Electoral systems and the protection and participation of minorities

to fully realize minority interests. Baldwin notes that inKosovo the ‘right to participate has largely been the rightof minority leaders to participate [and] before 2001 veryfew of these leaders could claim any democratic accountability,and even after 2001 there was not a culture ofaccountability of leaders.’ 3Experience has also demonstrated that electoral systemscan help to engender various types of majority andminority political behaviours: some systems place a premiumon hostile, ethnically chauvinistic appeals for votes,while others advantage those parties that take an accommodating,multi-ethnic stance. If sensitivity to context ismaintained, the electoral system can be crafted to minimizethe polarization of politics along communal linesand to encourage multi-ethnic movements that includeminorities as substantive elements. At the very least, theelectoral system should not accentuate religious, language,regional or cultural divides.The effects of the electoral system will also be conditionedby issues of access and simplicity. If literacy levelsand voting experience are low, then a clear and meaningfulsystem supported by robust voter education willenable minority groups to play a significant role. The wayin which district lines are drawn (and by whom) andupon which data those lines are based (population figures)are also key to minority recognition. Above all, minoritymembers must be eligible to vote and stand for office tomake their participation meaningful.This report marshals evidence from the lessons of electoraldesign in multi-ethnic states to offer guidance onhow best to ensure minorities’ rights to public participationand how to design systems that promote cooperationrather than conflict between groups. It is based on currentand ongoing cases (such as Afghanistan and Iraq), alongwith important historical cases (such as Bosnia, India,Kosovo, New Zealand, South Africa. etc).Two key points emerge from the study. First, thatwhen designing an appropriate electoral system thataddresses the needs of a minority, the case context determinesall. The capacity of minority representatives to gainoffice and influence under various electoral systems isconditioned by a host of historical, demographic andcommunal factors. The recommendations found at theend of this report offer the beginnings of a designapproach that takes into account such moulding factors.The second crucial point is that adequate minority representationgoes beyond minority members being includedin legislatures. Minority rights are also dependent uponhow legitimate these members of parliament are as representativesof minority communities, and whether theyhave power and influence beyond their (often) small presenceand numbers.4 ELECTORAL SYSTEMS AND THE PROTECTION AND PARTICIPATION OF MINORITIES

The importance of minorityrepresentationWhat is the benefit of having minority faces in legislaturesand ensuring parliament goes some way to reflecting thesocial diversity of a nation? In her classic book The Conceptof Representation, 4 Hanna Pitkin argued that thinkingof representation solely along formal lines – that representationis the mere granting of authorization to one to acton behalf of another – is too limited. There is somethingof that in representation, but taking that idea aloneignores what a parliament must look like in order to successfullyrepresent. A representative assembly takes intoaccount questions of geography and demography, not justpolitics and ideology. Behind ‘descriptive’ representation isthe idea of the mirror, which argues that the governmentshould be a portrait in miniature of the society as awhole, reflecting divergent groups, opinions and traits.Most democrats would applaud the idea of ‘descriptiverepresentation’ but there are problems with the notion.First, there is the question of what and who should berepresented, as voters are bundles of social backgroundsand beliefs. United States electoral law takes race intoaccount for districting purposes, with its laws arguing thatit is wrong for certain previously disenfranchised groupsto be excluded from electing representatives from theirparticular group. Thus African-Americans and Latino-Americans in America are, in certain circumstances,entitled to have district boundaries that maximize theshare of minority voters, to give them the opportunity toelect candidates of their choice. But this begs the question:why not help other groups that have beentraditionally under-represented – the poor, gays and lesbians,certain religious denominations, not to mentionother ‘ethnic’ groups? In Bosnia, elections revolve aroundthe ‘three constituent peoples’, but if you are from a differentminority group, the Roma for example, or consideryourself of mixed ethnicity, you are effectively shut out.Second, the mirror notion of descriptive representationmay be deemed counter-productive if it precludescitizens from choosing representatives who do not looklike them. One of the basic ideas of liberal democracy isfreedom of choice at the ballot box and if one is corralledinto having to vote for a candidate of one's own ethnicity,then that intrinsic free choice is constrained. Third,descriptive representation has the danger of ultimatelybecoming an end in itself. Our concerns about successfulrepresentation should not end once we have ensured thatparliament has the appropriate number of black peopleand white people, Hutus and Tutsis, Catholics and Protestants.Indeed, at this stage, our concerns about adequatepolitical representation should be just beginning. DonaldHorowitz cautions that:‘proportionate minority office-holding does not guaranteethat minority interests will receive attention inthe legislative process. Indeed, minority office-holdingmay come at the expense of minority representation inthe larger sense, for the creation of ethnically concentratedconstituencies means not only moreminority-dominated constituencies, but also moreconstituencies in which majority-group voters dominateand in which majority-group candidates do notneed to worry about minority support or minorityinterests.’ 5John Stuart Mill believed that the advocacy of a widerange of sympathies would develop a representative’s conscienceand allow them to appreciate all aspects of society.The alternative, the exclusive representation of a particulargroup by a member of that group, means that therepresentative would have less opportunity to developempathy with others. Thus, if just white people were representedby whites and black people by blacks, thepolitical elites would find it more difficult to developunderstanding.But it is clear that some degree of descriptive representation,taken in conjunction with many otherrequirements, is valuable, especially when minority groupshave common interests, tend to vote as a block in electionsand are broadly marginalized from decision-making.This is not just a symptom of unhealthy majority–minorityrelations in new democracies in the developing world.The lack of minority representatives in America andEurope, for example, has been indicative of the exclusionof important interests from government and policy. Overrecent years this under-representation has somewhatimproved, but, with few African-Americans in the USCongress, Asian or black British citizens in Westminster,or non-white members in the French Parliament, one canonly hope that minorities’ interests are being served bymajority (white) representatives. This is not guaranteed, asmodern representative politics is rooted in the ethos ofpromoting sectional interests.Mill argued that women and minority opinion (in hiswritings, the instructed elite) had considerable talents andskills, which would be lost to government and administra-ELECTORAL SYSTEMS AND THE PROTECTION AND PARTICIPATION OF MINORITIES5

tion if these whole classes of people were excluded fromrepresentation. The presence in government of groupsthat had previously been discriminated against might helpto break down ignorance and intolerance. Finally, and ofmost importance to constitutional design in transitionaland post-conflict democracies, the inclusion of the diversityof majorities and minorities within legislatures canreduce group alienation and violence in those dividedsocieties where politics is often viewed as a win-or-losegame. Many peace settlements over the last 25 years haverevolved around inclusive electoral systems or reservedseats for communal groups as part of broader power-sharingconstructs. Democratization in South Africa hasshown that the representation of alienated minoritieshelps to mitigate anti-system violence and engenders anatmosphere of cooperation. 6Minority group pre-determinationor self-determinationOne key question, when it comes to the representation ofminorities, is whether a separate voters roll should bemaintained for the minority to be able to elect their ‘own’candidates. Minority groups – whether based on language,ethnicity, religion or any other identity – coalesce eithervoluntarily, coercively or by some mixture of the two. Evenif identities are historically crafted and fluid (see DeborahKaspin on Malawi for a good example of identity formationaffecting politics in a democratizing African state), 7electoral politics may still allow for groups to define themselvesand come together as political blocks voluntarily.This is ‘self-determination’ where labels are not imposedfrom the outside; rather, they are adopted and claimed byindividuals who see themselves as part of a collectivegroup. 8 The alternative is where political institutions predeterminewho is a member of each group on the basis ofcriteria that range from being rational and legitimate tosuspect and oppressive. Apartheid South Africa was anexcellent example of the evils of a deeply flawed system ofethnic classification, that created a straitjacket throughwhich oppression could be meted out.Unfortunately, many peace settlements rest upon apre-determined view of who, and how large, the variousconflicting groups are, and this can create a rigid foundationwhich retards the growth of cross-cutting,multi-ethnic, political movements and can excludeminorities that are not party to the conflict. Whileelections to the Northern Irish Assembly do not predeterminevoters’ ethnic affiliations, they do requireparliamentarians to identify themselves as Unionist/Protestant, Nationalist/Catholic, or non-aligned.By their very definition, communal rolls, reserved seatsand race-conscious districting rely upon a pre-determinedassessment of what constitutes a group and how largesuch groups are. New Zealand is more flexible in allowingvoters to choose between being on the Maori or generalvoters’ roll, but there does exist in law the capacity to bechallenged if one registers as a Maori and (as yet rarelyused) judicial guidelines revolve around blood lines andone’s ‘Iwi’, or Maori community, attachment. Much criticismof power-sharing theories of democracy has revolvedaround the belief that such arrangements segment a societyinto fixed and pre-determined groups, which act asthe pillars of an elite cartel that is more interested in selfenrichmentthan in representing their communities.The key conundrum inherent within separate communalvoters’ rolls is how to choose which groups are awardedseats or are recognized as eligible for special treatment.What are the building blocks for the power-sharing settlementand who has (or needs) special rights? Do minoritygroups have to be small and oppressed, or can they besmall and powerful? And what constitutes a clearly definedethnic group to begin with? In Kosovo, the small Egyptiancommunity made claims that they should be treated on apar with minority Serbs. In Denmark and Germany, theminority groups allotted special privileges are Europeannational minorities, not the equally large immigrant communitiesfrom Africa, Asia or the Middle East. In Bosnia,citizens are boxed into Bosniac, Croat or Serb identitiesthat effectively deny the existence of smaller minoritygroups (such as the Roma) or those Bosnians who aremulti-ethnic or claim no ethnic identity at all. A too-rigidview of what constitutes an ethnicity may not gain purchaseon the important political divisions in society.Second, pre-determination within power-sharing settlementscan exclude the weaker groups that are notparty to the chief conflict. Significantly, this means theirvoices are silenced precisely because they are not in themidst of the violence. The Batwa ethnic group of Rwandawere overlooked and excluded in the seat allocationaspects of that country’s peace settlement because theconflict revolved around Hutus and Tutsis. In Sudan,smaller minorities were excluded from the north–southComprehensive Peace Agreement. 9 Armenians andMaronites were side-lined in Cyprus because TurkishCypriots refused to allow any other groups to acquireminority political status. 10Third, pre-determination often excludes the recognitionof minority groups that are less visibly identified as ‘groups’:communities of interest which may still be identity basedbut are not ethnic groups as classically envisioned. Communitieslinked by sexual politics, gender issues, youth orage issues are almost never included as valid building blocksof a polity. The dangers of precluding non-ethnic identitiesfor ‘special recognition’ was demonstrated by farcical scenesin Northern Ireland in November 2001 when three mem-6 ELECTORAL SYSTEMS AND THE PROTECTION AND PARTICIPATION OF MINORITIES

ers of the non-sectarian Alliance Party of Northern Irelandhad to re-designate themselves as ‘Unionists’ in order toensure the election of David Trimble as First Minister andthe continuation of the Assembly.Last, pre-defined communal groups and fixed reservedseats are not responsive to the inevitable flux in numbersof majority and minorities in nation-states. Rarely arethere clauses in electoral legislation for the periodic reviewof minority group size and the related number of reservedseats. The fixed Christian/Muslim parity in the Lebaneseparliament has always been controversial, especially sincethe Christian part of the population has declined significantlyover the last 20 years. Similarly, the fixed numberof communal seats in Fiji may not bear much relation tothe proportions of indigenous and Indian Fijians, asmigration and birth rates change the balance over time.Finally, there is something inherently illiberal in the stateimposition of a communal identity and political role onan individual without their acceptance of such a designation.While many minority citizens may well identify witha communal group, and indeed demand communalrights, not all individuals will. It is inordinately difficultto adequately establish criteria that draw the boundariesof ethnicity yet do not include and exclude wrongly at themargins. Nevertheless, ensuring some way of includingminority members in legislatures is crucial. As Yash Ghainotes:‘Minorities have the right to influence the formationand implementation of public policy, and to be representedby people belonging to the same social, cultural,and economic context as themselves. For a politicalsystem to be truly democratic, it has to allow minoritiesa voice of their own, to articulate their distinctconcerns and seek redress, and lay the basis for adeliberative democracy.’ 11The extremes that the Balkan states went to in the early1990s illustrate the pressures placed on a fledgling multiethnicdemocracy to reassure and include the minoritieswithin their borders. The rigid segmentation in Bosnia hasalready been mentioned, and Article 10.1 of the 1992 CroatianConstitution stated that any group with over 8 per centof the population should be ‘represented in the Parliamentproportionally to their respective participation in the overallpopulation’. When the Serbian minority did not win seatsin 1992, thirteen Croatians of Serb ethnicity were added toparliament. 12 In Kosovo, 17 per cent of the 120 parliamentaryseats were reserved for minorities – 10 for the Serbs and10 for the Roma/Ashkali/Egyptians/Bosniacs/Turks/Gora. 13ELECTORAL SYSTEMS AND THE PROTECTION AND PARTICIPATION OF MINORITIES7

Electoral system choices andconsequences – a brief overviewThis report is focused on the specific ways that votes in anelection are translated into seats and not the surroundingissues encompassed by the broader electoral framework (i.e.voter, party and candidate registration; campaign finance;election observation; ballot design; counting, tabulatingand reporting votes; constituency boundaries; the electioncommission; and methods of dispute settlement). 14 Theserelated ground rules for democracy will impact the chancesfor minority electoral success and their subsequent influence,but they fall outside of this report’s specific brief.Nevertheless, there are areas of overlap between the electoralsystem and the legal framework for elections. Forexample, the question ‘Who can vote?’ is both a legal andpractical question. Even if national and ethnic minoritiesare enfranchised along with other citizens, they may be precludedfrom voting as a result of local discrimination,intimidation or violence. They may be entitled to vote butare they registered? Registration that ties minority groups tospecific districts may be less inclusive than registration for alarger regional or national-based electoral system. Womenfrom all communities are faced with hurdles to participation,but women in minority communities may be facedwith even greater barriers to voting and standing for office.Some electoral systems may ease these difficulties whileothers can accentuate them.Ultimately, electoral systems are merely tools of theelectorate. They are the mechanism used to select decision-makerswhen societies have become too large forevery citizen to be involved in each decision that affectsthe community. Some systems may give primacy to aclose relationship between the votes cast overall and theseats won (proportionality), or they may funnel the votes(however distributed among parties) into a legislature thatcontains just two broad parties. Another important functionof an electoral system is to act as the conduit throughwhich citizens can hold their elected representativesaccountable.While there are some basic elements of participatorydemocracy present in all methods of electing leadersaround the world, the details of electoral systems varywidely. When seeking to design, innovate or change systems,the institutional cloth needs to be cut to suit eachdistinct body politic. What works well in France may notbe as appropriate for a place like Mauritius, for example.Westminster winner-take-all elections may prove to bedangerous in a new multi-party state like the Congo.Even among fully fledged consolidated democracies, electoralsystems are prosaic, and innovation and reform arethe order of the day.Two main families dominate: plurality-majority systemsand proportional systems, but increasinglynation-states are evolving mixed (or hybrid) combinationsof the two. Within these broad families are a number ofdistinct types of electoral systems in operation at thenational level, with many permutations on each form. Asof 2006, just under half (91, or 46 per cent of the total)of the independent states which have direct parliamentaryelections use plurality-majority systems (e.g. First Past thePost [FPTP], the Block Vote [BV], the Alternative Vote[AV], or the Two-Round System [TRS]). Another 72 (36per cent) use Proportional Representation (PR) type systems(either List PR or the Single Transferable Vote[STV]), 30 (15 per cent) use mixed systems (Parallel orMixed Member Proportional [MMP]). Individually, ListPR systems are the most popular, with 70 out of 199nation-states and related territories giving them 35 percent of the total, followed by the 47 cases of First Past thePost (24 per cent).Systems can be defined and categorized with referenceto three basic mechanistic issues: (1) how many representativesare elected from each constituency/district (i.e. thedistrict magnitude)? (2) Is the formula used a plurality,majority, or type of proportionality? (3) What is thethreshold for representation for parties and candidates?(This can either be imposed by law or practically determinedby the number of seats in a district.) Incombination, these three elements will be the chief determinantsof the way votes cast are translated into seatswon. They will affect the number of seats each party wins,the geographical distribution of party seats, and thenature of the individual candidates elected. Within ListPR systems a further crucial question is whether voterscan choose candidates from within the party’s list (i.e. thelist is open) or not (i.e. the list is closed). An open list willallow voters more latitude in determining not just whichparties win seats but how a party’s parliamentary caucuslooks (which can lead either to progressive or conservativeoutcomes).Electoral systems 15• Alternative Vote (AV) – Preference voting in singlememberdistricts. Voters rank order the candidatesusing numbers. If no candidate achieves an absolute8 ELECTORAL SYSTEMS AND THE PROTECTION AND PARTICIPATION OF MINORITIES

majority of first-preferences (i.e. 50 per cent + 1),votes are re-allocated from losing candidates until onecandidate has over 50 per cent of the votes cast.• Block Vote (BV) – Plurality voting in multi-memberdistricts. Voters have as many votes as there are candidatesto be elected. So, if four MPs are to be elected,each voter has four votes. The candidates with thehighest vote totals win the seats.• First Past the Post (FPTP) – Plurality voting in a single-memberdistrict. There is a single vote for acandidate in a single constituency. The winning candidateis the one who gains more votes than any othercandidate, but not necessarily a majority of votes.• List Proportional Representation (List PR) – Parties presentlists of candidates to the electorate, voters vote fora party, and parties receive seats in proportion to theiroverall share of the national vote. If a party wins 20per cent of the votes, the party is entitled to 20 percent of the seats. Winning candidates are taken fromthe lists.• Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) – This combinesboth constituency and List PR elections. Most commonlya mix of FPTP and List PR. The PR seatscompensate for any disproportionality produced bythe constituency seat results. That is, if a party wins10 per cent of the national vote but no FPTP seats,it is awarded enough list seats to make their share ofthe assembly 10 per cent.• Parallel System – This is a similar system to MMP andcombines both district and List PR elections. UnlikeMMP, the PR seats do not compensate for any disproportionalityarising from the district elections. In effect,the two halves of the election system are detached.• Single Non-Transferable Vote (SNTV) – Plurality votingin multi-member districts. Voters have only onevote but there is more than one MP to be electedfrom the constituency. Candidates with the highestvote totals take the seats.• Single Transferable Vote (STV) – Preference voting inmulti-member districts. Voters rank order candidateson the ballot paper as under AV. To win a seat candidatesmust surpass a quota of first-preference votes.Voters’ preferences are re-allocated to other continuingcandidates when an unsuccessful candidate isexcluded or if an elected candidate has a surplus.• Two-Round System (TRS) – Plurality voting in a singlememberdistrict. A second election is held if nocandidate achieves an absolute majority of votes(50 per cent +1) in the first election, i.e. a run-offsystem.Figure 1: Electoral system familiesELECTORSSemi-PRPluralitymajorityProportionalFPTPMalaysiaUKAVAustraliaFijiTRSFranceTogoBVLebanonSingaporeParallelRussiaSenegalSNTVAfghanistanJordanList PRTheNetherlandsSouth AfricaMMPLesothoNewZealandSTVMaltaNorthernIrelandELECTORAL SYSTEMS AND THE PROTECTION AND PARTICIPATION OF MINORITIES9

The global trend in electoral systemdesign and reformOver the first century of multi-party democracy (roughlybetween 1880 and 1980), it was apparent that, once anelectoral system was in place, it was unlikely to change, asthe power to change lay with those (political elites) whohad benefited from the system in the first place. However,over the last 25 years, the pace of electoral system reformhas dramatically speeded up. Many unconsolidated andtransitional democracies have radically altered their previoussystems, while new democracies have shied away fromthe moribund systems that were on the legislative booksbut rarely used. For example, Fiji moved from First Past thePost to a mixture of the Alternative Vote and communalrolls; Thailand moved from the Block Vote to a Parallel systemwith PR; while Ecuador switched from straight List PRto a Parallel system with lists and the Block Vote. Mongoliamoved from the Block Vote to FPTP and then back again,and Iraq and Afghanistan shook off long-dormant systems(TRS and FPTP) to use List PR and SNTV for their newmulti-party experiments in 2005. Indonesia reformed theirnationally based PR system to make the districts muchsmaller, while in South Africa a government-appointed taskforce in 2004 recommended changing the national list systemto one with 69 multi-member constituencies electingbetween 3 and 7 and 100 ‘compensatory MPs’ drawn froma national list. Finally, after the 2005 crises in Lebanon, areview commission is investigating ways to reform their‘confessional’ electoral system. The proposal is to add on aproportional element to the communal Block Vote systemto make the system ‘Parallel’.But it is not just new democracies grappling with electoralsystem reform. A number of established democracieshave also reformed, or are looking to reform, their systems.Japan switched from the Single Non-Transferable Vote to aParallel system in 1993; New Zealand made a dramaticshift from First Past the Post to a Mixed Member Proportionalsystem for their elections of 1996; and Italy movedto a similar system, from List PR, in the early 1990s. Furthermore,a number of other established democracies areconsidering change. Their have long been calls to extendMMP beyond Wales, Scotland and London to the BritishHouse of Commons. There are growing calls in Canada tochange the FPTP system to a more proportional one andthere is considerable experimentation with alternative electoralsystems at the city and state level in the USA. In theNetherlands, bills have been proposed to parliament whichwould build in smaller majoritarian districts to their longestablished system of national List PR, while PresidentPutin wishes to take Russia in the opposite direction byeliminating the single-member district seats in the Duma,leaving one huge national list.A number of Westminster-type democracies in theCaribbean have seen their FPTP systems produce dramaticand anomalous results in recent years. In 1999, in Grenada,the ruling party won every seat with 63 per cent of thevote; in St Lucia, in 1997, the St Lucia Labour Party wonevery seat bar one with 62 per cent; in St Vincent, in1998, the United Labour Party went into opposition with7 of 15 seats on the basis of their 58 per cent of thenational vote. The dead heat in Trinidad and Tobago in2001 between the predominantly Afro-Caribbean People’sNational Movement and Indo-Caribbean United NationalCongress led to the creation of a constitutional reviewcommission which has questions of electoral system reformat the heart of its brief.Within these developments, five main themes appear tobe driving the calls for electoral system reform. (1) Thedesire to increase the geographic representation of cities andvillages, and enhance the accountability of individual representativeswithin List PR systems (e.g. in Indonesia andSouth Africa). (2) The unease with vote–seat anomaliesinherent in FPTP or Block Vote systems (e.g. in Lesothoand Mongolia). (3) The desire to reduce party fragmentationin unstable political systems (e.g. Italy and Russia). (4)The hope of encouraging inter-ethnic accommodation insocieties divided by ascriptive identities (e.g. Bosnia andFiji). (5) A fifth driving force of change has been the beliefthat electoral systems need to better include and representminority communities. This attitude was a contributingfactor to system reform in New Zealand 16 and has beencited as a reason to consider change in Britain, Canada andthe USA. Fraenkel and Grofman note that the dramaticchanges in electoral systems in the South Pacific have inpart revolved around the question of:‘how to handle ethnic heterogeneity, whether inhyper-fractionalised settings (Papua New Guinea,Solomon Islands, Vanuatu) or bi- or tri-polar territorieswhere two or three sizeable ethnic groups competefor political power (indigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians in Fiji; Kanaks and white settlers or theirdescendants, in New Caledonia).’ 17The fact that often two or more competing objectivesexist at the same time partly explains the increasing popu-10 ELECTORAL SYSTEMS AND THE PROTECTION AND PARTICIPATION OF MINORITIES

larity and implementation of mixed electoral systemswhich combine geographical representation and lists (proportional)representation. Sometimes these mixed systemsmaintain overall proportionality (as in the Mixed MemberProportional systems of Germany and New Zealand) butmore often Parallel systems have been crafted which ineffect run two separate elections for different parts of thelegislature at the same time. The use of Parallel systemshas become particularly commonplace in the new democraciesof Asia (e.g. Timor), Eastern Europe (e.g. Georgia)and West Africa (e.g. Guinea).The theoretical impact ofvarious systems on minorityinclusionWhen it comes to the descriptive representation of minoritymembers in national legislatures, conventional wisdommaintains that systems of List PR should (1) be better forthe inclusion of very small minority groups; (2) enableminority MPs to be present as more than just the representativesof ‘minority parties’; and (3) facilitate minoritiesbeing elected in regions where they are not in a majority.Conversely, plurality-majority systems (like FPTP, AV,TRS or the BV) can see the election of minorities ifminority groups are sufficiently geographically concentratedin certain districts. A small minority all living in onepart of an inner city, for example, may be able to elect acandidate of choice if there are single-member districts. Inthe United States, a number of ‘majority-minority’ districtsare deliberately gerrymandered to ensure at least 65 percent of the potential voters in a district are African-American,to encourage the election of African-AmericanCongress people. In other nation-states, certain regions orislands with minority inhabitants may be deliberately overrepresentedin the legislature.Based on such theory, it is reasonable to assume thathybrid systems using both list and single-member districts(such as MMP or Parallel systems) can give minoritiestwo chances to be elected: first, through the local districtand, second, through the proportional, often national,lists. If the minority is geographically dispersed and politicallyfragmented, then the more proportional MMP willserve them better, but if they are concentrated and unifiedthen they may gain more seats under parallel systems,where greater emphasis rests on the district side of elections.Although a rarely used system, the SingleTransferable Vote has long been cited as a friendly systemto minorities and majorities, combining the advantages ofmulti-member district proportionality with preferencevoting, which might help moderate minority candidates.Last, the Single Non-Transferable Vote, as used inAfghanistan and Jordan, and previously in Japan and Taiwan,could allow for minority electoral success if they areregionally concentrated and develop a good nominationand vote distribution strategy. The Japanese experience ofSNTV from 1945 to 1993 tells us little about ethnicminority abilities under the system, because of the predominantlyhomogeneous nature of Japanese society, butafter 2005 we do now have some evidence from the heterogeneoussociety of Afghanistan.Two other aspects of PR systems (List and MMP) pertainto the election of minorities. First, where the thresholdfor representation is set. When the threshold is low (as inthe Netherlands [0.67 per cent] or Israel [1.5 per cent]),very small parties based on minority interests can gain seats;when the threshold is very high (as in Turkey, where it is 10per cent) such minority interests are likely to be shut out.Second, minority candidates can be impacted by whethervoters can pronounce on the party list (i.e. the list is open)or whether they have to accept the rank ordering of candidatesthat is presented by the party (i.e. the list is closed).This voting mechanism interacts with the degree of progressivenessor conservativeness of the electorate. If thevoters are, by and large, inclined to support a multi-ethnicand diverse polity, then open lists can allow them to supportminority candidates who may not be at the top oftheir party’s list (as has happened with women in Scandinavia);but if majority group voters are more likely toplump for people who look like them, then a closed listwill allow parties to circumvent some of the prejudices ofthe electorate (as has happened in South Africa).Data on electoral systemimpact on minorityrepresentationTo date, there has not been a broadly comparative surveypublished which compares the number of minority representativesacross countries and electoral systems. There hasbeen some within-country research and work on reserved‘communal’ seats, but nothing to give a global view of thevarying rates of minority success when it comes to seeingtheir representatives elected to parliaments. Table 1 presentsevidence gathered from 31 countries using sevendifferent types of electoral systems. The list includes highlyethnically diverse nations along with morehomogeneous societies; established and new democracies;and rich and poor states. Table 1 lists the percentage ofthe legislature made up of minority MPs, the communities’share of society overall and the over-/underrepresentationof each group. It describes minority representationabove and beyond the reserved communalrepresentation discussed later in this report.ELECTORAL SYSTEMS AND THE PROTECTION AND PARTICIPATION OF MINORITIES11

Table 1: Minority members in national legislaturesCountryMinority (% of population)Seat (%)Under/overNo. ofelectionsElec. sys.AfghanistanHazara (16.0)Tajik (30.0)Uzbek (13.0)12.021.38.0-4.0-8.7-5.01*SNTVAustraliaAborigines (1.4)0.0-1.45AVBelgiumFrancophones (32.0)40.38.34List PRBulgariaTurks (9.4)6.9-2.54List PRCanadaFrancophones (20.9)Asian* (1.5)Black* (1.2)Inuit* (3.5)24.55.21.30.63.63.70.1-2.93FPTPDenmarkMuslim (1.3)Inuit (0.9)Faroese (0.9)1.11.11.1-0.20.20.21*List PREstoniaRussophones (30.3)4.7-25.64List PRFijiIndo-Fijian (42.0)38.0-4.01*AVFinlandSwedes (5.8)7.71.93List PRFr. PolynesiaWhites (10.1)Chinese (3.7)15.85.35.71.61*List PRGermanyNth Africa/Mid East (3.0)0.6-2.41*MMPIndiaMuslims (11.4)5.3-5.14FPTPIrelandNon-Whites (0.5)0.0-0.51*STVIsraelArabs (Palestinians) (17.5)Druze (1.5)7.51.0-10.0-0.544List PRLatviaRussians (33.1)9.3-23.84List PRLithuaniaPoles (7.0)Russians (8.5)3.12.4-3.9-6.133List PRMalawiAsian (0.1)1.0(0.9)1*FPTPMongoliaKazaks (5.9)4.2-1.72BVNamibiaWhite (5.0)8.33.31*List PRNew ZealandMaori (12.3)Pacific Islander (5.0)Asian (0.5)16.03.02.03.7-2.01.51*MMPThe NetherlandsAfrica/Mid East/Turk (4.0)Caribbean (1.3)6.73.32.72.01*List PRNorwayAsian/Non-White (2.0)0.6-1.41*List PR12 ELECTORAL SYSTEMS AND THE PROTECTION AND PARTICIPATION OF MINORITIES

RomaniaHungarians (7.1)Roma (1.8)7.50.30.4(-1.5)33List PRSlovakiaHungarians (10.8)Russian (1.0)12.40.7(1.6)(-0.3)55List PRSloveniaHungarians (0.4)Italians (0.1)1.12.3(0.7)(2.2)44List PRSouth AfricaWhite (14.0)Coloured (8.0)Indian (2.4)29.38.96.9(15.3)(0.9)(4.5)222List PRSwedenMed/Mid East (1.9)Black (0.1)Latino (0.1)Sami (0.2)1.81.20.60.3(-0.1)(1.1)(0.5)(0.1)1*List PRSwitzerlandFrancophones (18.0)Italophones (7.0)Romansh (0.7)22.54.01.1(4.5)(-3.0)(0.4)444List PRTrinidad & TobagoAfro (37.0)Mixed (20.0)Chinese (2.0)41.711.13.0(4.1)(-8.9)(1.0)1*FPTPUnited KingdomAfro-Caribbean (0.9)Asian (2.9)0.60.7(-0.3)(-2.2)33FPTPUnited StatesAfrican-American (12.1)Latino (8.9)Native American (0.8)8.44.30.1(-3.7)(-4.6)(-0.7)777FPTPZambiaWhite (0.1)Asian (0.1)0.70.7(0.6)(0.6)1*FPTPZimbabweWhite (0.5)0.7(0.2)1*FPTPNOTE: AVERAGE 1990–2003 (OR MOST RECENT PARLIAMENT WHERE NOTED *)SOURCES: MINORITY %: WORLD DIRECTORY OF MINORITIES, LONDON, MRG. 1997. ELECTORAL SYSTEM: ANDREW REYNOLDS, BEN REILLY, AND ANDREW ELLIS. THE INTERNATIONAL IDEA HANDBOOK OFELECTORAL SYSTEM DESIGN. 2005. 1990–2003 DATA FROM LUBLIN (UNPUB. 2006); MOST RECENT ELECTION DATA BY AUTHOR.Table 2: Under/over-representation by electoral systemList PR(17 cases)FPTP(8)MMP(2)AV(2)BV(1)STV(1)SNTV(1)No. of groups over/under-represented21 over13 under9 over8 under2 over2 under0 over2 under0 over1 under0 over1 under0 over1 underAverage-0.6+0.9*-0.80.2-2.7-1.7-0.5-5.9NOTE: * WITH LATVIA AND ESTONIA REMOVED.The data collected in Tables 1 and 2 generally supportconventional wisdom about the likelihood of minoritysuccess under various election systems, but the survey of31 countries also illustrates that broader institutions ofpower-sharing, economic power held by a minority communityand geographical concentration also help ensurethat members of minorities are elected to parliament. Ofthe 62 minority groups analysed, 32 are ‘over-represented’when compared to their share of the population while 30groups are under-represented. When the minority isELECTORAL SYSTEMS AND THE PROTECTION AND PARTICIPATION OF MINORITIES13

greater than 10 per cent of the population the over/underdivision is 8/9.When it comes to representation by electoral systemthe 20 PR cases (of List, MMP and STV) perform best,although only under MMP (New Zealand and Germany)are minorities, on average, over-represented (and this isdriven by New Zealand). However, if one removes Estoniaand Latvia from the List PR group, the averageover-representation of a minority moves to a system highof 0.9. This gives us a better picture of the general trendunder List PR, because those two cases so dramaticallyunder-represent Russian-speakers that they skew the entireresults. This is more due to lack of voting rights for Russiansin the Baltic states than the effect of List PR. Theworst system on average for minority groups is SNTV,but again this is driven by the single case of Afghanistanin 2005.A more nuanced analysis of Table 1 finds that: (1)white people are consistently over-represented when theyare a small minority in a former colonial possession(Namibia, Polynesia, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe).(2) Small but economically powerful communities ofSouth Asians are often slightly over-represented in Africa(although not in Fiji and the UK). (3) When consociationalregimes are based on List PR elections (as theyusually are), significant minority players can be over-represented(e.g. French-speakers in Belgium andSwitzerland; whites, coloureds and Indians in SouthAfrica).Regionally, minority groups are more likely to be overrepresentedin Western Europe and North America (14groups were over-represented, 12 under-represented) thanin the Asia-Pacific region (4/8) or Eastern/Central Europe(4/7). While the eight minorities in African states in Table1 (five countries) are all over-represented to some degree.Some of the most vibrant minority representation can befound in the large district closed List PR systems of theNetherlands and South Africa, where members of minoritiessit on the government and opposition benches, in bigand small parties. The 15 minority MPs in the Dutchparliament in 2006 were born in Curaçao (1), Suriname(4), Morocco (3), Iran (1), Turkey (5) and Portugal (1),and they are distributed between six parties: CDA (4), GL(4), PVDA (3), VVD (2), D66 (1), LPF (1). In SouthAfrica’s first two democratic elections, minority white,coloured and Indian MPs were included in both the governingAfrican National Congress (ANC) and oppositionparties. In 1994 and 1999 the ANC was catapulted tovictory on the back of a vote which was overwhelminglyrooted in the black South African community, but inboth parliaments white MPs constituted 10–15 per centof the ANC’s caucus. Only half of the Zulu TraditionalInkatha Freedom Party MPs were Zulu, the others beingwhite and Indian South Africans.Even though they use an FPTP system, Canada displaysa significant number (21) of minority MPs (notincluding Francophone Canadians) who cut across partyboundaries: there are 12 Liberals, 6 Conservatives, 2 BlocQuébecois and 1 NDP.In a natural experiment in Britain and Ireland, theMMP system does not perform quite as well as the NewZealand case might suggest. Currently the United Kingdomoperates MMP elections for the Scottish and Welshand London Assemblies, List PR for elections to theEuropean Parliament and FPTP for the House of Commons.Northern Ireland uses STV to elect its Assemblyand List PR for Euro elections. As Table 4 shows, thereare five Asian MEPs (6.4 per cent) elected by List PR,which compares well to their 2.9 per cent populationshare. There is a record high of 10 (1.5 per cent) AsianMPs in the House of Commons elected by FPTP, butonly a single British-Asian Assembly member in the Scottish,Welsh and London Assemblies combined. Incontrast, there are only five (0.8 per cent) Afro-CaribbeanMPs at Westminster, a single London Assembly member,and none in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. TheEuropean Afro-Caribbean and Asian MPs demonstrateparty balance – two Labour, two Conservative, one LiberalDemocrat; in the House of Commons thirteenAfro-Caribbean and Asian Labour MPs are joined by twoTories, while both Afro-Caribbean and Asian LondonAssembly members are Labour.Table 3: Ethnic diversity of South African National Assembly 1994–9AfricanWhiteColouredIndian1994 numbers1994 %1999 numbers1999 %% population20852232587513032104261329742109338225314 ELECTORAL SYSTEMS AND THE PROTECTION AND PARTICIPATION OF MINORITIES

Table 4: Minority representation in the United Kingdom 2006Ethnicity(% of population)Assembly – No. (%)(Scotland: 129, Wales: 60, London: 25)European– No. (%) (78)Commons– No. (%) (646)MMPSTVList PRFPTPScotlandAsian (1.4)Afro (0.2)00––0010WalesAsian (1.1)Afro (0.2)00––0000LondonAsian (14.1)Afro (10.1)1 (4.0)1 (4.0)––0023N. IrelandAsianAfro––000000EnglandAsianAfro––––5072TotalAsian (4.4)Afro (2.0)1 (0.5)1 (0.5)005 (6.4)010 (1.5)5 (0.8)NOTE: FIGURES FROM 2001 CENSUS; 2003 SCOTTISH, WELSH AND NORTHERN IRISH ASSEMBLY ELECTIONS; 2005 UK HOUSE OF COMMONS ELECTIONS. ENGLAND EXCLUDES LONDON.Communal/reserved seats 18When minorities fail to ‘naturally’ make it into legislaturesthrough the regular electoral competition, they canbe guaranteed some representation through reserved ‘communallybased’ seats. Historically, the practice of seatreservation, or gerrymandering, for distinct ethnic groupshas long existed. The recognition and desire for somedegree of pre-arranged descriptive representation is not anew thing – nor is it a construct unencumbered by pastmis-use. In the mid twentieth century, many coloniallyadministered territories reserved seats for indigenousgroups, either as a transitional mechanism, a strategy ofdivide and rule or, less subtly, as a sop to keep them frompower. Anglophone possessions ceded a modicum ofpolitical influence by giving a minority of the legislativeseats to the majority population – notably in India,Kenya, Nyasaland and Tanzania. The apartheid governmentin South Africa took the logic of electoralconfinement to the extreme in their Tricameral parliamentof the 1980s, which had separate houses of parliament forColoureds, Whites and Indians but, tellingly, not for themajority black South African population.After the Second World War, separate communal rollswith reserved seats became integral parts of power-sharingsolutions to end internal conflicts; for example, Lebanonin 1943, Cyprus in 1960 and Zimbabwe in 1980. Suchsolutions were ‘rediscovered’ in the 1990s in the compartmentalizedethnic arrangements of peace pacts in Bosniaand Kosovo. At the beginning of the twenty-first century,the aura around reserved communal seats and specialmechanisms has swung to a point where it is seen as moreprogressive to reserve seats or ensure by some method thatminorities are descriptively represented in legislatures. Theaura of paternalism and tokenism, however, continues totaint such affirmative action mechanisms.The use of reserved seats and special arrangements inparliaments around the world is widespread. Table 5 lists32 countries (or autonomous territories) reserving seatsfor communal/minority groups, or where some specialmechanism is in place. One can add to these cases thePalestinian Authority and the Tibetan government inexile. Another two nations, Ukraine and the UnitedStates, engage in explicit race-conscious districting andat least four, Denmark, Finland, Tanzania and the UnitedKingdom, have historically over-represented definedethnic territories in their popularly elected lower houses(this is above and beyond the practice of federal nationsover-representing smaller territorial units in their upperhouses).ELECTORAL SYSTEMS AND THE PROTECTION AND PARTICIPATION OF MINORITIES15

Table 5: Cases of reserved seats, communal rolls and race-conscious districtingCountry Type of mechanism Size oflegislature%Reserved – Reserved communal seatsBhutan10 religious appointees (Buddhist)1507Colombia1 Black1611Croatia6 Croat Diaspora1 Serb1 Hungarian1 Italian1 Czech/Slovak1 Ruthenian/Ukranian/German/Austrian1517India79 Scheduled Castes41 Scheduled Tribes2 Anglo-Indians (nominated)54522Iran5 Zoroastrians, Jews and Christians2902Jordan9 Christians3 Circassians6 Bedouin8022Kiribati1 Banabans412New Zealand7 Maori seats1205Niger8 Tuareg8310Palestine Authority6 Christians and 1 Samaritan887Pakistan10 for non-Muslim minorities (4 Hindus, 4 Christians,1 Ahmadis/Parsees, 1 other religions)1288Romania19 seats for small minorities3434Samoa2 seats for part- and non-Samoans494Slovenia1 Hungarians1 Italians902Tibetan govt in exile5 major religious sects reserved seats46?Taiwan8 Aboriginal2253Venezuela3 seats – indigenous population1652Reserved – Upper HousesBelgium (Senate)29 French41 Flemish1 German71100Colombia (Senate)2 indigenous communities1022Ethiopia (Upper House)22 minority nationality representatives1171916 ELECTORAL SYSTEMS AND THE PROTECTION AND PARTICIPATION OF MINORITIES

Country Type of mechanism Size oflegislature%Electoral systemsDenmarkExemption from 2% rule for parties representing German minority179NAGermanyExemption from 5% rule for parties representing nationalminorities603NALebanon64 Christian (Maronites, Greeks, Druze)64 Muslims (Shia, Sunni)128100MauritiusBest loser ethnic balancing66NAPolandExemption from 5% rule for parties representing German minority460NASingaporeMinority candidates (Malay or Indian) on lists (1/6)83NAPower-sharing settlementsBosnia15 Croat15 Serb15 Bosniac45100Cyprus (1960)56 Greeks24 Turks80100Fiji23 Indigenous19 Indian1 Rotumans7161Kosovo10 Serb10 Roma, Ashkali, Egyptian, Bosniac, Turkish, Gorani12017Macedonia (proposed)Albanian, MacedonianRwanda45 Hutu13 Tutsi7083Sri Lanka (1924)3 European2 Burghers1 Tamil3 Muslim2 Indian3730Zimbabwe (1980–5)20 Whites/Coloured/Asian seats10020Over-representation of defined ethnic/national regionsDenmark2 Faroe Islands (which has 0.7% of Dmk pop.)1791.1Finland1 Aaland Islands200Tanzania5 extra Zanzibar274UK (before 2005)72 Scotland (which has 9.6% of UK pop.)65911ELECTORAL SYSTEMS AND THE PROTECTION AND PARTICIPATION OF MINORITIES17

Country Type of mechanism Size oflegislature%Colonial/minority regime allocationsIndia (Punjab)1932 Communal Award90 Muslim48 Hindu33 Sikh2 Christians1 Anglo-Indian1 European175100South AfricaTricameral (1983)144 White80 Coloured40 Indian(Coloured seats reserved in White house until 1956)264100Race-conscious districtingUkraineRace-conscious for minorities450–USAAfrican-American, Latino435–NOTE: DATA COLLECTED IN 2002. ASSISTANCE GRATEFULLY RECEIVED FIRST AND FOREMOST FROM ANNA JARSTAD, ALONG WITH JOHN CAREY, MARK RUSH, JØRGEN ELKLIT, MATT SHUGART, TIM SISK,AND MICHAEL GALLAGHER. DATA PARTIALLY DRAWN FROM JARSTAD, A., CHANGING THE GAME: CONSOCIATIONAL THEORY AND ETHNIC QUOTAS IN CYPRUS AND NEW ZEALAND, UPPSALA, DEPT PEACEAND CONFLICT, UPPSALA UNIVERSITY, 2001, P. 55.Such arrangements are found on every continent. Table5 includes four cases from the Pacific/Oceania region, fourfrom the Middle East, six from Asia, seven in Eastern/CentralEurope, five in Western Europe/North America and sixin Africa. Indeed, the only clearly under-representedregions in the list are the Americas, with only two cases inLatin America and only the USA in North America. Neitherare special mechanisms the sole province of‘enlightened’ liberal democracies. Of 32 national states orrelated territories listed in Table 5, 18 were ranked by FreedomHouse as ‘free’ at the time of data collection, 12 wereranked as ‘partly free’ and three were ‘not free’.Reserved seats in national legislatures can be classifiedunder four headings: (1) the identity of the minoritygroups for whom seats are reserved; (2) the mechanismfor reserving seats; (3) the electoral system used; and (4)the number of seats reserved.Identity of groupsThere is some degree of overlap between bases of identitybut four main themes dominate the minority group identitiesin the countries which utilize special electoralprovisions. One-third of the cases reserve seats on thebasis of ‘race’ or ethnicity, which need not necessarily bebased on language. Colombia, Fiji, New Zealand, Taiwanand Venezuela reserve seats for ‘indigenous’ minorities,although only in Fiji and New Zealand do such MPs representa significant electoral block. India, Mauritius,Samoa, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe, have all at some timereserved seats for the descendants of European or Asiancolonists or migrants who possess economic powerdespite being small in numbers. The recognition of languageand national identity is predominantly a Centraland Eastern European phenomenon – e.g. Bosnia, Croatia,Kosovo, Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Slovenia andUkraine. But, apart from Croatia and Kosovo, suchreserved seats are little more than lone voices in largemajority parliaments. Religious identity characterizes thebasis of reserved seats in the Middle East and South Asia,while geographical communal representation is mostoften found when island territories are detached fromnation-state’s main land mass (e.g. Rotuma, Fiji; Aaland,Finland; Banaba, Kiribati and Zanzibar, Tanzania).Type of mechanismCommunal representation is ensured or encouraged in anumber of different ways. First, seats can be reserved fora group and those seats filled by appointees of the recognizedgroup or elected by voters from a communal roll.Some type of seat reservation occurs in the majority ofcases and is a characteristic of power-sharing arrangementsafter domestic conflict. As noted earlier, in NewZealand there is a communal roll for Maoris but voterscan choose whether to be on it or not, as was the case inBelgium for language groups in European Parliamentelections in 1979. Second, the electoral law can mandateethnically mixed lists to some degree. This is effectivelythe case in Lebanon, Mauritius and Singapore, although18 ELECTORAL SYSTEMS AND THE PROTECTION AND PARTICIPATION OF MINORITIES

Table 6: Bases of identity for reserved seatsRace/ethnicityLanguage/nationReligionIslands/geographyColombiaCyprusEthiopiaFijiIndiaMauritiusNew ZealandRwandaSamoaSingaporeSri LankaSouth AfricaTaiwanUSAVenezuelaZimbabweBelgiumBosniaCroatiaDenmarkGermanyKosovoMacedoniaNew ZealandPolandSloveniaUKUkraineBhutanIranJordanLebanonPakistanPalestineSri LankaTanzaniaTibetDenmarkFijiFinlandJordanKiribatiNigerTanzaniaUKin the latter two cases the insertion of minority candidatesis more at the margins and more easily flouted.Third, there can be special exemptions for specifiedminority parties to the regular electoral law. In some ListPR systems, the threshold for winning seats is suspendedif the party is judged to be a representative of the recognizedethnic minority (e.g. Denmark, Poland). Fourth,districts in plurality single-member district (SMD) systemscan be gerrymandered to ensure or facilitate theelection of a minority representative. Apart fromUkraine, the USA appears to be the only case that legallyrecognizes such a technique, although it is clear that –informally – districts have been, and are, gerrymanderedto encourage the election of minority community representativesin First Past the Post elections in both thedeveloped and developing world. Finally, some geographicalregions are over-represented as a consequence ofhistory or modern political considerations which seek toreassure remote islands and fringes that they have an adequatevoice in national affairs (e.g. Scotland within theUK House of Commons until 2005). Again, this usuallystems from an informal political pact resistant to shorttermpartisan changes in government.Electoral systems and communal seatsA number of the cases in Table 5 that reinforce inclusionby using communal rolls within List PR systems areextreme cases of divided societies seeking to stabilizethemselves. These communal seats are products of explicitpeace settlements to install power-sharing regimes inthe aftermath of bloody civil wars; e.g. Bosnia, Cyprus,Kosovo and Lebanon. Generally, PR systems are less likelyto need to utilize ‘back-door’ mechanisms to ensureminority representation. There are reserved SMD seats inthe PR systems of New Zealand and Niger, but in NewZealand it has been argued that the reserved seats forMaoris are counter-productive and, if anything, are nolonger needed under the PR arrangements. This has notdampened enrolment on the Maori roll and the increaseto an all-time high of seven reserved seats.Nevertheless, the bulk of the examples identified inthis report have reserved single-member district seatswithin FPTP systems (e.g. India, Iran, Kiribati, Pakistan,Samoa) or require minorities to fill at least one of themulti-member seats in Single Non-Transferable Vote(SNTV) or Block Vote systems (e.g. Jordan, Palestine), orhave separate communal seats in a Multi-Member District(MMD) Alternative Vote (AV) system (Fiji). Eachcase is of a majoritarian electoral system, which is unableto guarantee adequate minority group representation.As a rule of thumb, the number of seats allocated tocommunal groups matches their numerical strength andpower to threaten majority interests. If they are smalland weak, they may be given one or two seats in thenational assembly but little real influence. This is casein the majority of examples listed in Table 5. Nevertheless,if the communal groups are large (as in Fiji, Indiaor Lebanon) or have destabilization potential (as inBosnia, Kosovo and Rwanda), seat allocations are moresignificant.ELECTORAL SYSTEMS AND THE PROTECTION AND PARTICIPATION OF MINORITIES19

The moulding effects ofelectoral systemsBeyond the mere fact of who gets elected, electoral systemshelp to structure the boundaries of acceptablepolitical discourse by giving incentives to party leaders tocouch their appeals to the electorate in distinct ways. Individed societies, where language, race, religion or ethnicityrepresents a fundamental political cleavage, someelectoral systems can reward candidates and parties whoact in a cooperative, accommodatory manner; while othersreward those who appeal only to their own ethnicgroup. This ‘spin’ that the electoral system gives to thesystem is dependent on the specific cleavages and divisionswithin any given society. In these ways, electoralsystems influence not just the numbers of minoritieselected but also how majority parties seek to appeal to, ormarginalize, minority voters, and how inclusive andmulti-ethnic candidate lists will be. One electoral systemmay encourage the forging of alliances between parties,which in turn will affect the broader political climate,while another may exaggerate conflict. Furthermore, if theresults an electoral system gives rise to are not perceivedto be ‘fair’ by significant minority communities of interest,it may encourage such alienated groups to workoutside the democratic boundaries, using confrontationalor even violent tactics. So how can electoral systems affectthe climate in post-conflict situations and help engender asustainable peace? Can a well-crafted electoral systemminimize hostilities in a potentially dangerous situation ofmajority–minority polarization?Electoral systems have become an integral part ofensuring minority rights in divided societies as they are theeasiest way to ensure the foundational legislative inclusionwhich forms the bedrock of power-sharing settlements. In1967, the St Lucian Nobel Laureate Sir Arthur Lewisissued a damning indictment of the inappropriateness ofWestminster majoritarian democracy for the embryonicpost-colonial states of Africa. 19 Since then, institutionaldesign in plural societies, resting on the reality of negotiatedsettlements, has often involved some degree of de jurepower-sharing between majorities and minorities in theallocation of state power. Over the last decade or so,explicit power-sharing has become the modus operandi ofdemocratic peace settlements, the most vivid examplesbeing South Africa’s 1994–9 interim Constitution, Bosnia’sDayton Accords, the Fijian Constitution of the late 1990s,the Northern Irish Good Friday Agreement, Sierra Leoneand Liberia’s late 1990s and early 2000s Governments ofNational Unity, and the Transitional Administrative Lawof Iraq in 2004–5 and the Sudanese Naivasha Accord of2005. Afghanistan, without significant and entrenchedpower-sharing provisions, is the contemporary exceptionto the constitutional trend.However, even where there appears to be a reticence toimpose de jure power-sharing at the highest levels of government,there nevertheless seems to be a growingacceptance that a high degree of de facto recognition andincorporation of ethnic segments is a normative good, ifnot essential element of any post-conflict government.Afghanistan, for instance, has a Constitution that is highlymajoritarian, but the fact remains that President Karzaifound ethnic balancing unavoidable in his cabinet: Hazaras,Pashtuns, Tajiks and Uzbeks all needed to bereassured that they had a voice in the very core of nationaldecision-making.Although not without its critics, the dominant powersharingmodel is the consociational model championed byArend Lijphart. 20 Consociationalism seeks to avoid thedestabilizing by-products of winner-take-all majoritariandemocracy by guaranteeing the leaders of all significantgroups in society a direct stake in political decision-making.Finding the option of authoritarian controlunsatisfying, 21 consociationalism prioritizes cooperationand the sharing of power between political elites. That is,when group leaders are deliberately empowered to governtogether, the group loyalties that formerly stoked violentconflict are channelled into resource allocation instead.Consociationalism’s end goal is stability based on postelectioninter-group accommodation.Lijphart describes four institutional tools for thispurpose: the primary institutions of executive powersharingand group autonomy, and the secondaryinstitutions of proportionality and mutual veto. 22 Executivepower-sharing refers to a ‘grand coalition’government in the executive, typically parliamentary,whereby the leaders of all major groups are ensured representationin the cabinet. Group autonomy equates tofederalism and devolves decision-making authority overissues of central concern to a society’s respective groups,as in cultural affairs and education. Proportionality allocatesequitably public resources like government seats,civil service positions and public funds. The mutual vetoallows each group to protect its vital interests by investingeach of them with the means to reject prejudicialpolitical decisions. The proportionality principle is alsokey to legislative elections and Lijphart argues thatconsociationalism needs to rest not merely on proportionalrepresentation but specifically List PR (as opposedto STV or MMP), which will give the degree of segmentalelite control (over legislation and their own followers)needed to make the elite-pact of consociation manifest.Consociation can also rest upon pre-defined communalor fixed group representation (as in Lebanon or theSwiss National Council), although Lijphart makes clear20 ELECTORAL SYSTEMS AND THE PROTECTION AND PARTICIPATION OF MINORITIES

his preference that communal groups define themselves incompetitive elections through List PR.An alternative to power-sharing at the executive levelis the concept of integrative majoritarianism, where ethnicelites are given incentives to appeal outside their primaryand narrowly defined constituencies. The key to suchpolitical integration is that, in the long run, internalincentives are more powerful than external constraints. Asnoted by Sisk, ‘the aim is to engineer a centripetal spin tothe political system by providing electoral incentives forbroad-based moderation by political leaders and disincentivesfor extremist outbidding’. 23For Donald Horowitz, the architect of the theory, acombination of integrative institutions and accommodation-inducingpolicies will engender such centripetalism.Chief among these is a preference based, vote-poolingelectoral system, the Alternative Vote – as used in Australiaand Fiji. He combines this legislative system with adirectly elected president, chosen either by a national electionon the basis of the Alternative Vote, or through asuper-majority requirement, where the winning candidatemust not merely win a national majority, but also surmounta threshold in all regions of the country. Forexample, in Nigeria in 1979, a winning presidential candidatewas required to win a national plurality of thevotes and at least 25 per cent of the votes in 13 of the 19states. In 1989, any successful candidate had to win a pluralityof the national votes, and not less than one-third ofthe votes in at least two-thirds of the states. 24 In conjunctionwith these institutional arrangements, like Lijphart,Horowitz argues for socio-economic policies which recognizeand advantage non-ethnic communities of interestsand reduce overall socio-economic inequalities.In contrast to List PR, the Alternative Vote is far lesslikely to ensure that political power is shared betweenmajority and minority groups, or even that minorities areelected to parliament. That is not to say that accommodationcannot take place under such institutional provisions,but such accommodation is dependent on the social anddemographic environment the institutions operate within.For the Alternative Vote to give parties incentives tobehave in an ethnically conciliatory manner, constituenciesmust be heterogeneous, with no one group holding anabsolute majority of the votes. Similarly, in order to elect apresident beholden to inclusive nation-building ratherthan ethnically divisive exclusion, no one group can be inthe absolute majority if the voting rule is preferential.Electoral system consequencesin theory and practiceThere is some dispute over expectations as to how variouselectoral systems will mould elite behaviours and campaigningstyles. Based on broad data sets, Cohen arguesthat PR is more effective than FPTP as an instrument ofethnic conflict management, 25 while Norris finds no clearrelationship between ethnic minority support for the stateand the electoral system used. 26 The mantra that electionsare embedded institutions and will be flavoured by thepolitical scene that they work within is often recited. Nevertheless,it is reasonable to argue that, all else beingequal, the following pressures are likely to exist:(1) Because List PR systems encourage parties to maximizevotes won both in areas where they are strongand areas where they are weak (because every vote isaggregated at a larger level) there exists an incentive toappeal to ‘other’ voters who may not be part of yourcore ethnic or ideological base. Thus List PR systemsmight encourage moderation in ethnic chauvinismand inclusiveness of minorities in campaign appeals.This may be particularly strong if majority partiesneed minority votes to make it over a given thresholdor to have enough seats to form a government. Theseincentives would dissipate if the party/majority groupdid not need extra votes and appealing for such voteswould lose them members of their core constituencywho were opposed to accommodatory overtures tominorities.(2) Preference voting in multi-member districts (STV inIreland, Malta and Northern Ireland) and preferencevoting in single-member districts (AV in Australia andFiji) can encourage the creation of multi-ethnic parties,advantage the moderate wings of ethnically basedparties and allow minority voters to influence whichtype of majority MP is elected. For these pressures tokick in within single-member district systems like AV,no single group must have a clear majority in thegiven district. For ‘moderating’ incentives to workunder STV, there must be significant doubt aboutwho is likely to be successful and the extremist wingsof polarized parties should not tacitly ally themselves(and trade lower preferences) in the interests of unifyingagainst a common enemy (e.g. the moderates).(3) Plurality-majority systems (FPTP, BV and TRS) arepredisposed to exclude minorities from power, even ifthe minority’s concentration allows them to win somesingle-member seats. There are countless cases ofminorities clustered in a given geographical area whocan win a small number of representatives, but whorarely form part of governing coalitions and cannotmount much of an opposition to majority rule withinthe legislature. Plurality-majority systems (withoutextra provisions to ensure multi-ethnic parties) are alsoELECTORAL SYSTEMS AND THE PROTECTION AND PARTICIPATION OF MINORITIES21

likely to accentuate majority–minority polarizationand campaigns based on ‘us against them’ and ethnicchauvinism. The most efficient way of winning morevotes than the next candidate (if you are the largestgroup in a district) is to make sure all your groupmembers support you, and the easiest mobilizationstrategy revolves around appeals to identity and preservationof group interests. If no single group can expecta clear majority in a district, one group may seekalliances with other groups, but such geographic interminglingis rare and alliances, while useful for onedistrict, may alienate core voters in others.(4) Hybrid systems, using both lists and single-memberdistricts, are likely to combine the broadly inclusiveincentives of national List PR with the more parochialgroup-based pressures of campaigning under FPTP.However, if the system is one of MMP, where the listseats compensate for any disproportionality comingout of the districts, then the incentive for a party tomaximize their votes across the entire nation (evenwhere they are weak) is enhanced. If the systemdetaches the districts and the lists (as under the Parallelsystems of Japan and Russia) then those broadeningincentives to appeal outside of your core group areminimized.(5) Electoral success under SNTV (as used inAfghanistan, Jordan and Vanuatu) revolves around asuccessful candidate nomination strategy and disciplining‘your’ voters to equally distribute their votesbetween your candidates. While the system does provideopportunities for minorities to make it intoparliament, it gives fewer incentives to appeal for thevotes of other groups. In fragmented new democracieswith inchoate party systems (as in the three examplesabove) the campaign strategies may be more confused,with individuals being dominant rather than establishedpolitical machines.Where have electoral systemspromoted cooperation betweencommunities and encouragedmulti-ethnic parties?Recent attempts to re-establish democracy in post-conflictsituations highlight a number of electoral systems thathave aided minority inclusion and multi-ethnic accommodationin a variety of contexts. South Africa’s first threedemocratic elections (1994, 1999 and 2004) were all conductedunder List PR, with half the National Assembly(200 members) being chosen from nine provincial listsand the other half being elected from a single nationallist. In effect, the country used one nation-wide constituency(with 400 members) for the conversion of votesinto seats, and no threshold for representation wasimposed.The PR system, as an integral part of other powersharingmechanisms in the new Constitution, was crucialto creating the atmosphere of inclusiveness and reconciliationthat precipitated the decline of the worst politicalviolence. Nevertheless, when negotiations began in earnestin 1991, there was no particular reason to believe thatSouth Africa would adopt PR. The whites-only parliamenthad always been elected by an FPTP system, whilethe ANC, now in a powerful bargaining position, expectedto be clearly advantaged if FPTP were maintained. Asonly five districts, out of over 700 in South Africa, hadwhite majorities, because of the vagaries of FPTP votingthe ANC, with 50–60 per cent of the popular vote,expected they would easily win 70–80 per cent of the parliamentaryseats. But the ANC did not opt for PRbecause they realized that the disparities of an FPTP electoralsystem would be fundamentally destabilizing in thelong run for minority and majority interests. List PR alsoavoided the politically charged controversy of having todraw constituency boundaries and, furthermore, it fittedin with the executive power-sharing ethos, which both theANC and Nationalists saw as a key tenet of the interimConstitution. Today, all major political parties support theuse of PR, although there are differences over which specificvariant to use.It is probable that, even with their geographic pocketsof electoral support, the Freedom Front (nine seats in thefirst National Assembly 1994–9), Democratic Party (sevenseats), Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania (five seats) andAfrican Christian Democratic Party (two seats) wouldhave failed to win a single parliamentary seat if the electionshad been held under a single-member district FPTPelectoral system. While these parties together only represented6 per cent of the first democratic Assembly, theirimportance inside the structures of government far outweighedtheir numerical strength.As noted earlier, the choice of electoral system has alsohad an impact upon the composition of parliament alongthe lines of ethnicity. The South African National Assembly,invested in May 1994, contained over 80 formermembers of the whites-only parliament, but that waswhere the similarities between the old and the new ended.In direct contrast to South Africa’s troubled history, blacksat with white, communist with conservative, Zulu withXhosa and Muslim with Christian. To a significant extent,the diversity of the new National Assembly was a productof the use of List PR. The national, and unalterable, can-22 ELECTORAL SYSTEMS AND THE PROTECTION AND PARTICIPATION OF MINORITIES

didate lists allowed parties to present ethnically heterogeneousgroups of candidates, which, it was hoped, wouldhave cross-cutting appeal. The resulting National Assemblywas 52 per cent black (including Ndebele-, Pedi-,Shangaan-, Sotho-, Swazi-, Tswana-, Venda-, Xhosa- andZulu-speaking representatives), 32 per cent white(English- and Afrikaans-speaking), 8 per cent Indian and7 per cent coloured. This compared to an electorate thatwas estimated to be 73 per cent black, 15 per cent white,9 per cent coloured and 3 per cent Indian. In 1999 theproportion of black and coloured MPs rose to 58 per centand 10 per cent respectively, while whites made up 26 percent and Indians 5 per cent. There is a widespread beliefin South Africa that if FPTP had been introduced therewould have been far fewer women, Indians and whites,with more black and male MPs. 27The positive, conflict-mitigating, effects of PR havealso been noted in the South Pacific. After serious independencerumblings by the indigenous (Kanak) minorityin New Caledonia, the 1998 Noumea Accords introducedpower-sharing in the executive based on List PR for thelegislature. Grofman and Fraenkel note that this took ‘theheat off inter-ethnic issues, enabled the emergence ofsmaller parties and, in 2004, paved the way to the triumphof centrist parties which have shifted the political agendaaway from the politics of ethnicity’. 28 The proportionalMMP system in New Zealand has encouraged a muchhigher degree of inter-ethnic campaigning among the significantparty players and increased both the numbers ofminorities elected and their integration into parties thatwere formerly dominated by the white majority. 29Nevertheless, there have been cases where majoritariansystems have been used as an aid to encouraging multiethnicparties and inter-ethnic accommodation. In India,the Congress Party long played an umbrella role for Hindusand Muslims (if not all of India’s myriad minoritygroups) to unite under a national banner of the state,leading to a long period of elite accommodation that wasonly weakened with the emergence of the Hindu NationalistBJP as a political force in the 1990s. Lijphart notesthat ‘the Congress Party’s repeated manufactured majoritieshave not come at the expense of India’s manyminorities due to its special status as the party of consensus,which has been deliberately protective of the variousreligious and linguistic minorities’. 30 Congress was able tomaintain its philosophy in face of the FPTP systembecause of the geographical concentration of minorities,along with the reserved seats for Scheduled Tribes andScheduled Castes.In Malaysia, the incentive to win a majority of singlememberdistricts in a heterogeneous polity hasencouraged the ruling Barisan Nasional Party to put forwardethnically mixed slates of Chinese and Indian as wellas Malay candidates. Singapore utilizes both FPTP andcommunal BV constituencies (with votes for party lists)to guarantee some degree of diversity in their legislature.Horowitz argues that the confessional Block Vote systemused in Lebanon ‘gives politicians very good reasons tocooperate across group lines … They must poll votes (thatis, exchange support) with the candidates of other groupsrunning in different reserved seats in the same constituency.’31 Nevertheless, the apparent success of thepower-sharing of the Taif Accords in Lebanon has notinsulated the electoral system from serious review andproposed reform in 2006. 32Where have electoral systemsexacerbated ethnicpolarization?Similarly, both proportional and majoritarian systems,when combined with other institutions and circumstances,have tended to exacerbate ethnic tensions andcommunal segmentation. A number of experts haveargued that the segmented type of List PR has accentuateddivisions and retarded post-conflict integration inBosnia. 33 It is true that the Dayton Accords, signed inNovember 1995, finally brought a type of closure to thecivil war that had raged throughout the territory of theformer Yugoslavia since 1992, costing over 100,000 livesand the violent expulsion of over half of the Bosnian populationfrom their homes. But the hopes for peace born inDayton, Ohio, came at the cost of political structures thatseparated, segmented and ultimately made all politics inBosnia about ethnic identity and political-physical separation.No space was left for the evolution of moderatemulti-ethnic parties, which might sow the seeds of areturn to shared nationhood in the Balkans.The Dayton Accords divided Bosnia into two entities,the Federation (Bosniacs and Croats) comprising 51per cent of the land, and the Republika Srpska comprisingthe rest. The national parliament has an upper housewith five members from each of the three ethnic groups,while the lower house has 28 members elected from theFederation and 14 from the Republika Srpska. There is athree-person national Presidency, but Serbs elect theSerb member, Croats elect the Croat and Bosniacs theBosniac. Each community has an effective legislativeveto over any matter they choose to designate ‘destructiveof a vital interest’. There is balancing at almost everylevel of government, but it is rooted in ethnic identityand segmentation – elections are, by design, ethnic censusesin Bosnia. As noted earlier, while the system doesgive some reassurance to minority Croat and Serb populations,it totally excludes the representation of smallerELECTORAL SYSTEMS AND THE PROTECTION AND PARTICIPATION OF MINORITIES23

communities, such as the Roma or those who are ofmulti-ethnic identities.This vulgar, identity-freezing, form of consociationmay well have been necessary to get signatures on paperin Dayton and to stem the blood-letting in Bosnia. Butthe preoccupation with three segments has producedbleak prospects for longer-term integration and democraticconsolidation. Indeed, the electoral system andexecutive power-sharing gave little incentive to parties tomoderate their ethnically based appeals or work togetheronce elected. In the first seven years, the UN’s High Representativehad to assume a level of decision-making farbeyond what was envisioned to fill the vacuum left byrecalcitrant politicians. Unsurprisingly, elections in 1996and 1999 were characterized by the sight of all major partiescrafting appeals on the basis of hostile and polarizingnotions of ethnic community and difference. The electionsof 2002 actually saw a swing to even more extremenationalist parties in both the Bosniac and Serb entities.The International Crisis Group (Crisis Group) proposedthat Bosnian voters be given three votes, one for each‘ethnic list’ but, as Bogaards notes, this would create thestrange situation of using ethnic lists ‘as the means toovercome ethnic voting’. 34In Iraq in January 2005 it was not proportional representationper se that excluded Sunnis from representationand severely destabilized an already fragile situation, butthe type of List PR combined with the demographic andpolitical reality of a post-Hussein Iraq. The national listsystem used for the Constituent Assembly meant that Sunniswere certain to be seriously under-represented if votersin Sunni neighbourhoods stayed away from the polls,either through fear or as part of a boycott. To date, Iraqhas struggled to rectify the polarization that resulted fromthis Sunni marginalization, but the outcome could havebeen quite different with one slight adaptation to the ListPR system. If the electoral districts had been based on theprovinces rather than the entire country, the Sunnis wouldhave received a ‘fair’ share of the legislature regardless ofthe turn-out in their home provinces. For the legislativeelections of December 2005, the switch to a provincialbasedPR system was made and Sunnis gained an almostproportionate share of the legislature.While PR has clearly not been appropriate in everycircumstance, more often than not plurality-majority systemsare cited as dangers to inter-ethnic harmony. Manyof the most egregious failures of FPTP can be found inAfrica. By 1994, the long-time dictator of Malawi, DrHastings Kamuzu Banda, had finally given in to domesticand international pressure and allowed multi-party electionsto be scheduled. The opposition politicians, alongwith British and European donor countries, perceiveddivisions in Malawi to be rooted in a simplistic notion ofBanda versus the rest, the dictator versus the democrats,the old versus the new. They did not see identity politicsas necessarily a divisive issue because, over centuries, languagegroups had become somewhat inter-mixedgeographically and inter-married. Thus all sides were contentto carry over the structure of Westminstermajoritarian institutions, which had been inherited fromBritish colonial rule, along with a strong presidency.However, a creeping and ominous new form of identitypolitics had been overlooked – that of regionalism, whichcut across traditional ties of language and culture. Centuriesof indigenous conflict, colonialism and missionaryactivity, along with 30 years of Banda’s autocratic rule,had advantaged the centre of the country and created second-classcitizens of the southerners, while marginalizingthe educated northerners to the third class.In the first election of 1994 (in a pattern repeated in1999) a full 99 per cent of the vote went to regionallyrooted parties. The United Democratic Front cobbledtogether a majority in the legislature and took the presidency(with just under 50 per cent of the vote) but 75 percent of their total vote came from the southern region.Banda’s Malawi Congress Party took 74 per cent of theirvote from the centre and came in second, with a third ofthe national vote; while 69 per cent of the third-placedAlliance for Democracy’s vote came from the north. 35 Historyhad crafted a political system based on the politics ofregional affiliation, while the electoral system parlayedthat into blunt polarization and the exclusion from powerof the ‘losing’ two regions. Today, Malawi wrestles withthe trauma of institutional failure and political fragmentation,not least because its political institutions do nothingto moderate the geographical cleavages that define Malawiansociety. Kenya, Lesotho, Nigeria, Zambia, andZimbabwe, to varying degrees, have all seen their politicalsphere defined and polarized ethnically by the FPTP systemthey inherited from colonial rule.Where have the positiveincentives of electoral systemsbeen overwhelmed by otherpressures?Innovative election systems introduced with the very bestof intentions are not always adequate to bring peace andstability. Fiji’s 1997 Constitution is a good example ofwell-intentioned constitutional levers being applied in away that weakened any positive electoral system pressuresand contributed to the swift breakdown of the democraticorder. The troubled Pacific island’s design process of themid 1990s was the academics’ ideal type. A small three-24 ELECTORAL SYSTEMS AND THE PROTECTION AND PARTICIPATION OF MINORITIES

person committee travelled around the world solicitingthe advice of the leading constitutional design specialistson what rules might best serve their divided nation – anation in which the indigenous Polynesians/Melanesians(a fluctuating majority-minority) have long been adamantabout their monopoly of government power, even as theIndo-Fijians (descended from nineteenth-century transportedplantation workers) surpassed them in absolutenumbers in the 1980s. Two coups and the removal of thefirst ever Indian-led government precipitated the constitutionalrewrite, which was aimed at reassuring both groupsin this highly segmented ethnically bipolar state.The Commission recommended that Fiji should moveaway from its communal voting system (where Indigenousand Indo-Fijians elected their representatives separately) toone using open seats, where candidates would have toappeal to a multi-ethnic electorate. They proposed theAlternative Vote form of preference voting, with the rationalethat this would force candidates of one ethnicity toappeal for the lower preference votes of the other community.These were all reasonable suggestions in and ofthemselves, but when the parliament ultimately adopted anew Constitution in 1997, they retained two-thirds of theseats as communal ones, thus destroying any incentive formulti-ethnic bridge-building in these races. Second, theychose to leave the new preference voting seats as singlememberdistrict ones (and not multi-member), whichmeant that, because of their small size and the territorialconcentration of indigenous and Indo-Fijians, there werevery few districts that had an adequate multi-ethnic mix togive an incentive for one group to appeal to the lowerordervotes of another. The incentive was minimized evenfurther by the Electoral Commission’s decision to allow astraight party ticket choice on the ballot, which left evenless reason to look outside of one’s ethnic group when voting.In 1999, 90 per cent of voters took this option.Third, and superimposed on top of the Commission’sstructure, the Fijian legislature added a grand coalitionexecutive with all parties winning over 10 per cent of thevote being offered seats in the cabinet. But governmentdecisions were to still to be taken by majority and thusthere was no veto for minorities on legislative issues –even if they directly impacted the rights and needs of agiven minority. In the elections of 1999, an Indian-ledparty formed the majority, with the backing of two moderateindigenous parties. The new government, led by theIndian Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry, proved to beintolerable to large sections of the indigenous Fijian community,who tacitly supported a coup led by GeorgeSpeight, an indigenous Fijian, a year later. New electionsheld in 2001 restored the indigenous Polynesian-Melanesiansto political dominance and democracy wassuccessfully subverted in favour of ethnic hegemony.Another ‘bi-polar’ case of two groups of roughly equalsize defined and divided by ethnic identity is Guyana.There, 40 years of a national List PR system, which onewould have expected to breed multi-ethnic alliances andparty slates, has done nothing to break the rigid politicaland social segregation between Afro-Guyanese and Indo-Guyanese. Similarly, the preference voting of STV inNorthern Ireland, a system again designed to craft incentivesfor inter-ethnic vote swapping and moderation, hasdone little to produce such behaviours. If anything, thepolarized Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and SinnFein benefited from transfers between anti-agreementNationalists and Unionists in the last Assembly electionsof 2003.A List PR electoral system was used in Angola in1991, but the aftermath of those ‘peace elections’ was disastrous.After a 15-year bloody civil war costing at least1.5 million lives, international mediators brokered a settlementbetween the ruling MPLA party of Eduardo dosSantos and UNITA’s Jonas Savimbi. The peace settlementdid give some hope to the numerically smaller UNITAand a national List PR system was used to ensure fairmajority–minority representation in the legislature, but apresidential winner-takes-all system was established,which gave little incentive to the losers to commit themselvesto the frustration of legislative opposition politics.In the elections of September 1992, dos Santos won 49per cent to Savimbi’s 40 per cent. When Savimbi lost theonly prize worth having, it was inevitable that he wouldrestart the civil war. A failed transition to democracy hereresulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands.Related issues that impactelectoral system choiceThere are three administrative and legal issues whichimpact minority access to representation and are conditionedby the electoral system used.Which mechanisms can best facilitateminority women’s participation? 36A variety of gender-inclusive mechanisms can be used toensure the election of women to legislative office (e.g.reserved seats, quotas within parliament or for party candidateselection, and other affirmative action inducementsor requirements) and, because of the smaller size ofminority parties and caucuses, such mechanisms can haveeven greater impact on the numbers of minority womenelected than women from the majority group. There is agrowing trend to mandate that, when parties constitutetheir ordered candidate slates within List PR systems, theynot only include a certain number of women but alsoposition them high enough on their lists to stand a rea-ELECTORAL SYSTEMS AND THE PROTECTION AND PARTICIPATION OF MINORITIES25

sonable chance of being elected. When minority partiesonly win a handful of seats, or majority parties have competingneeds to balance in the crafting of their lists, then astrong law that requires the alternation of men andwomen on lists enhances the chances of women fromminority communities to be elected. Under single-memberdistrict systems, minority parties are unlikely to have asurplus of ‘safe seats’ to give out to women candidates(unlike in the United Kingdom, where the ruling LabourParty was able to place a number of women in its ‘safeseats’, although few of these were women from minoritycommunities). When a certain number of seats arereserved in parliament for women, they are rarely minoritywomen. Under the SNTV system used in Afghanistan,the ethnic diversity of the nation was reflected in the 68women MPs elected. This was a product of the geographicconcentration of the Hazara, Tajik and Uzbekcommunities and the law which mandated that one ortwo women be elected from each of the country’s 35provinces.Illiteracy, voting procedure and ballotdesign 37Systems that require multiple votes (BV or MMP) orpreference voting (AV or STV) can be problematic forilliterate voters and any voter unfamiliar with the system(which could be the entire electorate in a new democracy).Minorities, and minority women in particular, areoften more likely to be illiterate, or not speak the majoritylanguage, than the norm. This places an onus on the electoraladministration to design ballots that are simple,intuitive and accessible to literate and non-literate alike,and for parties and civil society actors to educate voterson how best to strategically use their multiple votes toachieve their desired outcomes. When the ballot is morestraightforward (such as closed List PR or FPTP), ballotswith party/candidate symbols and colours may suffice (asin South Africa or Yemen). In the 2005 AfghanistanSNTV election, voters in Kabul were faced with a ballotpaper with nearly 400 candidate photos and symbolsfrom which they had a single vote to elect 33 MPs.Invalid ballots made up 4.5 per cent of the total in Kabuland they were as high as 11.1 per cent in the northernprovince of Takhar, where voters had to elect nine MPsfrom 97 candidates. The key is to avoid a system or votingprocedure that discriminates against one section ofsociety, be they illiterates, minorities or any other group.Constituency boundary design 38In single-member district systems (and majoritarianmulti-member systems like the Block Vote or Party BlockVote), district lines can fairly easily be manipulated toadvantage one group, and usually disadvantage the minority.Such gerrymandering has occurred with regularity incountries where re-districting is politically controlled,such as the United States, while the mal-aportionment ofseats (where one region receives more than its fair share)helped sustain the Kenya African National Union(KANU) of Daniel Arap Moi in power until 2002. It ismuch more difficult to skew election results with boundarymovements under List PR, STV or MMP. Indeed,when the number of MPs to be elected from a district ismore than five and the system is proportional for all practicalpurposes, gerrymandering becomes a moot issue.ConclusionsThe evidence given in this report that speaks to electoralsystem impact on minority representation and politicalinfluence strongly encourages us to evolve a theory ofdesign based on socio-political, cultural, historical anddemographic context. The key variables to be includedare: (1) minority group size; (2) degree of geographicalseparation or concentration; (3) pre-existence of ethnicallyhomogeneous or multi-ethnic parties; and (4) whovotes (which is a function of turn-out, citizenship andthe franchise).If we presume the franchise is open and there are nolegal obstacles to minority voting, campaigning and candidacy,then three questions should be posed on the routeto assessing the most minority-friendly electoral system:• Do minority groups chiefly vote for parties that articulatea ‘minority platform’ and are their representativesin parliament predominantly members of such parties,or do minority voters spread their votes across largeand small parties with multi-ethnic appeal and canMPs from minority groups be found in a variety ofparliamentary caucuses?• Are voters from the minority concentrated in certaingeographical districts and provinces, or are they scatteredand intermingled with majority voters andmembers of other minority groups?• Regardless of their numbers, do minority voters constitutea ‘tipping point’ in that their votes can makethe difference between non-minority parties winningnational government or their candidates winninglocally (i.e. in a state where Group A = 45 per cent,Group B = 45 per cent and Group C = 10 per cent,then minority group C would have ‘tipping point’potential. Conversely, where A = 60 per cent, B = 30per cent and C = 10 per cent, group C would nolonger have that leverage).While it is foolhardy to offer too-specific answers towhich system would be most appropriate for any given26 ELECTORAL SYSTEMS AND THE PROTECTION AND PARTICIPATION OF MINORITIES

grouping of cases based on their answers to the abovequestions it is reasonable to advise that: (1) minoritiesthat have ‘tipping point’ leverage in constituencies, alongwith sufficient concentration to win some district representationoutright, may be best served by single-membersystems like FPTP, TRS or AV, which give them bothdescriptive representation, geographically accountableMPs and a chance to influence races in areas where theydo not form a numerical majority. (2) Where minoritiesdo not have such leverage (because they are too small, ortoo geographically dispersed), then PR systems (either Listor MMP with district elements but overall proportionality)are probably more advantageous. (3) Where minoritiesare large enough to win a fifth or sixth of a regional votebut not sufficiently concentrated to take a proportionateshare of single-member districts, then the option of STVmight be entertained. (4) When the party system and votingbehaviour is multi-ethnic and parties are not rooted inchauvinist notions of identity, the ‘best’ systems are goingto be ones that promote and consolidate the existingalliances and avoid incentives to ethnic mobilization.However, in every case electoral system designers mustlook beyond mere numbers when it comes to the inclusionof minorities in the decision of the state. Vibrantparticipation means much more than small numbers oftoken minority members in a parliament. It is also a truismthat electoral systems are limited instruments ofchange and protection. They can ensure that minorityvoices are heard and encourage positive campaigns andmodes of politicking, but they sit at the centre of a muchbroader web of political institutions which, in sum, willdetermine the fate of minorities in the public sphere.ELECTORAL SYSTEMS AND THE PROTECTION AND PARTICIPATION OF MINORITIES27

RecommendationsTo all involved in design of newelectoral systems:1. Any new design or redesign of any electoral systemshould be based on the following principles:• ensuring the fair representation of each minoritygroup• ensuring that different groups will cooperate andthat appeals to nationalism will not be undulyrewarded.2. Designers of electoral systems must have a clear understandingof the situation of all minorities (ethnic/national, religious and linguistic) in the country beforebeginning the redesign. This should include the numbersof the minorities; their geographical spread, levelsof literacy (with particular emphasis on minoritywomen) and languages spoken.3. Designers of electoral systems should also be aware ofthe relevant rules of minority rights, including:• the right of all minorities to exist and be recognized• the rights of individuals to choose their identity/identities and not suffer any detriment for doing so• the rights of all members of society to freely practisetheir language, culture and religion, bythemselves or in community with others, includingin public and at elections• the rights of all to participate in decisions thataffect them, without any form of discrimination.4. Electoral systems should be designed to be appropriateto the particular needs of the society and all minoritieswithin it:• List PR can meet the needs of many minorities• single-member constituencies can benefit minoritieswhere their votes can be the ‘tipping point’.5. No electoral system should force electors and the electedinto pre-determined identities.6. Special measures may be necessary to ensure a fair representationof minority women.7. Electoral systems should ensure the rights of all topractise their language and religion. Special measuresmay be needed where minorities have high levels ofilliteracy.8. All existing electoral systems should be reviewed formeasures that have the effect of discriminatingagainst particular minorities and their representatives(e.g. high national thresholds) and these measuresamended.9. In all situations, but particularly in post-conflict societies,or in societies with high levels of inter-ethnic orreligious tension, electoral systems should be carefullydesigned to ensure cooperation across communities, andto require elected officials to have cross-communityappeal. Particular care should be taken to ensure that nopre-determined identities are forced on electors andelected in these conditions. The needs of smallerminorities should be particularly taken into account.28 ELECTORAL SYSTEMS AND THE PROTECTION AND PARTICIPATION OF MINORITIES

Relevant international instrumentsThere is a limited number of statutes that speak directly tominorities and the design of election systems, but a considerablenumber of instruments that speak to the rights of minorities to berepresented and included in decision-making. The most specificdocument is the OSCE Guidelines to Assist National Minority Participationin the Electoral Process (Warsaw), which was based inlarge part on the Lund Recommendations on the Effective Participationof National Minorities in Public Life.United Nations Declaration on the Rights ofPersons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religiousand Linguistic Minorities (Adopted by the UNGeneral Assembly, Resolution 47/135 of 18December 1992)Article 11. States shall protect the existence and the national or ethnic,cultural, religious and linguistic identity of minorities withintheir respective territories and shall encourage conditions forthe promotion of that identity.2. States shall adopt appropriate legislative and other measuresto achieve those ends.Article 2[…]2. Persons belonging to minorities have the right to participateeffectively in cultural, religious, social, economic and publiclife.3. Persons belonging to minorities have the right to participateeffectively in decisions on the national and, where appropriate,regional level concerning the minority to which theybelong or the regions in which they live, in a manner notincompatible with national legislation.4. Persons belonging to minorities have the right to establishand maintain their own associations.5. Persons belonging to minorities have the right to establishand maintain, without any discrimination, free and peacefulcontacts with other members of their group and with personsbelonging to other minorities, as well as contacts across frontierswith citizens of other States to whom they are related bynational or ethnic, religious or linguistic ties.Article 4[…]5. States should consider appropriate measures so that personsbelonging to minorities may participate fully in the economicprogress and development in their country.International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights(Adopted by the UN General Assembly; Resolution2200A (XXI) of 16 December 1966)Article 25Every citizen shall have the right and the opportunity, withoutany of the distinctions mentioned in Article 2 and withoutunreasonable restrictions:(a) To take part in the conduct of public affairs, directly orthrough freely chosen representatives.(b) To vote and to be elected at genuine periodic elections,which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shallbe held by secret ballot, guaranteeing the free expressionof the will of the electors.(c) To have access, on general terms of equality, to publicservice in his country.Article 26All persons are equal before the law and are entitled withoutany discrimination to the equal protection of the law. In thisrespect, the law shall prohibit any discrimination and guaranteeto all persons equal and effective protection againstdiscrimination on any ground such as race, colour, sex, language,religion, political or other opinion, national or socialorigin, property, birth or other status.International Convention on the Elimination of AllForms of Racial Discrimination (Adopted by the UNGeneral Assembly, Resolution 2106 (XX) of 21December 1965)Article 5In compliance with the fundamental obligations laid down inArticle 2 of this Convention, States Parties undertake to prohibitand to eliminate racial discrimination in all its forms andto guarantee the right of everyone, without distinction as torace, colour, or national or ethnic origin, to equality before thelaw, notably in the enjoyment of the following rights:[…](c) Political rights, in particular the right to participate in elections– to vote and to stand for election – on the basis of universaland equal suffrage, to take part in the Government as well asin the conduct of public affairs at any level and to have equalaccess to public service.Framework Convention for the Protection ofNational Minorities (1995)Article 31. Every person belonging to a national minority shall have theright freely to choose to be treated or not to be treated assuch and no disadvantage shall result from this choice orfrom the exercise of the rights which are connected to thatchoice.2. Persons belonging to national minorities may exercise therights and enjoy the freedoms flowing from the principlesenshrined in the present framework Convention individually aswell as in community with others.Article 15The Parties shall create the conditions necessary for theeffective participation of persons belonging to national minoritiesin cultural, social and economic life and in public affairs,in particular those affecting them.ELECTORAL SYSTEMS AND THE PROTECTION AND PARTICIPATION OF MINORITIES29

Notes1 Although they rarely pay a similar degree of attention togender inclusiveness.2 There have been very few legal cases brought so far byminorities challenging electoral systems. In Aziz v. Cyprus in2004, the European Court found a violation of human rights ofa Turkish Cypriot who was denied any chance to vote in theassembly of the Republic Cyprus (Greek dominated). This wasdue to the Republic still following a system of ethnic chambersin its parliament, but having put the Turkish chamber intosuspension since the Turkish invasion of 1974. This shows thatany ethnic representation must never have the effect of denyingsome groups or individuals fair representation. Two casesare currently going through the European Court of HumanRights, one, Yumak and Sadak v. Turkey is brought by two Kurdishpoliticians to challenge the Turkish electoral threshold of10 per cent and its effect of excluding Kurdish parties fromparliament. The other case Finci v. Bosnia and Herzegovina isbrought by a Jewish politician challenging the restriction onthose who can stand for election to the Bosnian Presidencyand House of Peoples (upper house).3 See Baldwin, C., Minority Rights in Kosovo under InternationalRule, London, MRG, 2006, p. 20.4 Pitkin, H., The Concept of Representation, Berkeley, Universityof California Press, 1967.5 Horowitz, D., ‘Electoral systems: a primer for decision makers’,Journal of Democracy, vol. 14, no. 4, pp. 119–20.6 See Reynolds, A., Electoral Systems and Democratization inSouthern Africa, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999.7 Kaspin, D., ‘The politics of ethnicity in Malawi’s democratictransition’, Journal of Modern African Studies, vol. 33, 1995,pp. 595–620.8 The FCNM, Article 3(1) states:“Every person belonging to a national minority shall have theright freely to choose to be treated or not to be treated assuch and no disadvantage shall result from this choice orfrom the exercise of the rights which are connected to thatchoice.”9 See Reynolds, A., Saltzman, J. and Stigant, S., ‘The greatesttest: consociationalism and conflict management in theSudan’, forthcoming.10 Lijphart, A., ‘Self-determination versus pre-determination ofethnic minorities in power sharing systems’, in W. Kymlicka(ed.), The Rights of Minority Cultures, Oxford, Oxford UniversityPress, 1995, p. 284.11 Ghai, Y., Public Participation and Minorities, London, MRG,2003, p. 5.12 See Juberias, F., ‘Post-Communist electoral systems andnational minorities’, in J. Stein (ed.), The Politics of NationalMinority Participation in Post-Communist Europe. Armonk,M.E. Sharpe, 2000, pp. 31–64.13 See Baldwin, op. cit., p. 19.14 See www.aceproject.org for detailed discussions of all theseareas.15 See Reynolds, A., Reilly, B. and Ellis, A., The New InternationalIDEA Handbook of Electoral System Design, Stockholm,IDEA, 2005.16 Roberts, N., Boston, J., Mcleay, E. and Levine, S. (eds), FromCampaign to Coalition: New Zealand's First General ElectionUnder Proportional Representation, Palmerston North, Dunmore,1997.17 See Fraenkel, J. and Grofman, B., ‘Introduction – politicalculture, representation and electoral systems in the PacificIslands’, Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, vol. 43,no. 3, 2005, p. 264.18 This discussion is drawn from Reynolds, A., ‘Reserved seatsin national legislatures’, Legislative Studies Quarterly, vol. 25,no. 3.19 Lewis, W.A., Politics in West Africa, London, Allen and Unwin,1967.20 Lijphart, A., Democracy in Plural Societies, New Haven, CT,Yale University Press, 1977; see also his Power-sharing inSouth Africa, Berkeley, Institute for International Studies, Universityof California, 1985.21 Lustick, I., ‘Stability in deeply divided societies: consociationalismversus control’, World Politics, vol. 31, 1979, pp.325–44.22 Lijphart, 1977, op. cit., pp. 25–44.23 Sisk, T.D., Power Sharing and International Mediation in EthnicConflicts, Washington, DC, United States Institute of PeacePress, 1996, p. 41.24 Ibid., p. 55.25 See Cohen, F., ‘Proportional versus majoritarian ethnic conflictmanagement in democracies’, Comparative PoliticalStudies, vol. 30, no. 5, 1997, pp. 607–30.26 Norris, P., ‘Ballots not bullets: testing consociational theoriesof ethnic conflict, electoral systems and democratization’, inA. Reynolds (ed.), The Architecture of Democracy, Oxford,Oxford University Press, pp. 206–47.27 For more on Southern Africa see Reynolds, A., Electoral Systemsand Democratization in Southern Africa, Oxford, OxfordUniversity Press, 1999.28 See Fraenkel, J. and Grofman, B., ‘Does the Alternative Votefoster moderation in ethnically divided societies? The caseof Fiji’, Comparative Political Studies, vol. 39, 2006, pp.623–51.29 See Roberts, N., Boston, J., Mcleay, E. and Levine, S. (eds),From Campaign to Coalition: New Zealand's First GeneralElection Under Proportional Representation, PalmerstonNorth, Dunmore, 1997.30 Lijphart, A., ‘The puzzle of Indian democracy: a consociationalinterpretation’, American Political Science Review, vol. 90,no. 2, 1996, pp. 263.31 Horowitz, op. cit., p. 118.32 See the recommendations of the Boutros Commission (anindependent commission set up to propose changes to theelectoral law in the wake of the Rafik Hariri assassination in2005).33 See Bogaards, M., ‘Electoral systems and the managementof ethnic conflict in the Balkans’, in A. Mungiu-Pippidi and I.Krastev, Nationalism after Communism: Lessons Learned,Budapest, CPS Books, 2004; Scholdan, B., ‘Democratizationand electoral engineering in post-ethnic conflict societies’,Javnost, vol. 7, no. 1, 2000; Juberias, op. cit.; Bose, S., Bosniaafter Dayton: Nationalist Partition and International Intervention,London, Hurst and Co., 2002.34 Bogaards, op. cit., p. 255.35 See Kaspin, D., ‘The politics of ethnicity in Malawi’s democratictransition’, Journal of Modern African Studies, vol. 33,1995, 614–15.36 For a detailed discussion on mechanisms to improvewomen’s representation see Karam, A. (ed.), Women in Parliament:Beyond Numbers, Stockholm, International IDEA,1998, and the Global Database of Quotas for Womenproject on the web at http://www.quotaproject.org/.30 ELECTORAL SYSTEMS AND THE PROTECTION AND PARTICIPATION OF MINORITIES

37 For more information on the impact of ballot design seeReynolds, A. and Steenbergen, M., ‘How the world votes: thepolitical consequences of ballot design, innovation andmanipulation’, Electoral Studies, vol. 25, no. 4, 2006. Forimages of over 100 ballots used around the world go to:http://www.unc.edu/~asreynol/ballots.html38 For detailed information on boundary design seehttp://www.aceproject.org/ace-en/topics/bd/index.htmlELECTORAL SYSTEMS AND THE PROTECTION AND PARTICIPATION OF MINORITIES31

ReferencesBaldwin, C., Minority Rights in Kosovo under International Rule,London, MRG, 2006.Bogaards, M., ‘Electoral systems and the management of ethnicconflict in the Balkans’, in A. Mungiu-Pippidi and I. Krastev (eds),Nationalism after Communism: Lessons Learned, Budapest, CPSBooks, 2004.Bose, S., Bosnia after Dayton: Nationalist Partition and InternationalIntervention, London, Hurst and Co., 2002.Cohen, F., ‘Proportional versus majoritarian ethnic conflict managementin democracies’, Comparative Political Studies, vol. 30,no. 5, 1997.Fraenkel, J. and Grofman, B., ‘Introduction – political culture, representationand electoral systems in the Pacific Islands’,Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, vol. 43, no. 3, 2005.Guinier, L., The Tyranny of the Majority, New York, Free Press, 1994.Horowitz, D., ‘Electoral systems: a primer for decision makers’,Journal of Democracy, vol. 14, no. 4, 2003.Juberias, F., ‘Post-Communist electoral systems and nationalminorities’, in J. Stein (ed.), The Politics of National Minority Participationin Post-Communist Europe, Armonk, M.E. Sharpe, 2000.Karam, A. (ed.), Women in Parliament: Beyond Numbers, Stockholm,International IDEA, 1998.Kaspin, D., ‘The politics of ethnicity in Malawi’s democratic transition’,Journal of Modern African Studies, vol. 33, 1995, pp.595–620.Lewis, W.A., Politics in West Africa, London, Allen and Unwin,1967.Lijphart, A., Democracy in Plural Societies, New Haven, CT, YaleUniversity Press, 1977.Lijphart, A., ‘Self-determination versus pre-determination of ethnicminorities in power sharing systems’, in W. Kymlicka (ed.), TheRights of Minority Cultures, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1995.Lijphart, A., ‘The puzzle of Indian democracy: a consociationalinterpretation’, American Political Science Review, vol. 90, no. 2,1996.Norris, P., ‘Ballots not bullets: testing consociational theories ofethnic conflict, electoral systems and democratization’, in A.Reynolds (ed.), The Architecture of Democracy, Oxford, OxfordUniversity Press, 2002.Reynolds, A., Electoral Systems and Democratization in SouthernAfrica, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999.Reynolds, A., ‘Reserved seats in national legislatures’, LegislativeStudies Quarterly, vol. 25, no. 3, 2005.Reynolds, A. and Steenbergen, M., ‘How the world votes: thepolitical consequences of ballot design, innovation and manipulation’,Electoral Studies, vol. 25, no. 4, 2006.Reynolds, A., Reilly, B. and Ellis, A., The New International IDEAHandbook of Electoral System Design, Stockholm, IDEA, 2005.Reynolds, A., Saltzman, J. and Stigant, S., ‘The greatest test:consociationalism and conflict management in the Sudan’, forthcoming.Roberts, N., Boston, J., Mcleay, E. and Levine, S. (eds), FromCampaign to Coalition: New Zealand's First General ElectionUnder Proportional Representation, Palmerston North, Dunmore,1997.Pitkin, H., The Concept of Representation, Berkeley, University ofCalifornia Press, 1967.Scholdan, B., ‘Democratization and electoral engineering in postethnicconflict societies’, Javnost, vol. 7, no. 1, 2000.Sisk, T.D., Power Sharing and International Mediation in EthnicConflicts, Washington, DC, United States Institute of Peace Press,1996.Young, I., ‘Deferring group representation’, in I. Shapiro and W.Kymlicka (eds), Ethnicity and Group Rights, NOMOS XXXIX, NewYork, New York University Press, 1997.32 ELECTORAL SYSTEMS AND THE PROTECTION AND PARTICIPATION OF MINORITIES

Getting involvedMRG relies on the generous support of institutions andindividuals to further our work. All donations receivedcontribute directly to our projects with minorities andindigenous peoples.One valuable way to support us is to subscribe to ourreport series. Subscribers receive regular MRG reportsand our annual review. We also have over 100 titles whichcan be purchased from our publications catalogue andwebsite. In addition, MRG publications are available tominority and indigenous peoples’ organizations throughour library scheme.MRG’s unique publications provide well-researched,accurate and impartial information on minority andindigenous peoples’ rights worldwide. We offer criticalanalysis and new perspectives on international issues.Our specialist training materials include essential guidesfor NGOs and others on international human rightsinstruments, and on accessing international bodies. ManyMRG publications have been translated into severallanguages.If you would like to know more about MRG, how to supportus and how to work with us, please visit our websitewww.minorityrights.org, or contact our London office.ELECTORAL SYSTEMS AND THE PROTECTION AND PARTICIPATION OF MINORITIES

working to secure the rights ofminorities and indigenous peoplesElectoral systems and the protection and participation of minoritiesThe protection of minorities and their inclusion in thepolitical process is essential to both avoiding and resolvingconflicts. But minorities are often excluded from electoralreform, constitution drafting and the creation of newgovernments.By considering the electoral systems behind differentconflict situations worldwide, this report shows how theparticipation of minorities in the legislative process at thestage of electoral reform is a key tool for peace-buildingand future conflict prevention. Protection of minority rightsis best achieved and articulated through a combination ofmajority sensitivity and minority inclusion.The report focuses on electoral systems, the way votes aretranslated into seats, and its impact on the representationof minority communities. It outlines the menu of electoralsystem options and their consequences; the process ofelectoral system design and reform; and discusses how thesystem chosen affects not just the numbers of minoritymembers elected but also how the system can mould elitebehaviours and levels of inclusion and accommodation.Minority Rights Group International 54 Commercial Street, London E1 6LT, United Kingdom ISBN 1 904584 55 1Tel +44 (0)20 7422 4200 Fax +44 (0)20 7422 4201Email minority.rights@mrgmail.org Website www.minorityrights.org