Ideological Diversity, Intelligibility and Electoral Design: A Deliberative Perspective

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article explores some trade-offs between two democratic goods: intelligibility and ideological diversity that different types of electoral systems – proportional representation and single member plurality – often involve through the way in which they affect the number of significant political parties in a polity. The article reviews practices that can alleviate those trade-offs and provides a sketch of what we can and should want to achieve within the limits of each system from the normative vantage point of deliberative democratic theory.