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Journal of Democracy 13.2 (2002) 111-125



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A New Look at Federalism

Electoral Rules and Governability

R. Kent Weaver

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Federalism and electoral rules are usually seen as two distinct mechanisms for managing societal conflict in general and territorial conflicts in particular. Electoral rules that provide some element of proportionality in legislative elections, for example, are frequently viewed as a "consociational" mechanism that allows many different groups to express their interests rather than polarizing them around a single dominant cleavage. Such electoral rules can be particularly effective at protecting minority interests when they are combined with other consociational features, including oversized coalitions with informal norms of cabinet selection (in parliamentary systems) that reach across major cleavages.

Federalism, on the other hand, is viewed as a quite different mechanism for limiting the rule of national majorities: Instead of building consensus across cleavage lines at the national level, conflict is managed by devolving decisions to geographic subunits, where decision making in turn may be managed through either majoritarian or majority-limiting mechanisms. Devolution may in fact leave regional minority groups—such as Spanish speakers in Catalonia, francophones in Ontario and the Canadian prairie provinces, or Catholics in Northern Ireland—less protected than they would be if the central government were to take a more active role.

As this simple example suggests, the interaction between federalism and electoral rules needs to be carefully examined. Electoral systems can vary in an almost infinite number of ways. In reviewing the institutional effects of different sets of electoral rules, it is helpful to begin with the polar opposite cases—single-member plurality (SMP) systems, [End Page 111] also known as first-past-the-post, and closed-list proportional representation (PR)—and then discuss intermediate cases. The focus here will be on legislative elections rather than selection rules for the chief executive in systems where the latter is separately elected.

Single-member plurality. SMP electoral rules, as the name implies, involve one-person legislative districts in which the candidate who receives the most votes is declared elected, regardless of whether that vote share is a majority or not. The very large academic literature on electoral systems has identified a number of consequences associated with SMP electoral rules:

  • SMP tends to restrict the number of political parties that are potential contenders for office, and creates a tendency toward a two-party system—for example, in the United Kingdom, the United States, and New Zealand (prior to 1996).
  • SMP facilitates the creation of single-party majority governments by turning pluralities of votes into a majority of legislative seats, although this outcome is by no means guaranteed. Furthermore, it is less likely to occur when territorially based cleavages allow minor parties to gain a significant share of legislative seats because their supporters are concentrated in specific regions.
  • SMP leads to some votes being "worth more" than others in vote-to-seat conversions. In particular, relatively small parties whose support is diffused across the whole political system without a territorial stronghold are likely to be severely punished, while parties of a similar size with geographically concentrated support may get a bonus.
  • SMP tends to lead to centrist, nonideological, pragmatic, "brokerage" politics as parties compete for the "median voter." Yet significant policy swings may occur when there is a change in government if parties move away from median-voter positions on some issues.
  • SMP increases incentives for strategic voting, since a vote for a minor-party candidate may be wasted, leading to a voter's least preferred candidate getting elected.
  • Critics of SMP have noted that it may have a number of additional (mostly harmful) consequences. When used at the national level, it may exacerbate regional cleavages, since it tends to exaggerate the advantage enjoyed by the largest political party in a region in vote-seat conversions and to punish smaller parties. In combination with the tendency of SMP to promote single-party majority governments (in parliamentary systems), there is a danger that in a country with strong territorially based cleavages one region may end up dramatically overrepresented in the governing party, while another region...

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