Institutional Design, Policies, and Democracy I

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Institutional Design, Policies, and Democracy (I)
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Updates reminders

• Exams graded returned by next week
• Comments brief general
• Class discussions lectures are fair game for
  exam!
• Remember weekly contributions (3 10)
• Picture (1)
• Today next week(s) institutional design
  (electoral systems, presidentialism, federalism)
• Institutions Nov. 21 28 ( December 6?)

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Measures of development well-being

• Human Development Index
• Gender Empowerment Index
• GNP aid to LDCs (Sachs)
• Subjective well-being (Inglehart)
• Post-materialism (Inglehart)
• Transparency International Corruption Index
• Economist Intelligence Unit quality of life index

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Economists quality of life index

• Material well-being (GDP/capita)
• Health (life expectancy)
• Political stability security (Economist)
• Family life (divorce rate)
• Community life (either high church attendance or
  high labor union membership)
• Climate geography (latitude)
• Job security (unemployment rate)
• Political freedom (Freedom House)
• Gender equality (M/F earnings)

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• Human Development Index (UNDP 2006)
• Gender Empowerment Index (UNDP 2006)
• GNP aid to LDCs (Sachs, Table 2)
• Subjective well-being (Inglehart 1997, Figure
  2.3)
• Post-materialism (Inglehart 1997, Figure 3.6 ).
• Transparency International Corruption Index
  (2007)
• Economist Intelligence Unit quality of life
  rankings (2005)

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Institutional Design Democracy

• Institutions ? two kinds of effects
• policy-making
• (democracy?)
• Policy-making consensual vs. majoritarian
  (representation vs. efficiency Lijphart 1999)
• Institutions
• electoral system (PR vs. majority)
• regime type (presidential vs. parliamentary)
• (federalism vs. unitary systems)

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Electoral systems

• How votes are translated into seats
• Votes
• Electoral system
• Seats

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Choosing the electoral system

• Two goals
• (i) Proportionality accurate/fair
  representation
• (ii) Efficiency choosing a government (a
  government that can govern)
• (Reilly encouraging cooperation - yet another
  goal)

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Tradeoffs

• Ideally, we would like to have the cake and eat
  it, too maximize both representation and
  efficiency
• Hard to achieve in practice one tends to come at
  the expense of the other
• Prioritize and choose accordingly

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Two types of electoral formulas

• (i) favor proportionality?
• ? Choose proportional representation
• (ii) favor efficiency/governability?
• ? Choose a majoritarian system

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Majority/plurality systems

• District magnitude M 1
• Formula
• plurality/FPTP (India)
• majority-runoff (France, French ex-colonies)
• alternative vote (Australia, Papua New Guinea
  pre-1975 post-2002)

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How do majoritarian system work?

• - M (district magnitude) 1
• - Winner-takes-all
• Plurality (first-past-the-post) more votes
  than any other candidate
• Majority-runoff
• gt 501 of the total vote
• - otherwise, runoff between two top vote-getters

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Alternative Vote (a.k.a. Preferential or Instant
Runoff Vote)

• Australia (legislative), Ireland Sri Lanka
  (presidential)
• M 1
• Voters rank candidates 1st choice, 2nd, 3rd
• If no candidate has more than 50 of first
  preferences, candidate with least of votes is
  eliminated
• His/her second preferences counted, and
  redistributed
• And so on, until we have a winner (more than 50
  of the vote)
• Instant Runoff Voting (5)
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vwqblOq8BmgM

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Quasi-example Romania 1996

• 3 candidates Iliescu, Constantinescu, Roman
• Iliescu 40, Constantinescu 36, Roman 24
• Roman eliminated his second choices counted
• Say, 2/3 for Constantinescu (66.6, or 16 of
  total vote), and 1/3 for Iliescu (33.3, 8 of
  total)
• New count Constantinescu 52, Iliescu 48
• Constantinescu wins

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Rules do matter

• Outcomes can be different e.g., the 1996 or the
  2004 election
• 1996 Iliescu won a plurality (1st round), but
  Constantinescu won the runoff
• Had rules been different (plurality elections,
  instead of majority-runoff), Iliescu would have
  won
• Same in 2004 Nastase won the first round,
  Basescu won the election (runoff)
• Reilly equally important, behavior (strategies
  and appeals) also change as institutions change

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Reilly Centripetalism

• Classical model of electoral competition
• Theory of centripetalism
• Ways of thinking about electoral systems ? types
  of electoral systems

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Reilly theory of centripetalism

• Democracy in divided societies
• The politics of outbidding
• Extremist rhetoric and policies more
  rewarding than moderation

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Classical model of electoral competition
(economic conflicts)
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Incentives for moderation

• Most voters centrists (moderate) position
• Single-member district, first-past-the-post
  (plurality) elections (SMDP or FPTP)
• Two-party competition, with moderate
  candidates/parties vying for the center
• This logic does not apply for ethnic or
  cultural/religious conflicts positions tend to
  be either/or, rather than a matter of degree

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Institutionalist claim

• Changing political institutions
• Change in political behavior
• The design of political institutions is paramount
  in conflict management

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Creating inter-group accommodation

• One promising path give political parties and
  candidates incentives to cooperate across ethnic
  lines
• Electoral institutions (legislative executive
  elections)
• Electoral sequences (in federal systems)

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Papua New Guinea

• Extraordinarily fragmented (culturally)
• No common history of statehood
• Hundreds of often mutually antipathetic groups
• 4 million people, 840 distinct languages (1/4 of
  the languages spoken in the whole world)

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PNG a natural experiment

• Effects of various electoral systems
• Alternative Vote (1964, 1968, 1972)
• Gains independence in 1975 switch to plurality
  (FPTP)
• Effects of AV vs. FPTP?
• Votes For Cash - Papua New Guinea (17)
• lthttp//www.youtube.com/watch?vhw3rc4Q9aowgt

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Other (potential) problems w FPTP?

• Malapportionment
• Gerrymandering
• Picking the wrong winner? (New Zealand 1978
  1981, USA 2000?)

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Gerrymandering

• County (judet) with 300,000 voters.
• Assume it elects three representatives in Single
  Member Districts
• Two parties running, A B
• Party A 102,000 voters
• Party B 198,000 voters
• Control over drawing the constituencies is as
  important as electoral support

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Conclusion?

• Same (overall) partisan support (5R, 4D),
  different results
• R draws the districts 2R, 1D
• D draws the districts 1R, 2D

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Electoral design in Chile

• 1988 referendum bad good news for Pinochet
• ? lost referendum (56 to 44)
• ? electoral system choice
• ? referendum ? valuable info
• Electoral support fairly evenly spread (44
  across districts)
• Best choice?
• Majority? Suicidal choice
• Multi-member district PR? A bit better (55 to 45)

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Is there a better choice?

• Yes, there is
• PR in districts with a magnitude of two
• Chile quasi two-party system (L vs. R)
• You need only 33.4 to be guaranteed one seat

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Evaluating electoral systems German vs.
French

• How?
• (i) Comparing democratic performance of countries
  using each system
• (ii) Full democracies what systems do they
  use (distribution)?

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Post-Communist electoral systems
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TRS in Ukraine country-specific problems

• Regional ethnolinguistic fragmentation
• Electoral law
• 50 turnout rule
• 50 vote in favor
• Legislation favoring independents over partisan
  candidates

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General problems? (Birch, 2003)

• TRS destabilizing factor
• ? inhibits democratic development
• ? encourage use of non-electoral means of
  exercising power
• Why? It fragments the party system
• ? district-specific strategic incentives
• ? diminishes uncertainty ? less inter-party
  cooperation

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Proportional representation

• Multi-member districts
• votes seats
• Maximizing proportionality large districts and
  minimum/no threshold
• Reduce proportionality
• Low district magnitude (Chile)
• OR high threshold (10 in Turkey)

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Mixed Member Proportional(German system)

• Billy Ballot explains MMP system
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vKSiAUZoDvks