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Key Text Electoral Systems for Divided Societies

Author: B Reilly
Date: 2002
Size: 15 pages (72 KB)

Summary

Electoral systems can reduce conflict in countries divided by race, ethnicity and language. They can also play an important role in helping new or transitional democracies achieve stability. This article from the Journal of Democracy looks at the impact that ‘preferential’ electoral systems (that is, those that enable voters to rank-order their preferences) have on divided societies, drawing on case studies from Northern Ireland, Estonia, Australia, Fiji and Papua New Guinea.

Traditionally, political science literature has favoured a ‘consociational’ approach which encourages the formation of ethnic parties, replicating ethnic divisions in the legislature. However, this approach does not necessarily reduce conflict, and its application in developing countries is questionable. Preferential systems — Single Transferable Vote (STV) and Alternative Vote (AV) — encourage cooperation and accommodation of rival groups through reciprocal vote-pooling. Voters rank candidates in order of preference on the ballot: The candidate with the lowest number of ‘first preferences’ is eliminated and the votes are redistributed. This continues until a quota (STV) or an absolute majority (AV) is reached. Politicians are, therefore, reliant on support from other groups and are encouraged to include them in their campaign: An incentive for creating alliances. This can help to create an aggregative party system with moderate, multi-ethnic parties.

In practice, there have been mixed results: Similar institutional designs have different impacts in different countries. However, cooperation amongst competing groups can be promoted under certain circumstances. Key findings were that:

The presence of ‘moderates’ both in political leadership and in the electorate is a key facilitating condition for conflict reduction
Highly fractionalised societies can benefit from AV systems. STV may be more appropriate for ‘bipolar’ splits
Voting behaviour appropriate to a new electoral system can take years to develop
Multi-ethnic constituencies enable cross-ethnic campaigns.

Key policy recommendations are that:

A one-size-fits-all approach does not work. Societies are divided in different ways and this needs to be taken into account when considering electoral systems
Successive elections (that is, more than one election) under the same rules are essential in order to encourage political learning
Care should be taken when drawing up electoral boundaries so that ethnic or other divisions are not reinforced through homogenous constituencies.

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Source: Reilly, B. 2002, 'Electoral Systems for Divided Societies', Journal of Democracy, vol. 21, no. 2,
Author: Ben Reilly , ben.reilly@anu.edu.au
National Centre for Development Studies Canberra, http://devnet.anu.edu.au/
Organisation: United States Institute of Peace (USIP), http://www.usip.org