Electoral Systems and Democratic Quality: Do Mixed Systems Combine the Best or the Worst of Both Worlds? An Explorative
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Electoral Systems and Democratic Quality: Do Mixed Systems Combine the Best or the Worst of Both Worlds? An Explorative Quantitative Cross-national Study Renske Doorenspleet Department of Political Science, Wassenaarseweg 52, 2300 RB Leiden, The Netherlands. E-mail: [email protected]
Following the recent explosion of new democracies, there has been a wave of constitution-building and electoral reform. The choice of the electoral system has been topic of debate among elites of the new democracies, knowing that this choice is an important one with different consequences. The effects of majoritarian and proportional electoral systems have been broadly investigated in the literature. Until recently, however, mixed electoral systems have attracted minimal academic attention. Although a growing number of new democracies have introduced hybrid types of electoral systems, which are neither proportional nor majoritarian, there are hardly any studies on the effects of these mixed electoral systems. This study explores not only the effects of majoritarian and proportional systems, but also the consequences of the mixed systems as compared to the two other systems. Not only 32 established democracies, but also 55 ‘new’ democracies are included in the multivariate regression analyses. Different measurements of the dependent variable (democratic quality) are taken into account, and some important control variables (especially human development) are incorporated in the analyses. It appears that it is important to differentiate between different types of electoral systems. The results show that such a distinction is crucial, since one particular type of mixed systems is associated with lower levels of democratic quality than the other types of electoral systems. In fact, they seem to combine the worst effects of both proportional and majoritarian systems. Acta Politica (2005) 40, 28–49. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ap.5500093 Keywords: mixed electoral systems; PR systems; majoritarian systems; democratic quality; accountability; old and new democracies; good governance
Introduction The number of democratic transitions after the Cold War has been striking. This rapid political transformation spread to Eastern Europe, Latin America (Chile became, e.g. democratic) and parts of Asia (e.g. Mongolia). The recent democratization wave has not only been more global and affected more
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countries than earlier waves did; there have — at least so far — also been fewer regressions to non-democratic regimes than in the past. Following this wave of new democratic regimes, there has been a wave of constitution-building and electoral reform. The choice of the electoral system has been topic of debate among elites of the new democracies, knowing that this choice is an important one with different consequences. The choice of the type of electoral system is not neutral: it determines the way in which votes are translated into seats and thereby the extent to which some groups of the
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