Electoral Systems and Democratic Quality: Do Mixed Systems Combine the Best or the Worst of Both Worlds? An Explorative Quantitative Cross-national Study

Abstract

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.