Fair representation versus clear decisions: On the reform of the electoral system and form of government

Abstract

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 non-confidence 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.