Posted by: Sean at December 4, 2005 11:27 PM