Are P.R. electoral systems more democratic than first-past-the-post systems?
Introduction.
Without divulging too deeply into the many definitions of the word ‘democratic’ and using a substubstantial proportion of this essay trying to find a best-fitting description for a democracy of any given size at any given time in history, I’m simply going to take it as the original term – translated as “rule by the people”(McLean, 1996) – linked with today’s form of mass political participation; voting at general elections.
With this simplified definition I intend to show the correlation between what the people vote for at an election, and what how accurate – or ‘democratic’ – the composition of parliament is with the translation of votes to seats under two different types of electoral systems. Regarding PR I intend to use the aspects common to all forms of P.R. because, again, describing the costs and benefits of each system would use an extensive part of the essay.
First Past The Post.
The initial and most obvious discrepancy in the FPTP electoral system is the disproportional way in which the seats are allocated regarding the number of votes. Due to the nature of the voting – the candidate with the most crosses gets his or her seat in parliament – there is no compensation for any other contender, regardless of how close or far they finished in relation to first place.
Figure 1.
In the ‘Bristol West’ constituency in the 2005 general election, as shown in figure 1, the winning Liberal Democrat candidate – Stephen Williams – claimed his seat in parliament with 38% of the vote whereas the second and third candidates, polling 30 and 27 percent respectively received nothing. On a regional level this is highlights how ‘un-democratic’ this system is because the new politician of this region failed to gain the endorsement of over 60% of his constituents that voted. When amplified to the national level the deficit between what the people vote for and what governs them is much easier to see.
Figure 2 shows the result of the 12 most ‘successful’ political parties in the same election. Upon very little scrutiny the (dis-) proportion of votes to seats easily highlights the major irregularity in the distribution under the FPTP system. With 645 parliamentary seats at steak the Labour Party managed to win 55% of them with only 35% of the national vote; 30 seats more than required for a parliamentary majority. Almost as alarming is that the Conservative party, with 92% of the Labour number of votes only managed to attain 30% of the parliament seats. As the parties get smaller the discrepancies get larger. The Liberal Democrats achieved a respectable 22% of the national vote but were only awarded an underhanded 10% of the seats. The party that lost out the most was the UKIP party who didn’t get a single seat despite receiving more than half a million votes, beating eight smaller parties that got up to 9 seats. Under a P.R. system the UKIP would have received 15 seats.
Figure 2.
With a system as inequitable as first past the post being used for over a century in the UK it is obvious that there are some advantages. Firstly, although the elected government isn’t democratic per-se, it is a strong government, which is left to make fast and accountable policy and decisions. FPTP is also very easy to use and understand, and produces a clear government in a fast time.
However, even with 65% of the voters, and considerably less if you include the non-voting population, disagreeing with the government the electoral system is unlikely to change because any government with such a strong majority would be shooting themselves in the foot if they were to pass a bill changing the current system. The labour party once set up an Electoral Reform commission chaired by Raymond Plant, and even after strongly recommending a P.R. system in his 1993 Plant Report (Georghiou, 1993), when Labour finally reclaimed governance the commission unsurprisingly dissolved.
It is obvious that a system with such glaring misrepresentation as FPTP cannot be classified as ‘democratic’ as the final picture always differs greatly to that painted by the voters. Proportional Representation (PR) in one form or another has been the dominant ‘other’ in the battle for a change in the Great British electoral system, and the many other countries that still advocate use of FPTP.
Using several different formulae the different forms of PR all aim to – as its name suggests – proportionally represent the voters by giving a party with Y% of votes, Y% of the seats in parliament. The most obvious democratic advantage of this set up is that it is a much more attractive system for the smaller parties that lose out under a pluralist electoral system.
Problems With Proportional Representation.
The ‘new’ Bundestag in Germany is a perfect example of PR at work. With 5 major parties competing, bargaining or begging for power in the legislative arena, the politics and decision-making works in a totally different way from that under the FPTP system (Site 1). However this is where the most striking question regarding PR and whether it really reflects what the people vote for.
The obvious issue being that when parties form coalitions to achieve the parliamentary majority they have to be open to change their policy aims and agendas. As noted, between 1969 and 1998 every government in office included the FDP party as a ‘junior’ part of the coalition (LeDuc, 2002). This party with an average of 5% of the German vote managed to decide which half of the Bundestag had the numerical advantage.
This democratic discrepancy highlights the fact that 30% of the population could vote for one parties agenda, only for it to be altered or even completely changed to satisfy the demands of another party to form a coalition. Using the original definition of democracy, this scenario almost stands to be the antithesis of the idea that the voters have the final say on how their country is governed.
Not only does this raise the issue of how ‘democratic’ it is when the smallest party can quintessentially become the most powerful in the political arena but in an even less democratic scenario the small party could be of an undesirable or extreme nature, requesting more severe demands than those of the centre based parties. Because of the small number of votes required to attain seats under PR these extreme parties can find electoral success in some regions of a country where there agenda is relevant.
It is also a historical fact that Hitler and Mussolini were both elected under a form of PR and in due course managed to completely corrupt and overthrow the political system (Bogdanor, 1994). Although in most democratised countries there is now a safeguard to prevent a similar scenario from taking place there are still authoritarian regimes in Africa that illegitimately overthrown democratic structures.
Another disadvantage proposed by critics of a PR system is that the only limit to the number of parties present in any institution in some countries is the number of seats. In a country like the Netherlands where there is a form of PR with no lower threshold some would argue that there are too many parties. In 1971 fifteen political parties gained seats in a single election (Franklin, 1992). Franklin later goes on to show; it is a hard task keeping up to date with the new parties, splinter parties, name changes, merges; and that every election since the 1960’s has caused a profound change in government. Whilst this might be seen as good for democracy but it does have it’s cost on how functional parliament will be.
Whilst there has been some recent research that shows a slight relationship between the “ideological position of legislature and the ideology of the electorate” (Powell, 2000) under a P.R. system other intellectuals have found that there is a definite association with PR electoral systems and party interactions of “competing and conflicting” or “highly unstable” nature (Dahl, 2000).
Side By Side:
Whilst I initially argued that FPTP was ‘undemocratic’ because the seat allocation was poorly representational of the public vote, it can be argued that a PR system of governance could be viewed as undemocratic in that a party may have to change its policies to maintain a coalition, essentially de-legitimising the emphasis of a parties manifesto in electoral campaigns.
It must be noted that eighteen of the previous twenty-two UK Governments – since 1922 – have been majority (Craig*, 1989). Meaning that the winning, and runner up, parties don’t have to change any of their policies after a general election, thus the voters – usually – know what a party stands for. In this respect at least one third or so of the country will be happily governed by the party of their choice with the exact policies that they voted on.
This situation is completely different under a PR system where the notion of coalitions implying the “readiness to compromise rather than engage” (Skyes, 1990). Using the original sense of the word ‘democratic’ this means that under a coalition government every vote cast could potentially be a wasted vote, as parties would have to barter and haggle with each other for influence over the legislation, breaking down the FPTP idea of a government using its accountability to put it’s ‘popular mandate’ into action. It would be foolish to assume that voters don’t expect a coalition government, or indeed split their ticket and vote for two parties but it is the uncertain outcome of the post-election stage that could lead to so many different outcomes.
This situation of a pluralist, minority government at first seems to initially be undemocratic when it comes to voting and seat allocation but on the other side of the coin it is far easier to “throw the rascals out” (Strom, 1990) and entirely replace the government under FPTP. With a PR system a poorly performing party can linger in parliament or even as part of coalition government with only the smallest percentage of votes.
Conclusion.
Research has also shown that it is only desirable for FPTP to be replaced by a form of PR once a multi party system has been established (Kutz, 1980). As for the UK, if this hypothesis is correct, a change in electoral system may be on the cards as the 2005 election is the closest that Westminster has been to a three-party system in modern political history. If this trend continues it could well be the major change in gears towards PR that the 65% of Brits have been waiting for.
Stripping both types of electoral system down to the bare bones it is easy to show that neither is perfectly ‘democratic’ – in the classical sense that it accurately reflects the bidding of the public – and that each has mirroring flaws and advantages. One system is clearly designed for a two-party with the democratic flaw that many votes are wasted at the time of the election; whereas the other is designed to be as close to the publics electoral will ass possible but has the fundamental failing that the parties’ goals change as soon as the in the post-election period.
In an ideal world it shouldn’t make a single difference what form of electoral system is used because the government in any country should be making decisions based on what is best for the general good of the population. It is also true that on a national magnitude a perfect ‘democratic’ social order, ruled exclusively by everyone, is impossible and that somewhere along the line, a person or group of peoples’ views will have to be compromised.
It doesn’t seem to be a question of how democratic an electoral system is but which choice is most compatible for a country’s history. Furthermore it would appear that the electorate in a country like the UK have not been titillated by the presence of PR in Europe because, despite fluctuations between high and low turnouts over the past one-hundred years, the electoral system has been one of the only constants.
Word Count: 2,012
Bibliography:
Bogdanor, Vernon. ‘What is proportional representation?’. Oxford University Press. 1994. P148
Craig, Fred W.S. ‘British Electoral Facts: 1832-1987’ Gower 1989.
*Figure includes four General Elections since the book was published.
Dahl, Robert A. ‘On Democracy’ Yale University Press. 2000. P.136
Franklin, Mark. ‘Electoral change: responses to evolving social and attitudinal structures in western countries’ Cambridge University Press, 1992. P255
Georghiou, Mary. ‘British Labour Party moves to P.R.’. Voting and Democracy Report: 1993.
Kutz, Richard. ‘A theory of parties and electoral systems’. Hopkins University Press. 1980
LeDuc, Lawrence. ‘Comparing Democracies: New Challenges in the study of elections and voting’. Sage. P.95
McLean, Iain. ‘Oxford concise dictionary of Politics’. Oxford University Press, 1996. P.139
Powell, G Bingham. ‘Electoral Laws, disproportionality and median correspondence: implications of two visions of democracy’. British Journal of Political Science. 2000 P.390
Skyes, Leslie. ‘Proportional Representation: which system’. Hornbeam Press. 1990. P.76
Strom, Kaare. “Minority government and majority rule” Cambridge University Press. 1990. P.74
Tables & Internet Resources:
Figure 1. Table from:*
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/vote2005/html/100.stm
Accessed 7th November 2005.
Figure 2. Table From: *
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/vote2005/html/scoreboard.stm
Accessed 7th November 2005.
Site 1: Info taken from:
http://www.bundestag.de/
Accessed on 8th November 2005
* The same source was used in both examples for consistency.
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