Electoral Systems

Andrew Reeve, Alan Ware

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136094125
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This text is designed to give students a comprehensive view of the British electoral system. Its innovative comparative and theoretical approach will provide a link between courses in British politics, comparative politics and political theory. The book looks at electoral systems in relation to democratic theory and examines the justification for modern electoral rules. It compares parliamentary elections with various other kinds of election, and it looks at the differences between British experience and that of other countries.
Andrew Reeve and Alan Ware aim to inform the debate about whether our electoral system should be reformed, by raising such crucial issues as the connection between democracy and the electoral process, the significance of the territorial dimension in the British electoral system, and the role the election system plays in allocating values in a society.

1 Introduction

Elections are taking place all the time in Britain. Social clubs elect new members, committees of all kinds elect new chairmen, trade unions elect members to their national councils, and so on. Far less frequently, though, there are general elections to Parliament and to the European Parliament. That we elect our MPs only every four years (or so) is one reason why political scientists recognize that elections are not a very 'intensive' form of political participation. But because we do take part in elections involving other aspects of our lives, the process of electing an MP (and indirectly a government) is not wholly strange and unfamiliar to us. If we reflect on how the various elections in which we have been involved (or about which we have heard) are conducted, it becomes clear that there are a large number of different ways in which elections are actually organized. Consider the following examples.

1. For more than two centuries many gentlemen's clubs in London have elected new members on the following principle. A current member proposes and another member seconds a candidate for membership. Any member who wishes to oppose the election of the candidate may do so by dropping a black ball (anonymously) into an urn before a given deadline. If no-one 'blackballs' him the candidate is duly elected as a member.
2. Every year firms which are limited companies have to present a report to their shareholders at an annual meeting, and it is at this meeting that new members of the board of directors are elected. In fact, the chances that a candidate so presented would not actually be elected are tiny. He or she has already been 'handpicked' by the present directors. They would not choose someone likely to be opposed by the large institutional shareholders. The support of these large institutions is crucial, because in such an election the number of votes you have is determined by how many shares you own. Thus small shareholders can rarely exercise the sort of veto power available to the club member with his black ball.
3. Many trade unions elect their general councils through a ballot of the membership which invites voters to indicate which candidates they prefer. That is, the members are asked to indicate on their ballot form who is their first choice candidate, who is their second choice candidate and so on. The idea is that, if, say, there are fifteen people to be chosen, the individual voter cannot merely show which fifteen people he or she would like to see elected, but can also indicate an order of preference among those fifteen which is then taken into account in the way the votes are added up.
4. One method of conducting elections which has found favour among some political scientists in recent years utilizes a system of 'approval voting' (see Brams and Fishburn 1978). Suppose we want to elect three representatives to a committee. Under this system voters would be asked to indicate which candidates they 'approve of' (that is, were willing to countenance being elected). The number of 'approvals' for each candidate would then be counted and the three with the greatest number would be duly elected.

Each of the different sets of rules governing how elections are conducted constitutes a separate electoral system. The study of electoral systems, then, is the study of the rules of elections. This book is about electoral systems in Britain, and it is primarily, but not exclusively, about the rules governing the election of political representatives. Unlike many studies of electoral systems, however, it seeks to integrate the analysis of voting systems into the study of electoral systems. Voting, of course, takes place in many contexts other than elections (such as in decision- making by committees), while there are instances of elections in which voting is not employed. Nevertheless, most kinds of elections do involve some form of voting, and we would expect that those who have studied voting procedures could provide important insights for students of electoral systems. That, in general, the study of election rules has not drawn much on recent advances in the analysis of voting systems is a point to which we return shortly. First, though, it is important to stress that studying the rules of an activity is an important subject partly because it helps us to understand the strategic elements of that activity. Consider the following analogy.

If we watch a game of association football, we need to understand its rules in order to have any appreciation of what is happening on the field. However, in addition to understanding the general way in which the game is played (through reading the rule book), our enjoyment of the game is enhanced by knowing how the players try to use their skills and devise a strategy for winning within the context of those rules. For example, merely reading and understanding the rules relating to 'offside' will not enable us to understand why some teams drill their back four defenders to operate a very strict 'offside trap' anywhere within their own half, while others do not. To appreciate this, of course, we have to look at the particular range of skills the team's players have, and so on. But our point is that, in part, these tactics are a response by teams to a particular rule in modern football - until recently that in the opponent's half a ball could not be passed to a player unless there were two opponents between him and the goal. Abolishing the offside law would change many aspects of how football is actually played.

To see how the rules of an activity constrain, but also provide opportunities for, particular ways of participating in it is one important way in which it may be studied. While this book is about certain kinds of rules (electoral systems), we focus on the ways in which those rules affect and relate to broader aspects of the British political system. But the book is also broader in scope than the sporting analogy we have just introduced suggests - and this point needs to be considered carefully.

Taking two similar sports (for example, rugby union and rugby league) we would learn a lot from examining how differences in the two sets of rules affect various strategies used in playing the game. Nevertheless, it would make little sense to ask how the different rules facilitate the realization of some more general principle or objective (such as that people become fitter). But in the case of the rules with which we are concerned in this book it is important to consider just such questions. On the one hand, it is appropriate to ask whether one set of electoral rules is more compatible with democracy than another. On the other hand, there is an even 'higher level' issue. Are elections, even ones conducted under the 'most appropriate' rules, the best way of deciding an issue - or might we do better trying to conduct our business in some other way, for example by having a very extensive market system?

Consequently, in this book we are concerned not merely with how electoral systems (and especially the Parliamentary electoral system) work in Britain, but also with important theoretical issues. 'Theory' permeates the book - and in various ways. We raise the question, for example, of how a system of elections compares with other methods of taking decisions. Again, we discuss how an electoral system contributes to the goal of democracy. But theoretical issues are also raised in the context of the operation of the Parliamentary electoral system itself for example, in looking at the question of how equal the vote is in Britain. We are taking a particular institution - the electoral system and examining aspects of it which are significant not just for political scientists but also for political theorists. Before turning to another aspect of the book's focus - that it is about Britain - it is necessary first to say something about electoral systems in general. There are three main points to be made about them in a summary way which are then explained in greater detail.

1. Not only is there a considerable number of electoral systems that we could think of if we tried; in reality there is an infinite variety of electoral systems that could be devised.
2. Electoral systems are key variables in the political process in a democracy, because to a large extent they determine who gets what, when and how.
3. Despite the infinite variety of systems and their importance in allocating values in a society, in most regimes electoral systems tend not to be changed very often or very radically. Particular electoral systems are maintained even when the elites forming the government change.

Variety of Electoral Systems

If we focus our attention just on those electoral systems used in choosing legislatures, there is a tendency to underestimate the infinite variety of electoral systems that could be devised. Often we might think of plurality electoral systems of the British kind, the Alternative Vote and various forms of proportional representation (PR) as constituting the greater part of a fairly restricted universe. There are three reasons why we are inclined to make this mistake about the range of possible electoral systems.

1. As politics students we are naturally inclined, perhaps, to think of national politics as being the main arena in which electoral systems are used, rather than thinking of their use in small clubs or organizations. Initially, therefore, we might overlook examples like the 'blackballing' procedure mentioned earlier.
2. As a matter of fact, though, the range of electoral systems employed in organizations is relatively small in relation to the range of rules we might find. Organizations tend to copy electoral rules they see working well in other organizations, rather than to spend time devising wholly new systems for themselves - even if those might turn out to be more appropriate. This is largely because most people have a very limited understanding of how electoral systems work, and the strategic possibilities they contain, so that experimentation has been, and continues to be, greatly circumscribed.
3. Research by political scientists on electoral systems, and their constituent elements, has also tended to restrict our focus in a number of ways. Nearly all books about electoral systems define their subject in terms of legislative and governmental elections. In fact, one of the classic studies, Douglas Rae's (1971) The Political Consequences of Electoral Laws, defines, an electoral law in this way.¹ Political scientists have been too concerned with either describing different electoral laws for legislative elections or analysing their consequences, rather than with exploring the implications of possible new electoral systems. In saying this, we are not thereby criticizing their work - far from it - but the limited scope of nearly all academic work on electoral systems does contribute to the false belief that there is a limited range of electoral systems that an organization or a state could choose.

But there is another, and arguably more important, point that must be made about the academic study of electoral laws. To a surprising degree it has become divorced from the study of a topic that we might imagine was very closely related to it - the study of voting procedures. Voting is a way of taking a decision (such as to which pub a group of friends should go on a particular evening). Elections also involve making decisions though they can be conducted without counting votes - as in the case of the 'blackballing' procedure. Nevertheless, most electoral systems do employ some form of voting procedure; but, as Dummett (1984:9) notes,

there are many features that render the theory of electoral systems far more complex than that of voting on committees. One of them is the dual significance of a vote in a general election under any system which ... divides the country into local constituencies: a vote goes to determine both who shall represent the constituency and what the composition of Parliament is to be.

In view of the complexity of the theory of electoral systems, we might expect that those who have studied it would have drawn heavily on the work of those who study voting systems. Generally they have not done so. Much of the research on voting procedures in recent decades has been conducted by mathematically-informed economists, whose work is often difficult to understand without an adequate training in mathematics.² Consequently, the study of electoral systems has drawn on research on voting procedures only to a limited extent. Dummett (1984: 294-5) himself compared the extensive bibliographies of two important works one on electoral systems and one on voting procedures - and found that the only writer to appear in both bibliographies was John Stuart Mill!

Divorced from a theoretical underpinning in voting procedures, and concerning itself mainly with well-known electoral systems, much of the discussion has been unnecessarily limited. Certainly, with the notable exception of academic debates about 'approval voting', controversy about electoral systems in Britain has been conducted largely on the issue of 'first-past-the-post' (plurality voting) versus 'PR'. In a sense, the ethos of the Electoral Reform Society is typical. Rather than having an eclectic approach to electoral systems, or helping to devise and popularize new forms of electoral systems, the Society is a fierce advocate of a particular form of proportional representation, the single transferable vote.

Supporters of the present British ('first-past-the-post') system defend it largely because it tends to produce single-party governments. Proponents of PR argue that the present system under-represents important minority views and can give unlimited political power to a party which has a Parliamentary majority based on considerably less than 50 per cent of the popular vote. From much of the debate we might imagine that there were only two main types of possible electoral systems and we must choose either one or the other. But, as we have stressed, there is an infinite variety of electoral systems. It is not at all difficult to think of a system which would reconcile the two views just mentioned. For example, Parliamentary elections might be conducted on a strictly proportional basis so that a party which obtained 42 per cent of the national vote would receive 42 per cent of the seats initially. But, to overcome the objections of the 'first-past-the-post' advocate, we might build in the following additional element. If the party which obtained the largest share of the vote also got more than 45 per cent of the total vote, it would receive an additional number of seats sufficient to give it an overall Parliamentary majority of, say, twenty seats; if none of the parties received as much as 45 per cent of the vote, then there would be no 'topping up' of seats. This electoral system would ensure single-party government when one party had a reasonably high level of voter support, but prevent single parties being able to govern on their own with relatively low levels of voter support.

We must emphasize that we are not advocating such a system ourselves; we are merely showing that there are many more possible electoral systems than usually feature in debates about electoral systems in Britain. As a matter of fact, this particular system was not conjured up out of thin air. It is a variation of a system that was actually used in pre-war Romania, but it is one that no-one seems to have bothered to invoke in contemporary debates about the British electoral system.

The Power of Electoral Systems

What kind of electoral system is employed plays an important part in determining who or what is chosen in an election, and, beyond that, any policy decisions in which those elected are involved. Electoral systems are not mere details but key causal factors in determining outcomes. Consider again the case of the 'blackballing' procedure in a gentlemen's club and compare that club with one which elects new members on the basis of a vote of all members. (In the latter case a member would be elected if he secured the votes of a plurality of all those voting.) What sort of person would be more likely elected under the 'blackballing' procedure? 'Blackballing' is more likely to lead to the exclusion of someone who is disliked by any one member, and to lead, therefore, to the election of those who are not disliked by anyone - either because they are generally popular or because many members know little about them. 'Blackballing' is an attractive device for social clubs because it seems to promote a harmonious membership, albeit one that is not as heterogeneous as it might be under plurality voting. Amongst would-be members 'blackballing' would promote behaviour outside the club that was not likely to offend any current member - at least behaviour that could be drawn to their attention. Under plurality voting the would-be member does not have to worry so much about the opinion of each individual.

Similarly, at the level of the national political system the electoral system determines important outcomes. It does so directly in that who is elected under one system may not be elected under another system. Almost certainly, for example, if the British general elections of 1979, 1983 and 1987 had been held under the West German type of party list electoral system, the votes cast would have resulted in a minority government or the need for a coalition government; Conservative governments with working Parliamentary majorities would not have been produced. But the particular electoral system also has indirect effects on outcomes. It influences what kinds of parties are formed - in Britain the electoral system works against the formation of new parties, except when they have the potential for a strong base in a particular territory. 'Splintering' of major parties has been limited for this reason too - the formation of the SDP (from a split in the Labour party) in 1981 being one of the rare exceptions. More indirectly still, and because of its differential impact on the parties, the electoral system influences if or when a policy issue gets on to the national political agenda.

Changing the electoral rules can change the 'shape' of electoral politics. This is illustrated well by the reduction in the influence of the Communist party between the Fourth and Fifth French Republics. During the Fourth Republic (1946-58) the Communists regularly polled about a quarter of the total vote and returned a similar number of deputies to the French Parliament. The existence of this large group opposed to the regime was an important cause of the governmental crises that regime continually faced. Under the electoral rules adopted by the Fifth Republic, it became much more difficult for the Communists to translate their share of the vote into Parliamentary seats. This under-representation of the Communists was one of the factors contributing to the much greater stability of the regime. It would seem then that, if 'changing the rules can change the game', all actors in an electoral system would have a strong incentive to change the electoral rules to their own advantage. As we shall see in the next section, in reality there is less modification of electoral rules - whether at the level of the state or in other bodies - than we might expect, given this apparent power to influence outcomes. Moreover, this power of electoral systems must be placed in context, for we must be careful not to make the false assumption that the rules determine everything; they do not.

Controversy about the impact of electoral rules was at the centre of one of the main debates within political science in the immediate post-war decades - concerning the relevance of sociology to the study of politics. Certainly until the late 1950s, many political scientists (and practising politicians too) believed that you could get the political results you wanted simply by providing the appropriate institutional fra...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 What is an election?
• 3 The evolution of the Parliamentary electoral system
• 4 Electoral systems and democracy
• 5 Secret and open voting
• 6 The territorial dimension of elections
• 7 Aggregating votes: rival systems
• 8 Conclusion
• Notes
• References
• Index