9.

Understanding the Dynamics

of

Electoral Reform
PATRICK DUNLEAVY

AND

HELEN MARGETTS

a long period of stasis 1993 marked a burst of change in

liberal democracies electoral arrangements. There were major shifts in
three established democratic countries (Italy, Japan, and New Zealand),
and a new system in Russia. All four changes show some parallels as well
as some distinct features, especially in adopting "mixed" electoral systems.
The roots of this pattern lie deep in the multiple criteria involved in
debates about voting systems. Multi-dimensionality also explains some of
the inherent difficulties of implementing reform, which we consider in the
context of the revived electoral reform debate in the UK. Lastly, we
examine the pressures for "convergence" in electoral systems at work in
plurality rule countries, where party systems show tendencies to fragment;
and in proportional representation systems, where public demands for
greater accountability have emerged.

ABSTRACT. After

There has been

recurrent

evidence from many contemporary liberal democracies of

large-scale discontent with aspects of their voting systems. Yet over the postwar
period the norm has been for voting systems not to change. Liberal democracies, it
seemed, had lost either the will or the capacity to enact major changes in their
institutional arrangements for choosing rulers. In the 1990s, however, this logjam
has apparently begun to break up. Public opinion and elite debates in many Western
countries have turned again to questions about designing electoral systems, and
dissatisfaction with the quality of existing democratic processes now has become
salient in established democratic countries. We first explore how this change
creates difficulties for the small &dquo;c&dquo; conservatism of much of the political science
literature. The second section examines why electoral system arrangements are
inherently contested, why achieving intellectual agreement or practical consensus
on them is likely to be difficult. The third section of the article explores why
electoral systems can endure even when a large majority of public opinion supports
the case for change, looking especially at the capacity of elites to shape agendas.

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10

The fourth section briefly examines the general pressures for change in countries
with plurality rule electoral systems, and then in countries with proportional representation systems. We suggest that a trend towards &dquo;mixed&dquo; electoral systems has
emerged in the contemporary world, reflecting diverse influences whose cumulative
effect is to erode the distinctiveness of each countrys historical patterns.

The Conventional Wisdom and the 1993 Reforms

Amongst political scientists the conventional wisdom stresses that electoral systems
reflect deep-rooted aspects of national character and political life across democracies:
Electoral systems do not arise from a vacuum but from political debate and
struggle. They mirror the politics of the time of their creation and are altered
when politics change to the point where the existing electoral system becomes
too restrictive (Taagepera and Shugart, 1989: 234).

Hence countries change their electoral systems very rarely, if at all. There are a few
obvious problems with this generalized view, such as the many tinkerings with the
French electoral system under the Fifth Republic, including the temporary replacement of double ballot voting by proportional representation in the 1986 national
legislative elections. Countries which use different voting systems at different tiers
of government (as Italy does in local elections,2 or France does for the European
Parliament elections3) also pose problems. But these cases were always presented as
slightly pathological exceptions to the general picture of countries as wedded to a
single stable system adjusted to their national circumstances.
Analysts keen to stress their positive &dquo;scientific&dquo; credentials against the older
normative advocates of this or that (usually proportional) voting system, also interpreted the liberal democracies reluctance to change their electoral arrangements
as a &dquo;rational&dquo; response. The implicit argument here moved from what &dquo;is&dquo; to what
&dquo;ought&dquo; to happen, by suggesting that since electoral systems reflect fundamental
features of a political system, they should not be changed except when those political fundamentals themselves change-as in revolutionary situations, or system
collapses, or in the aftermath of wars, or other strong exogenous shocks. For
example: &dquo;The conclusion is that there is no pressing moral or practical reason to
shift away from plurality rule in large and homogenous countries which have
practised it for a long time&dquo; (Taagepera and Shugart, 1989: 225).
With the few &dquo;odd&dquo; exceptions noted above, it followed that peacetime transformations of electoral systems should be almost unknown:

major purpose of elections is to supply a stable institutional framework for the

of various viewpoints. Even if imperfect, a long-established electoral
system may satisfy this purpose better than could a new and unfamiliar system,
even if it were inherently more advantageous. Those political forces which are
disadvantaged by the existing rules learn to live with them, gradually devising
strategies that minimize their drawbacks. What disadvantages remain, are not
unexpected, and hence the level of frustration is reduced. Familiarity breeds
stability....

expression

..

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11

[M]ost of the longstanding electoral systems do the job. Keeping the ills we
know of may be better than leaping into the unknown (Taagepera and Shugart,
1989: 218, 236).
A final implication of the orthodoxy was that liberal democracies are unlikely ever
to converge on a single system. The anticipation of minimal change, and the defence
of divergent rationalities depending on political culture and political circumstances,
generated an expectation of stubborn variegation in electoral arrangements, providing yet another characteristic to differentiate &dquo;positive&dquo; political science from the
blanket recommendations of electoral reform advocates.
Seen against this type of argument, 1993-94 appears as an annus mirabilis in which
three established liberal democracies-Italy, Japan, and New Zealand-radically
changed their voting systems. In each case the switch represented the accumulation of chronic dissatisfaction with the ways that their political systems had evolved,
and in particular with citizens inability to adequately control politicians and political party behaviour. But although all the transitions had deep roots, they none the
less took place in peacetime as part of &dquo;normal politics,&dquo; and in circumstances far
removed from &dquo;system collapse&dquo; situations. In Japan and New Zealand the reform
of the voting system was implemented despite relatively small changes in the distribution of voters support between parties, and despite substantial continuity in political elites control of power.
Perhaps the Italian collapse of the &dquo;partitocrazia&dquo; amidst the swelling
&dquo;Tangentopoly&dquo; corruption scandal comes closest to approximating the collapse of
the whole political order. But the basic form of the state and its relations with civil
society were not called into question by the transformation of Italys party system.
The legal system, for example, initiated the purge of corrupt politicians and gained
increased legitimacy as the scandals mounted. The citizens revolt was quite
narrowly focused on punishing particular parties associated with corruption, the
Christian Democrats and the Socialists. Some of the new political forces (such as
the Northern League) have raised fundamental issues about the structure of the
Italian state, such as the creation of a federation or even secession within the
European Union: but it is currently unclear whether these propositions are seriously
put forward, or are bargaining counters for more regional autonomy.
A further development of considerable interest was that in all three countries,
and in another important if still fledgling &dquo;liberal democracy,&dquo; Russia, the changes
made in 1993 apparently moved towards a common-looking pattern. Each country
adopted a mixed electoral system, combining plurality rule elections in singlemember constituencies with &dquo;additional&dquo; seats allocated between parties on a
proportional representation basis. The detailed organization of each system was
distinctive, and their probable outcomes in terms of delivering proportional
electoral results are completely different, as Table I shows. In Japan and New
Zealand the additional seats are allocated proportionally in a top-up mode, so as to
compensate those parties under-represented from the contests for the local
consituency MPs. Both systems closely follow the academic concept of &dquo;the
additional member system&dquo; (called the &dquo;mixed member proportional system&dquo; in
New Zealand), and are close to the operations of the postwar German voting system.
But in Italy the additional seats allocated at the regional level seem at present not
to be pure top-up seats. Instead, in the lower house some complex &dquo;semi-top-up&dquo;
arrangements operate as follows. For a local constituency X where party A wins, a
number of votes equal to those of the runner-up party B in X local constituency

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12
TABLE I.

Summary

Characteristics

of the Mixed Voting Systems Adopted in Japan, Italy,

New Zealand

and Russia in 1993.

Note: For Italy and Japan, the percentage of

additional seats refer to the lower chamber.

plurality rule/local

seats

and the percentage of

deducted from party As total in the regional votes, before allocating regional
This unique-looking system will over-represent large parties at the expense
of small.4 And in Russia, the local plurality contests and the national PR votes are
not related at all. Parties shares of the nationally allocated half of all seats are
determined by their share of the national vote, irrespective of how many seats they
have won in the local constituency contests. Thus the Russian system is only continare

seats.

gently proportional.
These important developments, together with much wider currents of change,
create considerable difficulties for the previous consensus amongst electoral system
researchers and make it worthwhile to look again at the politics of electoral reform.
We take the view that existing political science commentary on these issues is often
a form of disguised conservatism, which adopts a &dquo;system-biased&dquo; view that
whatever &dquo;is,&dquo; is &dquo;natural&dquo; (Catt, 1989). In the orthodox approach to electoral
studies, indeed, it is common for the electoral system to disappear almost into the
background (Dunleavy, 1990), and for analysts to internalize its key features in their
judgements of what is, and is not, politically salient behaviour. In this view, salience
is implicitly equated with institutional effectiveness (Dunleavy and Margetts, 1993;
Margetts and Dunleavy, 1993). Although explicit accounts of electoral systems are
potentially less system-biased in approach, the &dquo;naturalistic&dquo; view of long-lived
systems as somehow adapted to the demands of political actors in fact reproduces
their orientation.
In its

place

we

systems

are a

key

substitute an approach which stresses that electoral

focus of preference-shaping behaviour by established political
parties and elites, which actively maintain institutional arrangements that
maximize their access to state power (Dunleavy, 1991: chap. 5). The space within
which manipulation and preference-shaping can take place is generated in the first
place by the continuing debate about the purposes of electoral systems and the
criteria which ought to be applied in assessing them.
want to

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13

Why Voting Systems

are

Contested

Attempting to explain chronic disputes over terms and ideas, W.B. Gallie (1959)
argued that some concepts are &dquo;essentially contested.&dquo; He had in mind concepts
which are appraisive (describing some generally valued ideal state); complex and
multi-dimensional (requiring a weighting of different elements); and with rather
open language rules governing usage (hence leaving much scope for dispute about
when the concept applies or not, and how it should be defined). William Connolly
skirts around the &dquo;essentiality&dquo; of contestation to conclude more neutrally that
political science is littered with &dquo;cluster concepts&dquo; which involve applying multiple
criteria and which are hard to operationalize:
Conceptual disputes...are neither a mere prelude to inquiry nor peripheral to it,
but when they involve the central concepts of a field of inquiry, they are surface
manifestations of basic theoretical differences that reach to the core. The intensity of commitment to favoured definitions reflects intensity of commitment to a
general theoretical perspective; and revisions that follow conceptual debates
involve a shift in the theory that has housed the concepts (Connolly, 1974: 21).

The concept of an electoral system might seem far removed from such considerations. It might be objected that the methods used by countries for selecting political personnel can be operationally specified in neutral terms and studied despite
normative disagreements about which components or arrangements would best
maximize social welfare. In fact, disputes about the meaning of an electoral system,
about the factors which may be legitimately construed as part of the system, are
integrally connected with normative disputes about the &dquo;best&dquo; voting method.
Running through a variety of more specific arguments there is a basic tension
between those analysts who construe an electoral system primarily in terms of the
requirements of liberal democratic theory, and others who believe that electoral
systems must also be analyzed as general institutional arrangements and evaluated
against state management criteria generic to all states.
To see how this tension runs through the analysis of electoral systems, we follow
an approach pioneered by Hood (1976) of simply listing as comprehensively as possible the criteria for evaluating voting systems, focusing on whether there is a
&dquo;perfect&dquo; voting system which would meet all criteria simultaneously. To the extent
that the goal has proven infeasible, we shall then have mapped the &dquo;limits&dquo; of any
electoral system-limits which will mean that any arrangements are likely to be
permanently contested. The challenge for electoral analysts is to recognize this
situation explicitly, instead of trying to brush it under the carpet.

Criteria from

Democratic

Theory

The criteria related directly to principles of democratic theory fall into four groups:
(i) Political equality is fundamental to democracy. No voter should formally be
allocated an influence greater than others. Logically this implies:
~

The ratios between voting population and legislative seats should be equal
across a country. There should be no malapportionment of seats which overrepresents some parts of the country and under-represents others.
A perfect electoral system will have no &dquo;wasted votes&dquo;: every vote counts
equally towards determining the composition of the legislature. In particular, no set of votes is completely ignored in determining who is elected.

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14
.

Proportionality: across the country the percentage of seats awarded to a

party should reflect its percentage share of the national vote, for all parties.

(ii) Representation of viewpoints is also fundamental to liberal democracy, the substitution of an assembly to stand in place of the people as a whole (that is, in place
of direct democracy). How this substitution is achieved is important: the process
cannot be arbitrary or vitiated by lacunae, implying that:
~

Minorities within the country can win seats: there are no artificial barriers
to deny them places in the legislature.
All social groups are placed on an equal ex ante footing in standing for the
legislature and electing MPs. The nomination or voting method does not
include procedures or criteria which knock out some groups from representation at stages before the popular vote itself.
The legislature is socially representative, reflecting in its composition the
distribution of voters as a whole across social classes, genders, ethnic groups,

operating
~

or

regions.

is an important corollary of liberal democratic electoral

though it apparently refers to the relationship which should exist
between representatives and voters after an election has taken place. The basic idea
here (strongly developed in countries influenced by Anglo-American political traditions) is that the voting method should foster representatives behaviour which can
be monitored and judged by voters.

(iii) Accountability

processes,

even

Local knowledge of representatives behaviour and a developed mechanism

of local accountability can be fostered by constituency elections. Singlemember electoral districts create a &dquo;singular&dquo; relationship between voters
and MPs: local voters surveillance task is facilitated by identifying only one
representative amongst a crowd who they must monitor. According to Harold
Laski, constituency representation is one of four basic pillars of democracy.
By contrast, two countries operate without any constituency system at all
(the Netherlands and Israel), while a large number operate with much
larger, multi-member constituencies.
The ease with which the electorate can punish party wrongdoing or unpopularity is a more complex notion of accountability. It requires that political
parties should not be able to create protected niches (in terms of either
&dquo;safe&dquo; seats or indispensability for a governing coalition) which artificially
prevents voters from withdrawing support from them, or reducing their
representation in the legislature.

(iv) The importance of elections in terms of influencing access

ship and public policy development should be considerable in

political leaderany liberal democto

racy.
.

Elections should determine changes of government: there should not be a

disconnection between voters verdicts and the constitution of governments.
A strong form of this principle is the argument sometimes put forward in
countries with plurality rule systems that only elections should trigger
changes of government: there should not be mid-term rearrangements of
governing personnel in response to dynamics over which voters have no direct
control, such as the withdrawal of a sinall party from a coalition triggering
a governmental crisis.

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15
~

State

Voters should be offered distinct options on issues and policy directions

across political parties, &dquo;a choice not an echo,&dquo; because too much elite
convergence is a potent source of problems for a liberal democracy. Unless
the segmentation of elites between parties has some substantial basis, the
effects of competition in ensuring elite accountability may be impaired.
Voters should also be offered a full range of choices: there should be no elite
closure on debate.

Management

There

are

four

Criteria

sets

of standards for evaluation

directing attention

arrangements affect the stability and management of the

state

to

how electoral

apparatus

as an

institutional order. It is sometimes suggested that these principles are in fact

&dquo;democratic,&dquo; on the grounds that an unstable or unsustainable democracy will
deliver lower levels of welfare to citizens than a less &dquo;perfect&dquo; but more sustainable
form of democratic regime. However, the linkage here is specious: at root there are
two different imperatives at work here. Three sets of state management criteria
can

be

distinguished:

(i) Governability implies that the electoral system chosen should not worsen,
where possible should accentuate, the ease of effectively governing a society.
~

is often taken as a key indicator of this dimension,

of government &dquo;stability&dquo; (such as its ability to
a
progress legislative programme) are also sometimes cited.
Majority governments, single-party governments and &dquo;undivided&dquo; government are often recommended as other features which should be encouraged
by electoral systems to enhance governability. Majority governments (of one
or more parties) can be sure of enacting a legislative program. Single-party
governments may be easier for political leaders to manage than multi-party
coalitions (although single-party governments can also be plagued by a high
degree of factionalism). &dquo;Undivided&dquo; government refers to the presence of a
consistent pattern of partisan control across executive and legislature where
they are separately elected, or conceivably across the two houses of bicameral legislatures.
Avoiding &dquo;adversary politics&dquo; or political over-polarization is a diametrically
opposed principle in designing an electoral system. Whereas majority government considerations suggest reinforcing the representation of larger parties
or creating &dquo;winner-take-all&dquo; situations, a concern to prevent over-polarization points to an electoral system facilitating the graduated award of seats
to parties in response to their vote levels, rather than a system marked by
jumps or discontinuities.
Large-majority or consensus policy-making may be valued in state management terms, over and above the need to moderate political polarization. The
grounds cited have varied widely, ranging from a pluralist concern for &dquo;one
nation&dquo; policies, through conservative public choice arguments for largemajority decision rules (as inherently less oppressive), to left corporatist
advocacy of inclusive decisional systems.
Long-run policy-making is widely seen as a positive benefit of avoiding adversary politics, by contrast with the &dquo;short-termism&dquo; which may be fostered by
systems with rapid party alternations in power.
Government
but broader

durability

measures

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and

16

(ii) Party system stability criteria are concerned not directly with government, but
with the level of turbulence in the universe of political parties. State management
becomes more difficult if the party system is volatile and constantly changing, with
little opportunity for voters or leaders to adjust or to learn how to predict the consequences of their own and others actions.
~

Thresholds

the representation of anti-democratic or anti-system

built
into electoral systems, usually in the form of
parties
minimum support levels which must be reached before parties are entitled
to win seats from list elements in the electoral system. Most formal thresholds are set low (in the 4 to 5 percent range). The effectiveness of thresholds is, of course, disputed, since rule-of-law constraints prevent them being
targeted on anti-system or non-democratic parties. Thus occasions might
arise where thresholds actually benefit extremist parties which have already
passed their limits, and thereafter gain from the elimination of more centrist
parties below the threshold-as in the 1993 Russian election. Occasionally
(as in the 1993 Russian electoral system), additional thresholds are built in
at the stage of nominations or standing candidates, to ensure that political
parties are oriented towards national and not purely regional or local interests. Systems without list components do not have formalized thresholds, but
in practice parties need to win much higher levels of support to win access
to the legislature.
Protecting established parties against centrifugal tendencies is often justified in state management terms because fragmented and fissiparous parties
create more complex coalitional situations, and make it harder to sustain a
continuous government majority.
are

against
widely

(iii) Handling social conflicts

~

is

critical dimension of successful

state

management.

Managing ethnic conflicts and irredentism has rarely been more salient than
in the contemporary era, where ethnic divisions have re-emerged as the
absolutely dominant focus of political conflicts and civil disruption in many
countries. The specific impacts of electoral systems in fuelling or damping
down cleavages based on race, tribe, language, religion, culture, or national
identity are hence peculiarly important. However, it is unclear that there are
any general relationships here: context and the articulation of electoral
systems within broader institutional patterns (such as the role of plurality
elections in Westminster systems, or highly proportional systems within
consociational arrangements) seem most important.
Consensus-building around political institutions can be fostered (or
impaired) by voting systems to the extent that they create (or erode) the
overall legitimacy of a constitutional order. In a long-term way, and in a
of increased pooling of information about political systems across
liberal democracies, an electoral system which is markedly &dquo;out of line&dquo; with
practices elsewhere in terms of any of the major criteria set out above will
tend to accumulate legitimacy problems and have a progressively less
positive effect.

context

Some of the existing literature on electoral reform shows a marked tendency to

associate systems in a simple-minded way with groups of criteria. For example,
proportional and plurality (or &dquo;majoritarian&dquo;) systems are often portrayed as operating on different philosophical avenues, and hence incapable of being sensibly assessed

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17
TABLE 2.

(Roughly) Evaluating Plurality Rule

and Proportional

Representation.

against criteria which are &dquo;foreign&dquo; to their essential principles (Reeve and Ware,
1991). Part of the point of grouping criteria as we do above is to demonstrate how
feeble this familiar argument now looks. Table 2 presents a necessarily bald summary
of how plurality rule and proportional representation systems might be scored against
both democratic theory criteria and state management criteria. The pattern shows
very mixed results, rather than the clear orientation of plurality rule towards strong
state management and of PR systems towards democratic criteria which is normally
suggested. Any evaluation of these alternative systems would necessarily be far more
complex than the casual justifications offered by practising politicians or the conventional wisdom of political scientists analysing electoral systems.

Why Voting Systems

are

Hard to

Change

The multi-dimensional character of voting systems, the fact that they are defended
or criticized by reference to so many different criteria simultaneously, provides some
key insights into the difficulties of changing electoral systems in practice. Multidimensionality opens up important possibilities for strategic manoeuvring by political elites with interests in the status quo. We demonstrate the complexities of

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18

reform by reference to Britain, where the electoral reform debate

since 1987 has considerably heated up, but where the chances of enacting changes
away from plurality rule currently seem remote. The detailed context and development of debate in Britain has been well described elsewhere (see Norris, this issue;
and Dunleavy, Margetts, and Weir, 1992), so we shall concentrate on modelling
electoral reform in the UK in a self-consciously limited way, concentrating on certain
&dquo;stylized facts&dquo; and neglecting any effort at detailed descriptive realism.
We have pictured the British debate as a game played by three main parties
(Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats) in two dimensions. The first,
shown on the vertical axis in Figure 1, is &dquo;proportionality.&dquo; Empirically we might
operationalize this axis as I DV, the measure for &dquo;deviation from proportionality&dquo; (Taagepera and Shugart, 1989). The second dimension, shown on the horizontal axis in Figure 1, is &dquo;ease of governing,&dquo; by which we mean a summary measure
of the various non-representative (stability) criteria considered above, plus the
extent to which the UKs constitutional order confers on the government of the day
a capacity to reach and implement decisions insulated from, or able to override,

accomplishing

political opposition.
Existing institutional arrangements define the status quo point (shown as a small
black square in Figure 1 ), which is low on proportionality, with an &dquo;experiential&dquo;
measure of DV reaching 27 percent in 1992, far higher than any other European
Union country or indeed any other advanced industrial society (Dunleavy and
Margetts, 1994). Yet plurality rule elections, plus many other features of the UKs
uncodified constitution, normally secure &dquo;artificial&dquo; majorities for the leading party
at most elections and guarantee an almost uniquely unconstrained scope of action
for any Commons majority. Consequently, the UK status quo is placed far out along
the horizontal axis.

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19

Figure I also shows the current attitudes of the three political parties on electoral
changes as points in the same two-dimensional space. The Conservatives
have been the chief beneficiaries of plurality rule elections throughout the century
and since 1918 have always fiercely opposed changes towards a more proportional
system, especially given their period of electoral predominance since 1979. Tory
attitudes favour further slight increases in governability, however: their &dquo;statecraft&dquo;
radically increased central government power under Thatcher, a continuing trend
still under John Major. By contrast, the Liberal Democrats are committed to the
introduction of full proportional representation. Historically the Liberal Party
favoured the single transferable vote as the most &dquo;perfect&dquo; form of PR, even though
the large constituency sizes inherent in STV have made it a very hard system to
popularize in the UK. In theory, the Liberal Democrats deny that an STV system
would reduce governability. But in practice they would be perfectly content to bear
such a price, for as the probable &dquo;swing&dquo; party between Conservatives and Labour
under a PR system they would only be advantaged in forming governing coalitions.
Labours current attitudes towards electoral reform are in transition. The Party
system

used to be an unreflective supporter of the status quo but four successive defeats
have made its attitudes more critical. A vigorous internal debate since 1987 has left
Labour MPs evenly divided about the desirability of reform. But most Labour voters
are persuaded of the case for a proportional system, while still recoiling from the
need for coalitions which PR would imply. The party leadership has largely accepted
the case for building at least somewhat greater proportionality into British arrangements, but without affecting the House of Commons. Many of the partys MPs and
apparatchiks are unwilling to trade off any reduction of governability in order to
achieve a more proportional system, for to do so would be to accept in advance very
substantial re.strictions on a future majority Labour government, which they persist
in believing can be attained. The partys long period in opposition has if anything
increased the desire of Labour elites to make &dquo;one more heave,&dquo; and thereby attain
unconstrained governmental power. Accordingly we show Labours current position
as very mildly favouring more proportionality in the voting system, but as committed as the Conservatives to governability.
Each partys indicated position is its optimal point, and using the normal
&dquo;proximity assumption&dquo; of rational choice spatial models the further away any given
point is from that optimum the lower its utility for the party. It follows that for
each party we can draw a circular indifference curve through the status quo, which
shows other points in the two-dimensional space having the same utility for that
party. The Conservatives circle is small, reflecting the fact that they already get
most of what they want from the electoral system, while the Liberal Democrats
circle is large by contrast. Labours optimal position has moved some distance away
from the status quo, so its circle is somewhat larger than the Conservatives. Within
each partys indifference curve, all the outcomes shown have a higher value than
the status quo. Hence the intersections between the parties indifference curves are
important: they define &dquo;winsets&dquo; where in principle two parties would be able to
mutually improve their welfare (move closer to their optimum points). Since Figure
I also notes each partys share of the proportion of the popular vote, the winsets
can also identify combinations where clear majorities of public opinion could be
assembled for changes away from the status quo.
As Figure 1 is drawn there are two feasible winsets. The first between the
Conservatives and Labour is the &dquo;major party&dquo; winset, in favour of improving
governability while leaving proportionality unchanged. Although this area is small,

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20

the possibility of attaining a large majority &dquo;consensus&dquo; is high: yet the political
system has not moved further down this path, and is highly unlikely to do so. The
other winset, the overlap between Labour and the Liberal Democrats representing
an opposition party agreement on the need for electoral reform, is larger. But the
two parties can barely muster majority support for such an electoral system change,
and again Labour has only briefly dallied with a move in this direction-notably in
Kinnocks last year as party leader, especially during the closing days of the 1992
election campaign. Note that in Figure 1 Labours current optimum position still
lies outside this second winset.
In explaining why the status quo has stayed where it has, and not been changed
in either direction, we need to modify Figure I by making a more realistic estimate
of the extent of the difficulties of reform. Here we introduce a significant innovation in the way that two-dimensional bargaining games of this kind are commonly
conceptualized. Picturing the status quo as a single point (as in Figure 1 ) is actually
equivalent to assuming that there are no transaction costs in advocating change
and securing agreement, and no transition costs in implementing that agreement
and moving to a new position. Neither of these propositions is credible.
Transaction costs in legislative bargaining will be every bit as serious a consideration as they are in market contexts, where transaction costs economics insists that
the difficulties of discovering, moving to, and policing, contracts have an importance
equivalent in significance almost to physical production costs (Williamson, 1975,
1985). Economic transaction costs are defined by Arrow as the &dquo;costs of running the
economic system,&dquo; (quoted, Williamson, 1985, p. 18), and by Williamson (1985: 19)
as &dquo;the economic equivalent of friction in physical systems.&dquo; In legislative situations
transaction costs will also be substantial, since assembling and managing coalitions
is a costly and often fraught undertaking. For Labour to co-operate with the Tories
in enhancing governability (immediately benefiting a Tory administration) is costly
because it qualifies their opposition stance. And for Labour to cooperate with the
Liberal Democrats on achieving electoral reform is also costly, for of course the two
parties diverge considerably in the type of system they might favour. In particular,
the Liberal Democrats past attachment to STV is anathema to Labour leaders,
hence its rapid exclusion from the Plant Commissions report. Transaction costs also
attach to the risk of promoting a change which proves controversial or unpopular,
and squeezes out legislative time for other measures in a partys programme.
Transition costs are worth distinguishing separately because they would fall
outside Arrows definition of transaction costs, but not outside Williamsons.
Transition costs are concerned with ex post implementation penalties following an
agreement to shift away from the status quo. For example, moving away from an
established electoral system creates uncertainty for parties about their prospects
and strategies under the new system, while creating huge risks for incumbent MPs
who might or might not be able to secure re-election under the new arrangements.
For example, Labour would risk &dquo;knock-on&dquo; effects for its own levels of support if
it removed barriers to effective Liberal campaigning, although it might expect to
hit the Tories harder by doing so.
To see in principle how introducing transaction and transition costs affects the
winsets diagram, consider Figure 2, where we picture these costs as defining a
&dquo;penumbra&dquo; around the status quo position. The penumbra indicates the movement
which a change must make in order to be able to offset the transaction/transition
costs of making any change. For simplicitys sake we first draw it as a circular area,
meaning that in whatever direction change is advocated it must go the same

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21

distance away from the status quo to be viable. Small, incremental changes which
barely move away from the status quo would be ruled out by the penumbra, because
they would produce a net reduction in welfare for any party.
The effect of the penumbra is also to reduce the utility which each party derives
from alternatives to the status quo. We now draw each partys indifference curve
not through the status quo but through the point on the penumbra circle closest
to each partys optimum position. (At first sight it may seem that in Figure 2 the
status quo is nearer to each partys optimum than in Figure 1. In fact, the indifference curves in Figure 2 denote the same welfare level as those in Figure 1: so
the number of combinations of outcomes offering an improvement on the status
quo has been reduced for all parties.) The effect of the penumbra in Figure 2 is to
remove the Conservative/Labour winset completely: these parties circular indifference curves no longer overlap at all. The Labour/Liberal Democrat winset is also
considerably reduced in size, and the combinations involved where change is still
feasible are further removed from the status quo.
Since this is now the only winset, however, an obvious problem is to explain why
the two opposition parties have not so far been able to reach an accommodation to
move towards it. Possible explanations include the plurality rule electoral system
itself, which privileges the Conservatives as the leading major party even though
their electoral support is only 42 percent (Dunleavy, 1991). A further possibility is
that there are no prospective electoral system changes which would fall into this
narrow winset, with its demanding conditions that proportionality and governability increase. Suppose that the opposition party leaders picture electoral system
options as discrete points in the two-dimensional space. Then if no ready-made
system offers a point falling within the winset they may conclude that reform is
infeasible, even though in fact detailed modifications and adaptations of adjacent
systems might be relatively easily engineered so as to reach the winset.

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22

We can get closer to a &dquo;realistic&dquo; diagram of the electoral reform game by varying
another assumption of Figure 2, that transaction and transition costs decrease
evenly whichever direction change moves away from the status quo. In fact the
penumbra around the status quo is highly unlikely to be circular. Instead it will be
a stretched shape which will characteristically reflect a &dquo;mobilization of bias&dquo; in the
legislative and political realms. Many political forces will actively try to shape the
transaction and transition costs of changing the electoral system, with the effects
shown in Figure 3 where the bottom of the penumbra skirts the status quo point
closely while the top is further away from it. The effect of this &dquo;egg&dquo; shape that we
have used is then to push the Labour and Liberal Democrat indifference curves
apart, thereby removing any winset altogether.
How likely is it that a situation such as that in Figure 3 exists? Which forces have
interests in shaping the transaction/transition costs area in this fashion? The list in
fact is a long one. First, the general bias of incumbent MPs will clearly tolerate
minor changes of the electoral system (especially those which preserve its proportionality) more easily than any radical overhaul disrupting their established position
in their local constituency. Second, the Conservatives as the incumbent government
and dominant party have strong preference-shaping incentives to help structure the
penumbra in this way, as do the anti-reform elements in the Labour party (who
now count over 90 Labour MPs as overt supporters). Third, external interest groups
in British society display a considerable bias towards protecting the current system,
especially business and the commercial mass media, which are preponderantly proConservative in orientation. The trade unions affiliated to Labour were also an
important barrier to radical change until 1989-90, when the balance of union views
began to swing very slowly towards reform. Business and media opposition will
certainly pose a major problem for electoral reform to be achieved via a referendum, as the New Zealand referendum campaigns showed (see Vowles, this issue).

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23

British historical traditions and political culture also differentially protect

the status quo from a shift towards a more proportional system-for example, in

Finally,

the attachment to &dquo;simple&dquo; vote-counting methods and to single-member

constituencies, and to every MP having constituency duties (so that AMS, which
potentially creates a class of de-localized top-up MPs, is harder to advocate in the
British context).
But Figure 3 may still not tell the whole story, in particular about the possibilities for radical change in the voting system during the remainder of this decade..
While it makes sense to display the Conservatives optimal position as a single
point, the same is not true of the Labour Party or the Liberal Democrats. The open
debate inside Labours ranks means that its optimal position is relatively uncertain.
It could shift quite substantially if a future election produces a &dquo;hung parliament&dquo;
with a minority Labour government. Similarly, although the Liberal Democrats
public pronouncements (such as the 1993 Conference resolutions) still keep faith
with STV, there have been many indications that the party leadership would be
willing to make very substantial compromises with a Labour administration in order
to break the stranglehold of plurality voting in single-member constituencies which
so impedes Liberal Democrat representation in parliament. Hence the party could
easily support an AMS solution for reform, or even the traditional first resort of
indecisive- Labour MPs, the alternative vote.
We can picture these possibilities for change in the parties optimal positions in
Figure 4. Here we draw the old Labour and Liberal Democrat positions at Ll and
LD1 respectively, showing the indifference curves from Figure 3 as dotted lines. We
draw the new Labour and Liberal Democrat optima at L2 and LD2 respectively,
and show the new indifference curves as solid lines. These new indifference curves
do just intersect, so long as we envisage that Labours optimum point moves to
accept greater proportionality, and the Liberal Democrats optimum point shifts

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24

governability considerations (as it would anyway be likely to do if the

prospect of reform being implemented drew closer). Yet although both parties make
clear shifts in their positions, the overlap area created is a small one. Hence the
possibility for change remains fragile and conjunctural, so long as the transaction/transition costs penumbra around the status quo poses difficulties for the
opposition parties in co-operating with each other. (We might also have allowed for
the penumbra to be reshaped by new political conjunctures, such as a hung parliament : but this would have made Figure 4 even more complicated.)
towards

Contemporary Pressures Changing Electoral Systems

relatively rapid and apparently important changes in electoral
during 1993, which we discussed in the first section of the
seem
inconsistent
with the themes developed in the later two sections.
article, may
Here we seek to show how the multi-dimensionality of voting system choices, and
the general difficulty of securing change explored in the section above, can none
the less be consistent with the enactment of reform. We explore three issues:
pressures for change in plurality rule countries; pressures for change in countries
with hyper-proportional systems; and the emergence of mixed systems as the most
attractive form of solution to meet otherwise contradictory imperatives.

At first

sight

the

arrangements enacted

Plurality Rule

Countries

The dominant fact of political life in virtually all liberal democratic countries with
plurality rule systems is that processes of party fragmentation are likely to raise
increasing difficulties for them in the future. The exception, of course, is the United
States, which now stands alone in the world as the homeland of a system that is
almost perfectly two-party. In the 1990 Congressional elections the number of thirdchoice candidates in the House of Representatives elections was so small that the
effective number of parties was 2.0 or 2.1 in virtually every region of the USA
(Dunleavy and Margetts, 1993). And the relative reduction in parties at
Congressional elections was minute, a mere 7 percent, less than most proportional
representation systems, for the simple reason that if only two parties run candidates then even a plurality rule system may operate quite proportionally. Yet
because American (and American-based) political scientists are so important in the
comparative analysis of electoral systems, there is a serious risk of losing sight of
how odd the United States has now become in maintaining untrammelled two-party
competition in contests for the legislature. In US presidential elections, third-force
interventions are much more common and much more important than in
Congressional contests. Ross Perots 19 percent vote in 1992, coming on top of previous bids by John Anderson and George Wallace, and President Clintons election
on 43 percent of the vote, serve to underscore how atypical the US legislative
elections have become.
In all other countries commonly thought of as two-party systems, the last two
decades have seen a cumulative process of change. In Britain, third and fourth
parties have received a minimum of 20 percent of the vote for over two decades,
with regular mid-term scores well above that: there is little or no prospect of a
restoration of two-party predominance. In New Zealand, a rapid succession of third
parties, and a continuous process of party fragmentation cumulated in 1993 with
three new parties securing representation in the legislature as well as Labour and

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25

the National Party, and with widespread public disillusionment with the governments of both the established parties. The adoption of the new AMS electoral
system has given a further boost to party fragmentation. In Australia, the Labour
and Liberal/Country party grip on the House of Representatives remains absolutely
intact, but in Senate elections (using an STV system with something of a party list
character) third parties have consolidated their permanent role, especially the
centrist Democrats and the Greens. The 1993 elections left the Senate third parties
playing an increasingly pivotal role. Finally, amongst the Westminster-influenced
countries, the 1993 Canadian election saw a spectacular collapse in Conservative
representation, with the governing party going from a majority to just four seats.
Although the Liberals revived spectacularly in terms of seats, and the NDP representation was cut, the election by no means restored a two-party system. Instead
two new fourth parties emerged, with the success of Quebec separatists in federal
elections almost for the first time, and the arrival of a right-wing anti-tax party as
well.
If we look outside these advanced industrial countries at industrializing nations
using plurality elections, the picture of fragmentation does not change much. In
India the dominance of the Congress party has long disappeared, and the growth
of the Hindu chauvinist BJP has added an important new dimension, while the other
non-Congress parties until recently displayed very fissiparous tendencies. Malaysia
continues to operate plurality rule elections partly as a means of reinforcing the
hegemony of the majority ethnic group, and various aspects of Malaysian government (such as human rights abuses and harassment of opposition politicians)
continue to pose question marks over its democratic credentials. Both here and in
South Korea the ability of plurality rule systems to cope with the pressures for political liberalization created by very fast industrial growth seems likely to be limited.
If we step back from even this broad-gauge level of empirical description, and
instead pose the question of how political life and party politics are likely to change
in the next two decades, it seems unlikely that the general trend towards party
fragmentation in plurality rule systems, evident since the late 1960s, can now be
reversed. So many aspects of political life have been changed by mass media dynamics that old-style parties and election campaigning, focusing on the simplified
bundling together of issues, look increasingly obsolescent. Finally, the end of the
cold war and the transition to a more complex international order seem to have
further reduced the salience of left/right political cleavages, upon which historically
two-party politics was based.

Countries with

Proportional Representation

In PR countries the push for change has come mainly from public disillusionment
with low levels of political accountability flowing from either large electoral districts
or from large-scale party lists. In effect such systems create high costs for citizens
in monitoring multiple legislators from their constituency, and difficulties in
seeking to &dquo;punish&dquo; politicians who transgress. The collapse of the East European
communist systems, and the reinstallation of capitalist economies there, has powerfully re-emphasized the endemic and pervasive nature of political corruption. Some
right-wing public choice theorists in America have written solemn treatises about
how legislatures which respond both to electoral popularity and to the willingness
of organized economic interests to contribute political finance (e.g., via PACs in the
USA) will enact more economically &dquo;efficient&dquo; legislation, when compared with

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26

other legislatures (as in the UK) where politicians have less need to search for political finance. But in Italy and in Japan the current reforms of the electoral system
have sprung from a quite different public perception of corruption.
The Italian and Japanese electoral systems both shared a single highly undesirable characteristic in a climate where corruption is rife. They both forced politicians of the same party to compete with each other for votes. In Italys list PR system
the long-retained capacity for voters to &dquo;write-in&dquo; the names of candidates gave
incentives for MPs to concentrate some of their constituency activity on building up
a reputation amongst voters compared with other candidates of their party. The
system was also open to abuse; since only a minority of voters took up the write-in
option, quite small numbers could have an important influence on the positioning
of candidates on lists. Finally, of course, there were difficulties in operating the
&dquo;write-in&dquo; provisions in an environment where organized crime and political life
were closely intermeshed: allegations frequently surfaced that the Mafia could get
names of their favoured politicians written in to ballot papers where voters did not
take up the write-in option.
In Japan, the single non-transferable vote also created very strong incentives for
candidates of the same party to compete with each other strongly, since each voter
had only one vote but multiple seats had to be filled. The SNTV system meant that
candidates search for personal political funds was almost insatiable, whatever the
level of competition between the LDP and the opposition parties. It also encouraged a tradition of strong and direct constituency service by MPs to constituents,
focusing on providing semi-public goods. Both factors were important ingredients
in the growth of political corruption, which eventually produced the backlash in
1993, and change of the electoral system in early 1994.
A more diffuse reaction against the lack of accountability over minority parties
and politicians which can be created in hyper-proportional systems seems to have
occurred also in two PR countries without any constituency system at all. Diskin
and Diskin (this issue) show that the intransigence of the religious parties in Israel,
and their overly pivotal role in determining coalition government possibilities,
triggered first a period of &dquo;grand coalition&dquo; between Likud and Labour, and later
an agreement to create a system for directly electing the Israeli prime minister,
due to come into operation in 1996. Both devices were means of trying to enforce
some deference to the public interest on parties which given the legislative electoral
system were otherwise virtually invulnerable to public opinion: so long as they retain
their minority support, they face no incentive to behave cooperatively. A much lower
level of concern has also emerged in the Netherlands, where elections to the second
chamber (which is in fact the key House) currently are conducted on a nationwide
basis. A parliamentary commission is now examining whether or not the
Netherlands might change to a system with a constituency component, almost
certainly some form of the German or AMS approach.

The Attraction

of Mixed Electoral Systems

The apparent convergence of liberal democracies noted in the first section can now
be seen not as a coincidental phenomenon, but perhaps as the start of a more
important phase in the evolution of liberal democratic systems across the globe.
The second section stressed the multi-dimensionality of electoral choice. In an era
where citizens experiences of democracy are increasingly pooled by global mass
media, better education, and a great deal of &dquo;policy learning&dquo; across nations (Rose,

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27

1993), the characteristic result must be to cast into sharper silhouette those
features of electoral systems which are most distinctive. Ten or twenty years ago,
for example, the peculiarities of the British electoral system were much less apparent than they are today, when the UK is the only country in the European Union
to adhere to this approach, and when the British contribution to European parliamentary elections is to impart so marked a disproportional spin. Similarly, in Italy
or Japan the non-accountability between voters and representatives which was
inherent in their systems became progressively more apparent as time went by, and
as the contrast with cleaner politics in countries with constituency systems became
more clear cut.
Against this kind of background mixed electoral systems have emerged as attractive for very good reasons. Whereas Taagepera and Shugart (1989) stress &dquo;simplicity&dquo; as the over-arching virtue of an electoral system, mixed methods of voting for
legislatures seem to go against this advice, by giving citizens not one but two different voting methods. Yet in fact, the emergent &dquo;converged&dquo; form of mixed system
is still quite easy to understand. It combines the accountability strengths of plurality rule in single-member constituencies with the offsetting proportional qualities
of regional or national lists, an effect reinforced when the list element is used in a
&dquo;top-up&dquo; mode to redress imbalances of representation at constituency level.
None of this suggests that any invariant or &dquo;necessary&dquo; tendency has come to light
as a result of the 1993 changes. There is no &dquo;law&dquo; of displacement of pure PR or
pure plurality systems by mixed systems. Instead we need to recognize that debate
about electoral systems is literally endless, and the grass in a neighbouring field may
always look greener. Even in Germany, whose AMS system was deliberately devised
by the Allies as a mechanism for combining democratic values with state management imperatives, criticisms of the voting system are always present. For example,
the Bavarian PM Edmund Stolber, head of the right-wing Christian Social Union,
advocates a shift towards the British plurality rule system in Germany:
Slowly, through PR, we are running the risk of being incapable of forming a
majority government and the coalition-wrangling in Bonn causes people even
more disenchantment. If this carries on then majority-voting might be a solution
to provide stable government majorities and decision-making, and make more
people feel the strength of our democratic system again (Argles, 1994).
Notes
1. President Mitterrand and the French Socialists replaced the French double ballot system for
legislative elections with a PR system in time for the 1986 election, thereby limiting their
losses and splitting the right by effecting representation for the Front Nationale in the

Chamber. The new right-wing majority changed back to a double-ballot system, and after he
the 1988 presidential election Mitterrand was able to call snap legislative elections and
win almost a new majority using the systems non-proportional characteristics.
2. Italy adopted, in 1989, a system of awarding "reinforced majorities" on local councils to
the party list which won the mayoralty in each area: the winning mayor is thus guaranteed a 60 per cent majority for his or her list. At national level in 1993 the country adopted
a version of the additional member system, described below. (See also Donovan, this
won

issue.)
3. France has

always

used

national party list system for

allocating

seats in

the

European

Parliament, despite using the double-ballot system for legislative and presidential
elections.

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28
4. The

bigger the gap between party As local vote and that for the runner-up party B, the
regional 25 percent of seats will be allocated on top-up lines. The closer the
competition in local constituencies the more the system will look like an AMS system with
a 75 percent/25 percent split of local and top-up seats.
In the new Italian Senate elections a 75/25 split is again used. But here party As whole
vote in a local constituency it has won is deducted from its regional total before allocating the regional PR seats, thereby giving a more clear-cut "top-up" character to the
system. However, the regional electoral districts at the Senate level have far smaller
numbers of seats, so that again large parties are advantaged vis-à-vis smaller parties.
less the

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Biographical Notes
PATRICK DUNLEAVY is Professor of Government at the London School of Economics
and Political Science, where he has taught since 1979. His most recent books include
Democracy, Bureaucracy and Public Choice (Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice-Hall, 1992)
and Developments in British Politics 4 (London: Macmillan, 1993), a co-edited work.
ADDRESS: Department of Government, London School of Economics, Houghton

Street, London WC2A 2AE, U.K. email: dunleavy@lse.ac.uk.

HELEN MARGETTS is Lecturer in Politics at Birkbeck College. She is co-author of
the 1992 General Election: How Britain Would Have Voted Under Alternative

Replaying

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29

Electoral Systems (London: LSE Public Policy Group, 1992), and is co-editor of Turning
Japanese? Britain with a Permanent Party of Government (London: Lawrence and Wishart,
1994). ADDRESS: Department of Politics and Sociology, Birkbeck College, University
of London, Malet Street, London WC1 7HX, U.K. email: HMargetts@ccs.bbk.ac.uk.

Acknowledgements. We would like to thank Pippa Norris and all the other contributors to this issue for
kindly allowing us to read their papers. We thank also Rosa Mule for information on Italian electoral
law, and colleagues in the PSA Specialist Group on Electoral Reform from whose collective wisdom we
have benefited.

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