Contextual Determinants of Electoral System Choice - Ã bo Akademi

The second wave of democratization – from 1943 to 1962 – was characterized bythe re-establishment of some democracies and the process of decolonization.Electoral systems were either inherited from former colonial powers or imposed byoutside powers in order to meet a specific purpose. The postwar decolonizationresulted in many new independent countries in Africa and Asia, many of whichintroduced, or continued using, the electoral system of their colonial masters. Asmentioned, external imposition of electoral systems occurred in West Germany,Austria, Japan and South Korea (Reilly and Reynolds 1999: 9).The central feature of the ongoing third wave of democratization, which beganwith the overthrow of the Salazar dictatorship in Portugal in 1974, has beendeliberate electoral system design (1999: 9). An extensive debate on the merits ofdifferent electoral systems has been witnessed in several cases of democratictransition, such as Bolivia, South Africa and Fiji, as well as in establisheddemocracies like Italy, Japan and New Zealand. Due to the rareness of electoralreform in established democracies, Farrell (2001: 179) regards the growing numberof electoral system reforms as a new ‘fourth wave’ of electoral system choice.Electoral system choice as an epoch phenomenon is analyzed by means of avariable called temporal diffusion. A particular electoral system may be frequentlyadopted at a specific point in time and rarely chosen at other times. Accordingly,countries are to a great extent assumed to adopt electoral systems that many othercountries have recently chosen. The cognitive heuristics model, which isemphasized in Weyland’s (2005) analysis of the causal mechanisms behinddiffusion, underlies the wavelike pattern of diffusion: its modest start, sudden rise,and eventual decline. At certain points in time, there is a need for developing newinstitutions. Usually a particular system is more popular than other systems, andserves as a model for countries in a constitution building process. The constitutionis often a child of its time – the single parts of the constitutional framework can beperceived in the same way. However, it is difficult to predict which electoralsystem as well as other institutions, will be in fashion at a particular point in time.3.2.5 The Institutional PerspectiveThe third approach maintains that institutional choices are explained by the overallconstitutional design. Norris, for instance, emphasizes the importance of the111