Is a majoritarian or a proportional electoral system better

Kate
Is a majoritarian or a proportional electoral system better?

At the centre of the debate of choosing between majoritarian and proportional electoral system concerns the issue of trade-off between having representative versus effective, accountable government. Whereas majoritarian systems tend to produce more accountable, stronger, and stable government, they offer poor representativeness. In contrast, proportional representation providing highly representative government usually leads to coalition which tends to be unstable and unaccountable. This essay will examine these strengths and weaknesses of majoritarian and proportional representation. In the final analysis, it is in fact the district magnitude that determines the better system (Hix and Carey 2009); Low-magnitude proportional representation1 seems to provide the better alternative to pure PR and majoritorian systems in the end.
First it is necessary to distinguish between these two types of electoral systems. A majoritarian electoral system is one in which the candidates or parties that receive most votes win2. (some majoritarian systems only require a candidate to win more votes than others). A proportional representation (PR) is a quota or divisor based electoral system employed in multimember districts3.
The advocates of the majoritarian electoral system emphasise largely on the importance of accountable and responsive government. Recall that accountability is the extent to which voters are able to reward or punish parties for their behaviour and responsiveness is how well elected representatives respond to changes in the preferences of the electorate4. These are relatively higher in majoritarian system than in PR. Since almost all majoritarian systems are employed in a single-member district, voters vote for one candidate in each constituency and the candidate who gains most votes wins that seat. Having one representative, it is easy to know who is responsible for the outcome of policies implemented. Consequently, majoritarian system is likely to produce a representative who provides high level of constituency service and respond to electorates’ needs because when the tenure in office ends, electorates can easily decide whether to vote for the candidate again or punish him by voting for another party’s candidate in the next election by judging his performance.
Conversely, proportional representation provides lower accountability. As several representatives are elected per one constituency, it is difficult to the electorates to know who is responsible for policy failure because many representatives are responsible for one constituency. This can particularly be a problem if the district magnitude is large, for example, Brazil has average district magnitude of 195, meaning that on average 19 representatives are responsible for one constituency. If policy failure occurs, there is likely to be blame-shifting game between them. Consequently, when the next election approaches, a voter may not be able to punish or reward specific party because of low clarity of responsibility; voters do not know for certain who is truly responsible for policy failure or should be rewarded for policy success.
Although the majoritarian system tends to produce high accountability, this advantage comes at the expense of disproportionality and unrepresentativeness. Since one seat cannot be separated in single-member constituency, this means the candidate who gets the most votes wins the whole seat. Thus, despite having gained some votes, a candidate will not gain any seat unless he comes first in the constituency. It is also possible that the winning candidate does not receive the true majority of votes. For instance, the 2005 UK legislative elections in which the Single-Member Plurality system was used, a Conservative candidate Philip Hollobone won the most votes (45.6%) in Kettering constituency. This means that actually 54.4% of voters did not vote for Hollobone6, yet he became the representative of Kettering. Therefore the majoritarian system can produce results through which voters’ wishes are not accurately represented. Moreover, a party may obtain most votes nationally, but gain only few seats because the party’s candidates may fail to come first in their constituencies. For example, the Alliance won 25.4% of votes nationally but gained only 3.5% of seats even though it won only 2.2% less than Labour which received 28.6% of seats7. These examples indicate that majoritarian system produces highly disproportional electoral outcome and may largely misrepresent wishes of electorates.
In contrast, the main advantage of proportional representation is that it produces proportional outcome and therefore high level of representativeness. Since PR is employed in multi-member district, many representatives are elected in a constituency. Seats can therefore be split proportionally amongst candidates. The percentage of votes corresponds to the percentage of seats gained. For example, in the Netherlands where the pure PR system is implemented, the percentages of votes and seats are highly proportional; in 2010, Mark Rutte from VVD party won 20.49% of the votes and 31 seats or 20.7%. Being proportional also means that small parties have chances to win some seats; Andre Rouvoet won 4% of votes in the 2010 Dutch election and 6 seats or exactly 4%. These show that PR translates votes into seats much more accurately than majoritarian system, which means that wishes and interests of the electorates are accurately respresented. Also it is fairer for small parties because they are not under-represented.
In addition, majoritarian system tends to produce strong and stable government. This is because, according to Duverger’s8 law, the majoritarian system produces a two-party system as a result of two factors. Firstly is the mechanical factor; majoritarian system allocates disproportional shares between big and small parties; big parties gain more seats than received votes and small parties fewer seats than received votes. Secondly is psychological factor; disproportionality of the system makes voters vote strategically – or voting for the party which is most likely to win, though not most preferred as they know their votes will be wasted if voting for small parties which have no winning chance under majoritarian system (Duverger 1954, Clark and Golder 2006). The admirers of the majoritarian system would argue that single-party or two-party governments are stronger and more effective than the coalition. Having only one or two parties, it is easier to reach agreements because there is less need to negotiate. Therefore, government can pass more legislation and implement policies more rapidly.
On the other hand, countries which implement proportional representation usually end up with coalition which tends to be weak and unstable. Tsebelis9 argues that coalition government faces difficulty in passing legislations because more veto players may make the winset of the status quo smaller, therefore increases the policy stability (Tsebelis 2002). He also finds that the largest coalition on average produces 1.2 significant laws less than the single-party government 10 (Tsebelis 1999). Coalition governments formed under proportional electoral system also usually have difficulty reaching agreements. For example, eleven parties won seats in Belgium’s June 2007 legislative election, yet agreement to form new government could not be made until December11. Such difficulty could be problematic in situations in which quick decision making is required, for example, in the state of terrorist attack. This inability to adapt to exogenous shock can further result in the fall of government12. Proportional representation therefore tends to produce government which is ineffective in its governability, unstable, and short lived.
Thus, choosing between majoritarian system and PR clearly depends on one’s advocate to stable government which can implement policy effectively, and be held accountable by public or highly representative government. However, in the final analysis, it may be argued that what makes a “better” system is the appropriateness of district magnitude. Hix and Carey find that low-magnitude PR is “almost effective as high-magnitude PR at reducing disproportionality” between votes and seats shares. At the same time “increases in party fragmentation at low-magnitude PR are less pronounced”13 (Hix and Carey, 2009). They find that increasing a district magnitude from single-member district to 5 member districts reduces the disproportionality of representation by three-quater. Although increasing district magnitude from 1 to 5 also increases the number of parties in parliament by one and in government by a half, thus likely to lead to a coalition government, Hix and Carey asserts that there are likely to be only 2-3 coalition parties. Thus, it will not be very difficult to hold government accountable (Hix and Carey 2009). For example, in Spanish 2011 election (district magnitude of 5) the Popular party and Socialist Party won 44.6% and 28.7% of votes respectively whereas other parties gained small percentages. In fact, the People’s party even formed a single-party government with the majority of 186 out of 350 seats, whereas index of proportionality remains high at 87.7. Low-magnitude proportional representation helps to balance the trade-offs between accountability and representation and may provide a better electoral system than pure majoritarian system or PR.
To conclude, the majoritarian system tends to produce single-or-two-party government which is more accountable, stable and effective, but disproportionality and unrepresentative parliament. In contrast, proportional representation produces proportional outcome and higher level of representativeness as small parties are not excluded due to under-representation. However, these come with an exchange of coalition government which tends to be unaacountable, unstable and ineffective. There is no easy choice between pure majoritarian and pure PR as high accountability and representation cannot be achieved at the same time. Clearly, the “better” electoral system would depend on one’s advocation to which of these strengths. However, it seems to be the district magnitude that is the determination of the better system. PR with appropriate district magnitude of no more than 5 can bring the well-balanced combination of accountability and representation.

References
1. George Tsebelis (1999) ‘Veto Players and Law Production in Parliamentary Democracies: An Empirical Analysis’, American Journal of Political Science 93(3): 591-608.
2. George Tsebelis, veto player theory: how political institutions work, Princeton University Press, 2002
3. John Carey and Simon Hix (2011) 'The Electoral Sweet Spot: Low-Magnitude Proportional Electoral Systems ', American Journal of Political Science 55(2) 383-339.
4. William Roberts Clark,Matt Golder, Sona Nadenichek Golder, Principles of Comparative Politics (1st Edition) Washington D.C.: CQ Press. 2009
5. William R. Clark and Matt Golder (2006) ‘Rehabilitating Duverger’s Theory: Testing the Mechanical and Strategic Modifying Effects of Electoral Laws’, Comparative Political Studies 39(6): 679-708.

References: 1. George Tsebelis (1999) ‘Veto Players and Law Production in Parliamentary Democracies: An Empirical Analysis’, American Journal of Political Science 93(3): 591-608. 2. George Tsebelis, veto player theory: how political institutions work, Princeton University Press, 2002  3. John Carey and Simon Hix (2011) 'The Electoral Sweet Spot: Low-Magnitude Proportional Electoral Systems ', American Journal of Political Science 55(2) 383-339. 4. William Roberts Clark,Matt Golder, Sona Nadenichek Golder, Principles of Comparative Politics (1st Edition) Washington D.C.: CQ Press. 2009 5. William R. Clark and Matt Golder (2006) ‘Rehabilitating Duverger’s Theory: Testing the Mechanical and Strategic Modifying Effects of Electoral Laws’, Comparative Political Studies 39(6): 679-708.