7 - THE PROBLEM WITH PR (Trường Sơn)

THE PROBLEM WITH PR

Guy Lardeyret

Guy Lardeyret is president of the Paris-based Institut pour la Démo-cratie, a nongovernmental organization that is currently providing advice and support to heads of state, government officials, or party leaders in about 20 countries in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and South America. The essay originally appeared in the Sum-mer 1991 issue of the Journal of Democracy.

Arend Lijphart’s article on “Constitutional Choices for New Democ-racies” (pp. 73–85 above) attempts to provide scientific evidence for the superiority of proportional representation (PR) to the system of plu-rality elections. The author presents a comparative analysis designed to show that regimes based on plurality elections do not measure up to parliamentary–PR regimes in terms of “democratic performance.”

Lijphart considers the effects of electoral systems on eight variables, which we will consider successively. The first correlation suggests that PR favors the representation of “minorities” and pressure groups. As clearly shown by the statistics, women legislators are more numerous in Nordic countries, which also tend to spend more money on family poli-cies. Although tradition plays a role, the phenomenon is made possible by PR: candidate slates are chosen by party leaders, who are more easily influenced by strong women’s movements.

The relationship between PR and voter participation is not as clear. If it were calculated on the European basis (as a proportion of registered voters), U.S. voter turnout would be similar to that of Western Europe. Moreover, Lijphart’s figures would look quite different if he had not made some questionable decisions in categorizing countries. France, for instance, might be counted as a presidential–plurality democracy alongside the United States. Germany (whose mixed electoral system has majoritarian effects) belongs among the parliamentary–plurality regimes, while Spain and Portugal (which Lijphart ignores) should be included among the third group, the parliamentary–PR democracies.

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Lijphart’s next set of figures indicates that northern European coun-tries have a more equal distribution of income, which is not surprising. If there is a link between the electoral system and the greater degree of economic equality in these countries, it may not have much to do with democracy. When conservatives win elections in such countries as Swe-den, Denmark, Norway, and Finland, they must form coalitions with other parties, which makes it hard for them to pursue their democrati-cally mandated program of reducing the welfare state.

Lijphart’s use of Robert Dahl’s system for rating “democratic qual-ity” raises the question of what criteria best measure democratic perfor-mance. If the index includes variables such as turnout (as measured in the U.S.), the number of parties, and the strength of interest groups, it introduces a strong bias in favor of PR with this sample of countries.

Finally, the correlations with inflation, economic growth, and unem-ployment (underestimated in Nordic countries because of highly protected jobs) are difficult to exploit. These indicators are much more powerfully influenced by many other important factors.

Consequences of Electoral Systems

Lijphart accepts from the beginning a fundamental hypothesis— namely, that the electoral system largely determines the party system and through it the structure of the government. Thus, countries where PR is the rule end up with multipartism and coalition governments, while plurality elections favor the two-party system and single-party governments. But as Lijphart notes, opinions diverge on how the party system affects the exercise of democratic governance. It is precisely on this point that it would have been fruitful for Lijphart to test the hy-pothesis against empirical data.

Such an analysis would have clearly shown that bipartism favors governmental stability and decision-making capacity as well as peri-odic alternations in power. Multipartism, on the other hand, is positively correlated with ephemeral governments, periods when the chief execu-tive office goes unfilled, repeated elections, and long tenures in office for fixed groups of key politicians. The more parties a country has, moreover, the greater is the incidence of these phenomena.

When the government rests on a homogeneous majority, it remains in power for the duration of its mandated term (stability); can apply its program (efficiency); and is likely, should it falter, to lose power to a strong and united opposition (alternation). By contrast, the coalition governments so common in PR systems often cannot survive serious disagreement over particular measures (instability); need inordinate amounts of time to build new coalitions (executive vacancy); and when they fall apart, call new elections that generally return the same people (nonalternation).

88 The Problem with PR

The contention that PR favors the representation of “minorities” is true, in a sense: PR gives any well-organized pressure group—be it a union, a religion, an ethnic group, a profession, or an ideological fac-tion—a chance to win seats. A party that polarizes one important issue of common interest like environmental protection will attract votes.

Dividing the electorate in this way tends to exacerbate the conflicts in a society. For example, the introduction of PR in local and European elections in France during the 1980s made possible the growing promi-nence of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front (FN), a far-right party that condemns immigration. The Front’s rise has in turn sparked the forma-tion of a number of left-wing “antiracist” groups that are no less intolerant than the FN itself. This unhealthy situation can be attributed largely to PR.

It can also be shown that PR is dangerous for countries faced with ethnic or cultural divisions. In Belgium, for instance, linguistic parties sprang up after PR was introduced early in this century. Belgian politics became little more than a feud between the Flemings and the French-speaking Walloons. Without the monarchy to cement its national unity, Belgium could have fallen apart.

The risks of coalition governments should also be recalled. Such governments are often reluctant to make unpopular decisions because of the resistance of some coalition partner. The Palestinian problem in Israel will probably never be solved unless Israel’s electoral law is changed or extraordinary foreign pressure is exerted.

Proportional representation tends to give small parties dispropor-tionate power because such parties control the “swing” seats needed to make up a majority coalition. Germany’s Free Democratic Party, for instance, has been able to participate in all governments since World War II. Sometimes coalitions can be political absurdities: In Greece recently, the right forged an alliance with the communists in order to keep the socialists out of the government. The political annals of the Scandinavian countries offer numerous examples of cases where the only party to have made significant gains in a given election was un-able to find partners and had to remain in opposition.

Even more problematic is PR’s tendency to give extremist parties a chance to participate in government. Such a party may eliminate its coalition partners by an internal coup, as Mussolini’s Fascists did in Italy in the 1920s. Without PR, the Communists and the Nazis would probably not have been able to storm onto the German political scene as they did in the 1930s.

An election is not a poll aimed at giving the most accurate represen-tation of all the various opinions or interests at play in a given society. Were that the case—there being no fixed limit to the possible divisions in a society—the most democratic assembly would be one where each member represented a sharply defined interest or particular ideological

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nuance. Such an assembly would present an absurd caricature of demo-cratic government.

An electoral system is intended to give citizens the power to decide who shall rule and according to what policy. It should produce an effi-cient government, supported by the bulk of the citizens. Plurality elections force the parties to coalesce before the balloting occurs. They must synthesize the divergent interests and opinions of as many voters as possible, offer the electors a coherent program for governing, and prove their ability to gather a majority. Parties in plurality systems tend to be moderate because most votes are to be gained among the unde-cided voters of the center.

Proportional representation places the responsibility of choosing both the personnel and the policy of the new government on party leaders, deliberating out of public view and after all the votes have been cast. What distinguishes one system from the other thus has less to do with “consensus” than with differences in their methods of forging political compromises. The method of plurality elections is more democratic as well as more efficient, because the decisions are taken by the citizens themselves. The choice is clear, and the contract is limited in time.

Rediscovering the Westminster Model

Once a homogeneous majority exists in parliament, there is no need, strictly speaking, for the direct election of a separate chief executive. The head of the majority party in parliament can do the job, and this avoids the risk of conflict between the two sources of democratic legiti-macy. The parliamentary majority provides competent ministers who remain in touch with the legislature. The executive has the initiative in proposing legislation; the legislators’ main role is to improve bills through amendments, and not to obstruct policies that have received the support of the electorate.

We thus rediscover the Westminster model, which has been working smoothly for the past 300 years in England, while France has changed regimes 20 times in two centuries and is still experimenting with vari-ous possible combinations of electoral systems with parliamentary and presidential regimes. France’s greatest single institutional advance came in 1958, when the faltering parliamentary–PR Fourth Republic gave way to the presidential-de-facto-plurality Fifth Republic under Charles de Gaulle. Yet serious conflicts of competence emerged between the president and the prime minister during the “cohabitation” period of 1986–88, when for the first time in the history of the Fifth Republic, a president from one party (Socialist François Mitterand) was teamed with a premier from another (Gaullist Jacques Chirac). This situation, which could soon recur, creates pressure for a move toward the parliamentary– plurality model.

90 The Problem with PR

There is now massive evidence that, among the four possible combi-nations of institutions (presidential or parliamentary) and electoral systems (PR or plurality), the order of rank according to standards of both efficiency and democracy is the following: the Westminster model, presidential–plurality, parliamentary–PR, and presidential–PR. Among the PR systems, the worst is pure PR (Italy, Israel), and the least bad is PR with majoritarian devices (Germany, Greece).

It is almost impossible to get rid of PR, because doing so requires asking independent parties to cooperate in their own liquidation. The coalition of threatened parties will almost always be strong enough to thwart electoral reform, which must then await a major national crisis. The shift from presidentialism to parliamentarism is fairly easy in semi-presidential regimes. Portugal has recently made this move, and Finland has done practically the same thing, which may soon be confirmed by a constitutional change (not that one is indispensable: parties can agree not to nominate their leaders as presidential candidates).

This helps to explain the institutional problems which, as Lijphart acknowledges, can be observed in Latin America. Electoral divisions in parliament tend to reinforce the power of the president. Political com-petition then focuses on the presidency to a degree that can encourage military coups. One way to avoid that risk is the establishment of a presidential party that entrenches itself in both the state apparatus and many sectors of society. The classic case is Paraguay, where President Alfredo Stroessner stayed in office for 35 years at the head of his Colo-rado Party machine. To prohibit the reelection of the president simply shifts the power to the ruling party, as Mexicans have learned under the longstanding rule of the PRI.

Building a Democracy

Although the electoral system is a major determinant of a political regime—albeit one curiously omitted in most constitutions—it would be a mistake for new democracies to assume that good democratic per-formance can be ensured by choosing the right electoral system, or that democracy can be simply defined as a political system where the rulers are freely elected (although that is certainly a necessary condition). Although Boris Yeltsin was freely elected president of the Russian Re-public, the RSFSR is still not a democracy.

To become a democracy, a regime must meet two fundamental condi-tions. Because sovereignty resides with the citizens, who delegate power only to solve problems of common concern, a democracy must above all respect the distinction between the private and public spheres.1 The transition to democracy in most of the countries of Eastern Europe will depend primarily on their capacity to disengage the state from eco-nomic and social life. It is much more difficult to restore the springs of

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individual initiative, which have been destroyed by years of stifling bureaucracy and irresponsibility, than to ratify a formal constitution. On the other hand, countries such as Korea, Taiwan, or Singapore, where an authoritarian regime has allowed the growth of an effervescent pri-vate and economic life, can easily become democratic as soon as free and fair elections are organized.

The second great principle to follow in building a democracy is to diffuse power by dividing control over the public sphere among various levels and centers of authority. The rule here is that decisions should be taken at the level closest to the citizen. Switzerland presents a splendid example of this principle in action. Decentralization can also be spread by competence, with decisions delegated to people concerned with the subject. To set the executive and legislative branches directly against one another, whether at the local or the national level, is more likely to cause inefficiency than political equilibrium. When a country contains populations from widely differing cultures, each intent upon its au-tonomy, federalism (usually involving a second legislative chamber) is the best institutional solution. A good constitution will find ways to establish these prerequisites of democracy, along with an independent judiciary to guarantee the rule of law.

Ethnic divisions present especially thorny difficulties in Africa. De-spite the existence of interesting local democratic traditions in many parts of the continent, national elections there tend to degenerate into ethnic contests over legislative seats and public offices. The best way to counteract these propensities is to oblige members of each group to run against one another on (transethnic) political and ideological grounds in single-member districts. The worst way is to adopt PR, which tends to reproduce ethnic cleavages in the legislature.

In this regard, the unique case of South Africa becomes especially intriguing. The “white tribe” has installed a political regime that basi-cally respects the first two conditions of democracy. As the country moves toward fuller democracy, it remains to be seen whether South Africa’s new citizens will array themselves along cleavages of ideology or ethnicity. South Africa’s prospects will be grim if it cannot build big and moderate multiethnic parties. There can be no question that a sys-tem of plurality elections offers the best conditions for the growth of such parties.

Lijphart’s article proves at least that political scientists still have a long way to go even to reach a consensus, much less to discover the definitive truth—if it exists—on this fundamental issue.

NOTES

 

1. For a thorough analysis of the concept of democracy, see Jean Baechler,

Democracy: An Analytical Survey (New York: UNESCO, 1995).