‘Stroke of Genius’ or ‘Attack on Democracy’? The 2023 Reform of the German Electoral System

The electoral system is the set of rules and procedures used to translate votes cast for specific candidates or political parties into seats in a legislative body; some scholars also include presidential or other executive elections under the rubric of electoral systems. Electoral system reform, often called simply electoral reform, is the adoption of some fundamental changes in these rules and procedures. Although no clear agreement exists on how much change is required in order to qualify as electoral system reform, the term is generally understood to mean more than incremental changes in specific features of an electoral system. Thus, electoral system reform typically means a shift in the main principle by which allocation of seats takes place, such as a move from majority allocation to proportional representation or from candidate-based to party-list allocation (or vice versa). By this standard, electoral system reform is a relatively rare event. Major reforms of electoral systems have taken place in the late 20th and early 21st centuries in several key countries, including France (twice), Italy (twice), Japan, and New Zealand. In addition, in the latter part of the 20th century, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland have adopted for their own parliaments new electoral systems that are fundamentally different from those used for the UK House of Commons. Serious discussions of reform, in the sense of wholesale change in the principle of representation, have occurred in Canada (including some its provinces) and the United Kingdom. However, as of the early 21st century, reforms of the electoral system for the UK and Canadian House of Commons and Canadian provincial legislatures have not occurred. Some researchers increase the number of relevant cases by including more-incremental modifications to electoral systems rather than only wholesale changes. Within the family of proportional representation, incremental changes include alterations of the threshold (the minimum vote share needed to win a seat) or in the rules applying to the role of preference votes for individual candidates in the ordering of party lists. Such changes are much more common than wholesale changes between proportional and majority principles of representation. Most researchers do not consider changes in district boundaries (or the criteria to be used in such boundary drawing) in plurality/majority systems to be reform, since they are more-routine procedures periodically required by the laws of most countries using such systems.

‘The second republic’ is how Asher Arian defined Israel's government in the 1990s, referring to the ‘new issues, new constitutional rules, new leadership’ that emerged at the beginning of that era....

Prior to the 14th general election (GE-14), electoral practices in Malaysia have been often criticised as being obscure and biased since it was plagued with issues such as dubious voter registers and ballot paper fraud. Therefore, in its manifesto during GE-14, Pakatan Harapan (PH) promised to reform this electoral practice to make it more independent, transparent, and fair. PH then won the GE-14 on the strength of this vow, forcing it to keep its manifesto pledge. However, implementing the said promise is not easy as most of the proposals involve amendments to the Federal Constitution that require the support of at least a two-thirds majority. The fact that PH lacks such a majority has raised the issue of whether or not the objective to reform the electoral system can be materialised. Thus, this article examines the aspects of electoral reform implemented by PH during its 22 months in power and assesses the challenges faced in implementing such electoral system reform. The concept of electoral reform was used as an analytical tool in this article. This article mainly obtained its data from secondary sources including books, journals, theses, official government documents and websites, while primary data were collected from unstructured interviews with authoritative informants. Findings revealed that among the important reforms of the country's electoral system that have been accomplished by PH are improving the standard operating procedures of elections, enhancing election rules that do not require amendments, amending laws that require simple majority support in the parliament, and implementing ‘high-impact’ electoral reforms that require amendments to the Federal Constitution. Moreover, it was also discovered that the main challenge to reforming the electoral system was the constraint of electoral rule amendments that require the approval of a two-thirds majority of parliamentarians. Other obstacles included politicians' unwillingness to accept a new electoral system culture, barriers to accessing data and information owned by other agencies, discrepancies between federal and state legislation, and financial constraints on improving existing hardware and systems necessary for electoral reform success.

Electoral system reforms are frequently discussed in various parts of the world, although major electoral system changes have been quite rare in established democracies. This article aims at predicting how the party systems in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden would change if elections were conducted under a plurality system or a mixed‐member majoritarian system. To this end, results of the last parliamentary elections are recalculated. The analyses show that the Nordic party systems would be subjected to drastic change. In Denmark, plurality elections would create a two‐party system; in Finland, Norway and Sweden, one party would be much larger than the others. Keskusta and Arbeiderpartiet would be superior to the other parties in Finland and Norway, respectively, whereas Socialdemokratiska Arbetarepartiet would almost take complete control over the Swedish legislature. In practice, smaller parties would have to team up with larger ideologically similar parties. Under a mixed electoral system, several small and medium‐sized parties would survive, but in most countries, the main competition would take place between two basic political alternatives. Smaller parties are well‐advised to go against electoral system reforms that involve single‐member districts.

List of Tables and Figures Notes on Contributors Preface Introduction: Political Drop-Outs and Electoral System Reform Henry Milner Part I: The Pros and Cons of Reforming the Canadian Electoral System 1. Regionalism and Party Systems: Evaluating Proposals to Reform Canada's Electoral System Harold J. Jansen and Alan Siaroff 2. That Bleak? Fathoming the Consequences of Proportional Representation in Canada Louis Massicotte 3. Problems in Electoral Reform: Why the Decision to Change Electoral Systems is Not Simple Richard S. Katz 4. Reminders and Expectations about Electoral Reform John C. Courtney Part II: Recent Experience in Other Countries 5. Stormy Passage to a Safe Harbour? Proportional Representation in New Zealand Jack H. Nagel 6. Making Every Vote Count in Scotland: Devolution and Electoral Reform

Introduction In his seminal 1968 essay on the Canadian electoral system, Alan Cairns wrote that 'proportional representation has not been seriously considered as a possible alternative to the existing system,' and that 'the habituation of Canadians to the existing system renders policy oriented research on the comparative merits of different electoral systems a fruitless exercise' (1968: 263). Cairns' essay generated considerable academic interest in the workings of Canada's electoral system, much of it critical of the single member plurality system (SMP). None of this, however, leads to any serious consideration of reform. The best example of the reticence of the political class to deal with proposals for electoral system reform was the decision by the 1991 Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing that it would consider virtually every conceivable issue related to elections and political parties except for the electoral system. The Commission produced 23 research volumes, not a single one of which deals with the electoral system. As recently as 1997, Henry Milner, who has emerged as a leading student and advocate of Canadian electoral reform, observed that '...unlike in Britain, in Canada we have not even brought the issue to public discussion' (1997: 8).

Territorial Conflict, Domestic Crisis, and the Covid-19 Pandemic in the South Caucasus. Explaining Variegated EU Responses.

This research note considers the effects of electoral system reform in Bolivia. In 1995, Bolivia moved from a list-proportional to a mixed-member proportional electoral system. The intervening years saw growing regional polarization of politics and a collapse of the existing party system. Using statistical analysis of disaggregated electoral data (at department, municipality, and district level), this paper tests whether electoral system reforms may have contributed to the current political crisis. Research findings show that regional cleavages existed prior to electoral system reform, but suggest that reforms aggravated their effects. Such evidence gives reason to question the recent popularity of mixed-member proportionality.

The main purpose of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of why African electoral systems should be reformed and how to do so in order to improve the quality of representation, participation, and government effectiveness.We attempt to offer a generic framework, a menu, so to speak, whereby African political parties and policy makers can reflect on the current state of play vis-à-vis their electoral systems and then decide whether a comprehensive or partial electoral reform agenda is needed.The paper also delineates the various institutions and stakeholders that should be involved in the electoral system reform process.This is a call to improve the reform process instead of entrusting it with a limited range of state-sponsored institutions, which often create more problems than those they contrive to solve.The paper is divided into four sections: a) a synoptic exposé of electoral reforms; b) the various types of electoral reforms and the factors which militate against them; c) lessons from the African experience with electoral system reforms; and d) an analysis of the main stakeholders required to steer a comprehensive electoral system reform agenda.

The political history of Italy and Japan during the post-war period is strongly ­associated with two dominant parties: the Italian Christian Democrats (DC) and the Japanese Liberal Democrat Party (LDP). Notwithstanding this similarity, the electoral and party systems of the two countries differed. Italy had a fragmented and polarized multiparty system under proportional representation (PR), while Japan was known for the dominance of a single ruling party under the unusual single nontransferable vote (SNTV) system. However, in the 1990s, both countries experienced electoral system changes through the adoption of mixed electoral systems. Electoral reform was enacted first in Italy in 1993 and in the following year in Japan. Later in 2005, Italy switched from a mixed majoritarian electoral system (MMES) to a further “hybridized” electoral system, which gives a seat bonus to the party or coalition winning a plurality of votes, but in which seat allocation to coalition partners follows a proportional rule. In Japan, the MMES adopted in 1994 was changed as well, although in minor ways. For example, in the 1996 elections, the mixed system elected 300 MPs from single member districts (SMDs) and 200 from 11 PR districts; in the 2000 elections, the number of PR seats decreased from 200 to 180.KeywordsElectoral SystemParty SystemProportional RepresentationLiberal Democrat PartyCoalition GovernmentThese 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.

In February 2000, Zimbabweans went to the polls to vote on a draft constitution for their country. The draft contained some important provisions, amongst other things, for the reform of the country's electoral system. The draft was rejected and a bitter general election campaign ensued in the second quarter of 2000. The general election held in June 2000 and the presidential elections in March 2002 were the most violent in Zimbabwe's electoral history. These developments raise significant questions relating to constitutionalism and the electoral process in Zimbabwe. It was an admission that both constitutional and electoral reform were imperative and indeed overdue that a state-appointed Constitutional Commission (CC) was set up in 1999 after a civil society-driven one, the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) had been founded earlier in 1998. In particular, the political developments since 2000 have pointedly highlighted the challenge to address the increasing deficit in democratic governance and stability in Zimbabwe. This paper attempts to assess critically developments relating to constitutionalism and the electoral system, the linkages between them, and their significance for governance and stability.

Elections are the foundation and inevitable elements of democracy. As an inevitable element of democracy, it imposes democratic country to fix its election to be free and fair. Moreover, fair elections also enable regimes change and the implementation of good governance and may significantly advance or impede long-term democratic development. In recent years, the Malaysian government has increasingly faced negative perceptions toward the electoral system. The negative perceptions toward the Malaysian election are influenced by the performance of the Election Commission (EC). The ignorance or failure of the government to improve the credibility of every election led to the demand for reform from civil societies and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) to bring the election framework in line with the concept of an ideal election. Therefore, this article aims to explore the issues of electoral reform and to suggest a framework for electoral system reform in Malaysia. This research applies a qualitative method which is document analysis and interview. The result of this study found that issues on the electoral system includes all election cycle. The electoral system reform framework shows few elements on electoral cycle such as voter education, absentee voter, and empowerment of Election Commission (EC) need serious attention from the government. This research contributes in term of reform suggestion to increase the efficiency and election credibility.

It is widely recognised that politicians are self-interested and desire election rules beneficial to their re-election. Although partisanship in electoral system reform is well-understood, the factors that affect partisan manipulation of other democratic ‘rules of the game’ – including election administration, franchise laws, and campaign finance – has received little attention to date. New Zealand is so far the only established democracy to shift from a non-proportional to a proportional electoral system and thus presents an ideal case to test the effects of electoral system change on the politics of election reform. This article examines partisan and demobilising election reforms passed between 1970 and 1993 under first-past-the-post and between 1997 and 2020 under mixed-member proportional representation. Moving to a proportional system has failed to diminish the amount of partisan election lawmaking, though voting restrictions have become less common. These results should caution against claims that reforming a country’s electoral system will necessarily curtail the passage of normatively undesirable election reforms.

Understanding the Impact of Electoral Systems on Women's Representation

Electoral systems are a fundamental feature of any democratic system, and the design of an electoral system can have a tremendous impact on party-, candidate-, and voter-behaviour. However, in order to use all features of an electoral system as intended, voters must have a clear understanding of how their electoral system actually works. While earlier studies have already shown that many German voters have limited knowledge about the characteristics of their electoral systems, we shift the focus to the more fundamental understanding of electoral systems’ objectives. Therefore, this paper addresses the question of how competent voters are in understanding and applying six core functions of electoral systems: (1) proportionality, (2) minority representation, (3) party system concentration, (4) personalisation, (5) legitimacy, and (6) comprehensibility. Based on an original representative survey of German citizens, we demonstrate that only a minority of the electorate is competent enough to capture these functions. We further demonstrate how education and political interest influence voters’ understanding of electoral systems. While the political logic of compromises in electoral reforms tends to create electoral systems of growing complexity, our findings strongly suggest policymakers must bear in mind voters’ limited resources and capabilities to fully understand electoral systems’ functions.