新加坡選舉制度與政治效應－1988～2011年國會選舉分析

Abstract

This paper analyzes Singapore Elections Department's parliamentary elections results to discuss Singapore electoral system and its political effects from 1988 to 2011. The political system of Singapore under the People's Action Party (PAP) has been one-party-domination after independence. Although some opposition politicians won seats in general elections since 1984, the PAP has maintained an absolute majority in the Parliament until now. Previous studies suggest that PAP's overwhelming victories in general elections are resulted from their campaign strategies, including the enactments of Internal Security Act, filings of defamation lawsuits, designing of serial number on ballot paper and the control of the mass media. However, from the perspective of campaign strategy, the disproportionality of turnout rate in general elections and parliament seats can not be explained effectively.Therefore, this paper emphasizes on electoral system instead of campaign strategies to explain the seats distribution in Singapore Parliament. On the aspect of the ballot structure, Singapore's electoral system causes three important effects. First, The single member plurality system, given its winner-take-all characteristic, allows PAP to dominate Singapore Parliament. Second, except some uncontested divisions, two parties campaign in most electoral divisions. Furthermore, different opposition parties would choice their electoral divisions respectively to challenge PAP's candidates.On the aspect of the electoral district size, the mixed electoral system of SMDs and group representation constituencies (GRC) cause three political effects. First, GRC system expands the influence of winner-take-all and aggravates the disproportionality in Parliament. Second, most of opposition parties were lack of qualified candidates to compete with PAP in GRCs. Third, because of the absence of opposition parties, the increasing number uncontested divisions reflects that voters in these divisions are deprived of their fundamental right to vote.