Majoritarian Systems

Abstract

At the beginning of the twentieth century, practically all European states adopted majoritarian systems. Today very few advanced democracies use them: Australia, Canada, France, the United States and the United Kingdom.1 Among them, France is rather unique in being the only non-Anglo-Saxon country, as well as for adopting a two-round system, introduced exactly half a century ago by General Charles de Gaulle. As just seen in the previous chapter, there are many variants of majoritarian systems. Cumulative vote, block vote, single non-transferable vote, limited vote: these are the main variants that today are still adopted in a few cases in the world, both for selecting representatives in legislatures at the national level and for lower tiers of government. However, today (after Japan switched in 1994 from single non-transferable vote to a mixed-member majoritarian system, see Chapter 5) the three major variants adopted in the countries here analysed are the following: 1. The plurality system (also known as ‘first-past-the-post’) used in England since the fifteenth century and later in Canada and the US (as well as New Zealand until the 1993 reform; see Chapter 5); 2. The two-round system used in France for the last 50 years for the elections of the Assemblée National (as well as, in a different version, for the election of the President of the Republic); 3. The alternative vote, adopted in Australia. KeywordsPresidential ElectionElectoral SystemParty SystemMajor PartyCumulative VoteThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.