The perils and pitfalls of ignoring disproportionality's behavioral components

2019

Z Vgl Polit Wiss

Zusammenfassung Die Fragmentierung europäischer Parteiensysteme und damit verbundene Schwierigkeiten bei der Koalitionsbildung haben zu einer Neuauflage altbekannter Debatten über unterschiedliche Wahlsysteme geführt. Einige Autoren sehen dabei bestimmte Wahlsysteme als optimalen Kompromiss zwischen den Prinzipien der Mehrheits-und der Verhältniswahl an. Wir argumentieren, dass diese Optimalitätsargumente eine konzeptionelle Schlagseite zugunsten "majoritärer" Demokratiekonzeptionen haben. Eine anspruchsvolle "proportionale" Demokratiekonzeption umfasst die Ziele mechanischer Proportionalität, multidimensionaler Repräsentation und wechselnder Gesetzgebungsmehrheiten. Diese Ziele lassen sich allerdings im parlamentarischen Regierungssystem nicht mit den Zielen der Mehrheitswahl vereinbaren. Der Grund ist, dass die relevanten Hürden des Wahlsystems gleichzeitig für die parlamentarische Repräsentation und die Teilnahme am Misstrauensvotum gelten. Erstere ist entscheidend für die proportionale, letztere für die majoritäre Konzeption der Demokratie. Sind wir bereit diese beiden Hürden zu entkoppeln -und somit das Regierungssystem zu verändern -ergibt sich eine Vielfalt neuer Reformoptionen. Wir illustrieren diese Punkte mit Daten für 29 demokratische Systeme im Zeitraum von 1995 bis 2015. Schlüsselwörter Regierungssysteme · Demokratietypen · WahlsystemeAbstract The increased fragmentation of European party systems and the resulting difficulties of government formation have led to renewed debates about electoral systems. Some authors characterize certain electoral systems as optimal compromises between "proportional" and "majoritarian" conceptions of democracy. We argue that these optimality arguments are biased towards the majoritarian conception. Ambitious proportional conceptions embrace the goals of mechanical proportionality, multidimensional representation and flexible, issue-specific legislative coalitions. However, in parliamentary systems of government these goals cannot be reconciled with majoritarian goals. This is because in parliamentarism the same electoral threshold applies to parliamentary representation and to participation in the vote of nonconfidence procedure. The first threshold is crucial for the proportional, the latter for the majoritarian conception of democracy. If we are willing to decouple the two thresholds -and hence change the form of government -new avenues for reform open up. We illustrate our arguments using data for 29 democratic systems between 1995 and 2015. Keywords Forms of government · Types of democracy · Electoral systems1 Einleitung Die europäischen Parteiensysteme werden fragmentierter. In den Niederlanden etwa gibt es heute 13 Parlamentsparteien, von denen die größte gerade einmal 22 % der Sitze gewonnen hat. Auch in Deutschland hat die Fragmentierung zugenommen, wodurch die Bildung von Regierungen schwieriger wird (Bräuninger et al. 2018). Zudem führen neue Konfliktlinien häufig dazu, dass sich in Wahlkämpfen nicht mehr zwei klar erkennbare Lager gegenüberstehen -so wie in ...

Section: Proportionalitätunclassified

Faire Repräsentation versus klare Richtungsentscheide?

2019

Z Vgl Polit Wiss

“…(1) Proportionality (Prop) is measured by the (log of the) effective district magnitude (Best and Zhirnov 2015). This purely institutional measurement is important because it captures the entry barriers for new parties (McGann 2013).…”

Section: Operationalising the Two Visionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…7 The 'optimised' electoral systems in democracies like Spain (low-magnitude PR) or Germany (mixed-member proportional) do not transcend the trade-off, but merely achieve rather centrist positions on the trade-off line. The sweet spot arguments are predicated on a behavioural rather than institutional measurement of proportionality (Best and Zhirnov 2015) as well as the neglect of the goals of dimensionality and legislative flexibility. Democratic majority formation in countries like Denmark or Finland is more complex, but not necessarily less 'efficient' (see also Ganghof, Eppner, and Heeß 2015).…”

Section: Empirical Patterns Of Democracymentioning

confidence: 99%

Australian bicameralism as semi-parliamentarism: patterns of majority formation in 29 democracies

Australian Journal of Political Science

Pörschke

2018

The article analyses the type of bicameralism we find in Australia as a distinct executive-legislative system -a hybrid between parliamentary and presidential government -which we call 'semiparliamentary government'. We argue that this hybrid presents an important and underappreciated alternative to pure parliamentary government as well as presidential forms of the power-separation, and that it can achieve a certain balance between competing models or visions of democracy. We specify theoretically how the semi-parliamentary separation of powers contributes to the balancing of democratic visions and propose a conceptual framework for comparing democratic visions. We use this framework to locate the Australian Commonwealth, all Australian states and 22 advanced democratic nation-states on a twodimensional empirical map of democratic patterns for the period from

“…This index uses the actual empirical deviations of parties’ vote and seat shares. One downside is that if a majoritarian electoral system deters new parties or candidates from entering the competition, and citizens from voting for them if they enter, the empirically observable disproportionality can be very low (Best and Zhirnov, 2015). The United States are case in point (Lijphart, 2012: 150–152).…”

Section: Re-conceptualizing the Epdmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Table 1 presents the values of our three revised indicators for Lijphart’s 36 countries. To compute the effective district magnitude, we revised and complemented the dataset of Best and Zhirnov (2015). 8 The values for the effective number of parties are those of Lijphart, adjusted only for directly elected upper houses.…”

Section: A Revised Epdmentioning

confidence: 99%

Patterns of accountability and representation: Why the executive-parties dimension cannot explain democratic performance

2017

Politics

Arend Lijphart uses an average of five standardized variables – the executive-parties dimension (EPD) – to describe patterns of democracy and explain differences in democracies’ performance. The article suggests ways to improve the descriptive part of the project. It argues that the EPD maps different approaches to achieving accountability and representation, rather than differences in consensus. This re-conceptualization leads to a more coherent and valid measurement. It is also argued that more systematic adjustments are needed for differences in constitutional structures (presidentialism and bicameralism). The article presents data on a revised EPD and its components for 36 democracies in the period from 1981 to 2010. As to the explanatory part of the project, we contend that the EPD often hinders adequate causal analysis rather than facilitating it. We show this by re-analysing democracies’ performance with respect to turnout and capital punishment.