Comparative Politics

Electoral systems

Introduction:

Firstly, in democracies, elections serve both a practical and a symbolic

role. Democratic elections provide the primary mechanism by which
people’s consent is translated into the authority rule.

The increase in the number if democratic elections since the 1970s is

largely a consequence of the third wave of democratization. Nevertheless,
Elections do not only occur in democracies. The increase frequency in
which elections are taking place in dictatorships has led some scholars to
talk about the rise of “electoral authoratiarism”. Elections tend to serve a
very different purpose in dictatorships than in democracies.

Electoral Integrity has to do with the conduct of elections at all stages of

the electoral cycle, including the prelection period, campaign, the polling
day, and the election aftermath. The electoral Integrity Project is run by
Pipa Norris. It is designed to look at three questions: When do elections
meet international standards of electoral integrity? What happens when
elections fail to do so? What can be done to mitigate these problems?.
Electoral integrity matters because flawed elections can reduce trust in
the political system, fuel social instability, undermine recent democratic
gains…

Electoral malpractice is these settings often has to do with political

interference in how district boundaries are drawn, problems with voter
registration, technical failures, and unfair campaign finance rules.

*Preliminary questions:

Hamilton system=Hare quota

Jefferson system=D’Hont system

*Should we study electoral systems?

We cannot explain the rise of Cs, Vox, Podemos by a change in the
electoral systems.
There are other contexts in which electoral systems are important, for
instance, Podemos made a petition to change the electoral system
showing the importance of it.

*Should we study electoral systems?

They are important because there is an expanding number of democracies
and each of them applies a different type of electoral system.

Elections are increasingly used to fill legislative and executive offices around the world: 185 of
the world's 193 independent states now use direct elections to elect people to their lower
house of parliament Democracies are sometimes classified in terms of their electoral system.

Also, the importance of electoral districts. E.g. Provincias in Spain.

🡪 U.K. uses the single member district system, only one person can
be chosen to represent its province.

In this kind of system, we only have one candidate per party. We

have only one winner.

The main effect of changing from a majoritarian system to a proportional

system is the increase of multiple parties representations.

2010 UK elections led to a Hung Parliament and to a coalition. The Liberal Party
thought that a change in the elections system would lead to a decrease in the
number of liberal representors.

UK Alternative Vote Referendum, 2011

• There was a nationwide vote held on Thursday 5 May 2011 (the same date as local
elections in many areas) to choose the method of electing MPs at subsequent general
elections.
• The referendum concerned whether to replace the present "first past-the-post"
system with the "alternative vote" (AV) method .
The referendum result was positive towards the first past-the-post current system.
Electoral systems:
Def.: An electoral system is a set of rules which goal is to translate votes into seats.
The election of an electoral system has many consequences:
- The last of a government
- The partyies representation
- Women representation
- …

There are not two electoral system in the world that are completely different, that is
why there are cross-national variations. There are sub-classifications in each type.

As we have passed the 50´S all electoral systems are increasingly employed over time,
this is due to an increase in the number of democracies. The mixed electoral system
was used for decades in only one country in the world: Germany, but then in the 90´S a
lot of countries copied Germany.
Nowadays there has been a “progressive” reduction in the number of Majoritarian
Systems and a huge increase in the number of Mixed Systems.

* Concepts:
Distinguish between two dimensions of variation:
 - The inter party dimension (horizontal) explains the relationship between
parties. Questions like how many seats is party A winning? How proportional is
the electoral system?
1. Vote for big parties (majoritarian)
2. Vote for small (proportional)
- Consequences: Strategical/tactical vote (voto útil)

- The intra party dimension (vertical) explains the relationships in a party

organization. Questions like who is getting the seat (the candidate)? Is a
candidate elected by his individual characteristics? 🡪How these seats are
internally distributed in a party?
1. Vote for a party (closed list)
2. Vote for a candidate (opened list)

*Electoral system elements:

o Electoral formula: mathematical process to establish the relation.

Votes are translated into seat thanks to an electoral formula.

o District magnitude: numbers of seats that is assigned to each district

o The legal threshold:

In Spain we have a district level of 3% threshold but not a national one.
The majority of countries implement a national threshold not a district one.
o The assembly size:
Total number of seats

o Ballot structure: the way in which voters can express their choice.
In Spain we use closed list.
The only intraparty electoral system element is the ballot structure.

*Types of electoral systems:

● Majoritarian system: a winner-takes-all system (E.g. U.K.). It is a type of

electoral systems in which the candidates or parties that receive the most votes
win. We can distinguish two types of majoritarian systems:

1. A plurality rule: you need at least one more vote than any other candidate.
Types:

*Majoritarian single member district plurality (SMDP) also known as

first past the post system. E.G.: India, U.K., Canada (they have all a
common past).

Characteristics:
 -manufactural majority which leads to a higher possibility of forming a
single-party government. This is the main issue of the next U.K.
elections. 🡨 EXAM!
-Individuals cast a single vote and the candidate with the most votes is
elected, majority not needed, within single-member districts (SMDs)
-In this system it is important the geographical distribution of the votes.
-High threshold for non-spatially concentrated minor parties.
(UK example of overrepresentation of LB and SNP parties).

- Advantages: its simplicity, only one candidate is elected, it tends to

produce high levels of constituency service and closed bones between
constituents and their representatives.
-Critics: it can lead to unrepresentative outcomes at the district and
national level. It tends to favor larger parties. It also encourages
strategical votes. It provokes the underrepresentation of some ethnic
groups.

*Block vote systems: in USA there is a multimember district,

district=states. E.g. Trump won the presidential elections even if he had
less votes. Main problem: Spurious majorities (lo que paso con Hilary
Clinton y Trump. Clinton ganó por mayoría absoluta, pero en pocos
estados y Trump mantuvo una media en todos los Estados.)

*Single Non-Transferable Vote (SNTV). It works as SMDP except from

the fact that they operate in multi member districts. They tend to
produce more proportional outcomes and greater representation for
smaller parties and minority ethnic groups.

-Critics: they tend to weaken political parties by creating incentives for

intraparty fighting and factionalization. As multiple candidates represent
a party there is competition among each other and consciousness of
personal characteristics. There is voter confusion due to the excessive
number of candidates. This also difficulties the reach of legislative
coalitions. Moreover, candidates know the percentage of votes they
need to gain in order to get a seat, so this leads to patronage systems
and clientelistic votes. Some scholars affirm that SNTV encourages
extremist parties to be elected.
-E.g.: Afghanistan
Characteristics:
-Small multimember districts
-Multiple candidates from the same party

*Limited vote
-E.g.: Spanish Senate

2. A majority rule: you need at least 50% +1 to gain the elections.

 *Two-rounds-majority (TRS) 🡨 E.g. France.
It is an electoral system that has the potential for two rounds.
The majority-runoff is a system in which voters cast a single candidate-
centered vote in a single member district. Any candidate who obtains an
absolute majority in the first round of elections is elected. If no one
obtains an absolute majority, then the top two vote winners go om to
compete in a runoff election in the second round.

Main consequences of two-rounds-majority, it creates blocks, coalition

of parties; in the first-round people vote by “heart” meanwhile in the
second round the votes are taken by the “brain”. It is the most common
method for electing presidents around the world.
-Strengths: it lets the voter two have a second vote.

The Alternative vote (AV) = instant runoff as in Australia: subsequent elimination of

the candidates with the lowest votes and reallocation of their votes following voters’
list of preferences. In this system can happen that the candidate that won in the first
round is not finally winning the elections. It is a candidate-centered preference voting
system used in single-member districts where voters rank order candidates. A
candidate who receives an absolute majority is elected. If there is no majority, then the
candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and her votes reallocated until one
candidate has an absolute majority of the valid votes remaining. It has the main
advantages and critics of the SMDP. Except from the problem that the SMDP allow
candidates to win who do not obtain majority support. This problem is addressed by
AV systems with the reallocation of the votes, nevertheless this system has also been
criticized.

All the examples explained above, except from block vote systems and SNTV, have just
one seat per district. They are Single Member Districts. One of the main problems of
Single Member Districts (SMD) is the district formation: Gerrymandering district
formation is the manipulation of the size and disposition of districts in order to
increase the probabilities of having the beloved candidate elected. Districts adopted
the form of a Salamander

● Proportional system: theoretically there is a close correspondence between

the votes and the sites for each party. It is an electoral system in which a
quota or divisor based electoral system is employed in multimember
districts. Proportional representation systems take place in multimember district.
We can classify proportional systems attending to the electoral formula:

o Divisor formula: D’Hondt formula is the one we have in Spain.

 o Quota formulas:
A quota is the price in terms of votes that a party must pay in order to gurantee
themselves a seat in a particular electoral district.
-Hare quota/ n’=0: total number of votes/total number of seats to allocate🡪 we
divide the number of votes of each political party into the hare quota🡪 we
have the number of seats that goes to each political party🡪 there are
remaining seats🡪 we take the parties with the higher decimals and
reallocate the remaining seats to the ones with higher decimals.
E.g.: Hong Kong

-Hgenbach-Bischoff quota: n=1

-Imperali quota: n=2
-Reinforced imperali quota: n=3
-Droop quota: equal to the Hagenbach-Bischoff quota plus one with any 2decimal
part” removed.

The notion that PR systems are essential for stability and democratic rule in
divided societies is widely, but not universally accepted. The main critics are that
this system encourages the creation of Coalition Governments, the representation
of extremist parties, the weak link between constituents and their representatives.
● Mixed system: combines both ideas. (Pedro solo se centró en la definición).
Def.:: a system that has both systems in one. E.g. Germany. A mixed electoral
system is one in which voters elect representatives through two different
systems, one majoritarian and one proportional.
Most mixed systems employ multiple electoral tiers: An electoral tier is a level at which votes
are translated into seats. The lowest electoral tier is the district or constituency level. Higher
tiers are constituted by grouping together different lower-tier constituencies, typically at the
regional or national level.
 In a mixed system, it is often the case that a majoritarian system is used in the lowest
tier (district level) and a proportional system is used in the upper tier (regional or
national level) In most mixed systems, individuals have two votes:
• One vote is for the representative at the district level (candidate vote)
• One vote is for the party list in the higher electoral tier (party vote)
We can distinguish from:
-Indpendent mixed electoral sytems: in which majoritarian and proportional
components of the electoral system are implemented independently of each other.
They are less proportional.
Dependent mixed electoral system: in which the application of the proportional formula is
dependent on the distributiom of seats or votes produced by the majoritarian formula. They
are more proportional.

ELECTORAL CONCEPTS:
* District magnitude: The number of Members of Parliaments (MPs) elected from each
constituency.
• “The decisive factor” [Taagepera & Shugart 1989: 112]
• Basic typology:
- Single-member district (SMDs)
-Multi-member district (and whole-country)

A whole country can be a district as in Netherlands.

-Conclusion: The bigger the district the more proportional the outcome and an
increase in the number of parties.
* Legal threshold:
Threshold: Vote shares (or number of seats) that parties need to obtain in order to participate
in the allocation of seats.
-Main goal: to reduce the number of political parties and fragmentation. It is also a
way of facilitating stable governments.
-Basic typology:
District level threshold🡪 to prevent excessive fragmentation
National level threshold🡪 Germany
E.g. First national elections of Poland in which there was no threshold.
* Assembly size:
Def.: the total number of seats to allocate.
It is a function of the cubic root of the population size
* Ballot Structure:
Def.: element of electoral system that provides more or less freedom to the voters to
select the candidates. It also determines candidates’ incentives to cultivate a personal
vote.
Basic tipology:
-Close list systems: E.g. Spain, no freedom, the list is already elected by parties.
Candidates are not really important (they have fewer incentives to cult a personal
vote).
-Flexible list systems: E.g. Netherlands. Lists are fixed by parties, nevertheless voters
can provoke the jump of some candidates.
-Open list system: E.g. Brazil. System in which there is no ranking, the ranking is the
creation of the people, there is no a pre-established ranking.
-Single-transferable vote (in proportional systems): E.g. Ireland. Transferring votes until
the seats are allocated.
NO LUXEMBOURG (que no os lo veais en el PP porque dijo que no era importante.)
* Effects of electoral system:
● We focus on the proportionality of votes: Reallocation from small parties to big
parties 🡪 underrepresentation of small parties and overrepresentation of big
parties.

-Red line: parties with more seats than votes. Green line: parties with more
votes than seats
▪ Main factors of proportionality:

1. Number of parties in the electorate

2. Geographical distribution of the vote
3. District magnitude
4. Legal thresholds
5. The electoral formula (e.g., D’Hondt is the least proportional among PR)
 ● We focus on Fragmentation of the Party System:
More or less political fragmentation depends on the chosen electoral system.
Duverger said: (1) “The plurality single-ballot rule tends to party dualism.”
(2) “The double-ballot system and proportional representation tend to
multipartyism.”

Party systems
Def.:
Criteria to classify political parties:
I. Fragmentation (number and size of the parties)
Focuses on main political parties.
Effective number of parties: is the indicator that we use to measure the
number of parties in a country. (CAE EN EL EXAMEN). THE HIGHER
THE EFFECTIVE NUMBER=THE HIGHER FRAGMENTATION.
-The number
-The size in term of votes or terms of seats
We distinguish between:
▪ Effective number of electoral parties: votes

▪ Effective number of parliamentary parties: seats

The maximum effective number of parties is that for which each party
receives the same percentage of votes.
Consequences of the number of parties: higher number of parties=higher
unpredictability.
II. Party competition dynamics (party system polarized or not polarized)
Strategies: centripetal competition (towards the center) or centrifugal
competition (towards the extremes).
How can we measure it?
-The electoral systems: centrifugal=proportional systems; centripetal=
majoritarian systems.
-Dimension of political competition: economic policies, territorial tensions
(Spain), social policies.
Consequences of polarization: radical ideas 🡪 collapse of Democracy
(Santori argues that this was the cause of the collapse of the Weimar
Republic).// No polarization🡪 less interest and satisfaction in politics🡪
lower voters participation.
Combine both criteria:
.
Caramani exposes a different criterion of classification:
▪ Dominant-party systems: it is currently in crisis, the only exception is
South Africa
▪ Two-party system: also in crisis, the only exception is USA.

▪ Bipolar systems: not 2 parties but 2 coalitions of parties.

▪ Multiparty systems: they can be polarized or moderate

No pros and cos.
How can we explain the number of parties in a Democracy?
2 Main determinants of political fragmentation:
▪ Cleavage Structure: division provoked by political divisions created by
the social structure (social classes) due to historical transformations.
Four main types of cleavages with different types of parties as
consequence.
Relationships between social cleavages:
o Overlapping or reinforcing=concordance between both
cleavages.
o Cross-cutting. It is better in order to have less polarization
due to the possibility of having a better communication.
In Spain we are more proxime to reinforcing. Cleavages:
center-periphery and otro que ns.
No freezing hypothesis in Europe anymore. (Ecological crisis, migration
crisis).
What can we do to avoid reinforcing cleavages? Institutional solutions
about giving access to power to the different groups in society.
▪ Electoral system:
Duverger’s 🡪 first pass the pools systems (overrepresentation of
some parties and under representation of others) 🡪 two party
system //
Duverger’s 🡪 not pass the pools 🡪 multiparty system
Cleavages🡪 electoral systems (acts as a filter for cleavages to create
political parties 🡪 New political parties.
FEDERALISM
1. We have increasing decentralization worldwide.
2. Causes: social demands by some particular movements (nationalist
movements); an agreement after war; in order to prevent hash situation
3. Is Spain a federal country? In theory Spain is not a federal country,
nevertheless there is a process of decentralization. Spain is not a federal state
as the definition of federal state does not fix the Spanish situation.
4. There are lot of types of federal countries. We will focus on 3 classsifications:
-Congruent and non-congruent federalisms. Sociodemographic homogenization
or heterogeneity.
-Symmetric or asymmetric: units with same or not the same power.
-Coming together or holding together: different units chose to come together
and form a federal country (USA). // Decentralization of a country that decides
to survive as a country (Belgium). EXAMEN