Lecture 4

Rules that govern social interactions, constraining the behavior of and the options open to actors.

rules and procedures that are created, communicated, and enforced through channels widely accepted as officials” e.g. courts, legislatures, bureaucracies, constitutions, laws, regulation, …

“socially shared rules, usually unwritten, that are created, communicated, and enforced outside of officially sanctioned channel” e.g. cultural orientation, corruption, legislative and judicial norms, …

established guidelines for deliberation, the aggregation of preferences into collective decisions, and the implementation of those decisions

an institution (a set of rules and methods) for “converting citizens’ preferences into decision-making authority for members of the legislative, executive, and, sometimes, judicial branches of government”, in national or local levels

• Providing representation • Geographic, ideological, party, and descriptive (mirror of nation) • Making elections accessible and meaningful • Providing incentives for conciliation • Facilitating stable and efficient government • Holding the government accountable • Holding individual representatives accountable • Encouraging political party competition • Promoting legislative opposition and oversight • Making electoral processes sustainable • Meeting international standards

• Suffrage: right of voting • Frequent: elections must be held regularly and periodically • Integrity: truthful vote counting, pre-established rules, independent observations, independent organization to solve disputes • Free: freedom of expression, information, assembly, candidacy, voting • Fair: fair competition, fair access of all candidates/parties to the public facilities and voters • Effective: elected officials are the main/real decision makers

number of elected posts

who can vote

the number of seats per district larger is more proportional

how votes are translated to seats

how voters can express their choices

• Majority (and Plurality) systems • Proportional representation (PR) systems • Mixed systems

winner-takes-all system, the winner is the one receiving the greatest number of votes in a constituency

proportionality between share of votes and seats for parties in each constituency

combining plurality (for geographical representation) and PR (for party representation)

• Single member district election (district magnitude = 1) • (nominally) Equal sized electoral district (in number of voters) • Used in Britain and British-influenced states e.g. Canada, India, USA • Can create “manufactured majority” for parties: (majority) first in seats but (minority) second in votes! • Encourages tactical voting (heart or head): the favored party has no chance of victory in the particular district • Beneficial to concentrated regional parties and disadvantageous to nationally- dispersed (small) parties • Wasted votes and high disproportionality • Gerrymandering: drawing district boundaries in favor of a party • Also used for presidential election, e.g. Mexico, Venezuela

• Also called second ballot or run-off voting • Majority (50%+1) or a Quota (e.g. 35%) required to win in the 1st round, otherwise run-off 2nd round • Produce party coalitions on left and right (for the 2ndround) • Popular legitimacy of the winner • Less need for tactical voting in the 1stround (heart and head) • Mostly used for presidential elections but also for parliamentary elections • Used in France (both presidential and parliamentary elections)

• Preferential voting: priority ranked voting (1st, 2nd, 3rd,etc.) • Instant run-off: two rounds in one election • Single member districts • Majority (50% +1) required to win in 1stround, otherwise eliminating the least-voted candidate and count the second preference of votes of removed candidate; continue the process until a candidate reaches the majority. • Used in Australia parliamentary election, in the UK for election of parties’ leaders • Also can be used in referendums

• Multimember national or regional districts • Proportionality between shares of votes and seats • Sometime legal thresholdof votes for a party to secure seats • Different formulas to allocate votes to seats • Few wasted votes

• Vote only for party and not candidates * e.g. Belgium, South Africa, Spain

• Vote for party and select preferred candidate(s) from the list • e.g. Brazil, Indonesia, Netherlands

• Like the Alternative Vote but for multi-seat constituencies (e.g. 3 or 4 members in each electoral district) • priority ranked voting (1st, 2nd, 3rd,etc.) • a quota is defined to determine the minimum votes for a winning candidate, e.g. Droop quota: [V/(M+1)] +1 (V= number of valid votes, M=district magnitude) • Redistribution in successive counts from surplus votes of a winning candidate and excluded candidate with the least votes (like AV) • Less wasted votes • Used in Ireland, Australian Senate, Malta

the minimum % of votes needed by a party to secure representation; lower is more proportional