Contextual Determinants of Electoral System Choice - Ã bo Akademi

Principe – did not adopt electoral provisions until the 1990s. Indonesia inheritedlist PR from the Netherlands; Suriname, however, preferred a mixed electoralsystem. All colonies of the United States, i.e. the Philippines, the Federated Statesof Micronesia, Marshall Islands and Belau, inherited the plurality formula whenindependence was attained. The Americans administered their colonies much in thesame way as the British, which probably explains the pattern. Western Samoainherited the plurality method from New Zealand. Belgium transferred list PR toCongo (-Kinshasa) and Rwanda – Burundi, the third Belgian colony, adoptedSMP. Somalia inherited list PR from Italy, whereas Libya prefered SMP. Nauruinherited AV from Australia – Papua New Guinea, however, rejected AV in favorof SMP when independence was declared. Namibia, the only colony of SouthAfrica, adopted list PR a few years before South Africa introduced the samesystem. East Timor, the youngest independent country of the world, adopted thesame electoral system as Indonesia applies, i.e. list PR.Of the former Soviet states, more than half chose another electoral system thanTBM. Notwithstanding, it is noteworthy that Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan,Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan retained the old electoral system afterindependence was attained. Only one of the countries that declared independencefrom the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, namely Bosnia-Herzegovina, adopted the same electoral system (in 1996) that simultaneouslyexisted in Yugoslavia, i.e. list PR.In table 6.2, the correlation between electoral system choice on the one hand andBritish, French and Soviet legacy on the other is separately given. These resultsmust be interpreted with cautiousness, because the variables are categorical.Nevertheless, it provides an idea of what to expect in the multivariate analyses. 40Despite observing only first choices of electoral systems in the analysis above, thetotal population is now paid attention to. All former British colonies (and French aswell as Soviet colonies separately) that adopted their first electoral systems withinten years after the end of the colonial rule are compared to all other cases. A fourthvariable that regards all former colonies is also included.40 In multivariate logistic regression analysis, a nominal dependent variable with three or several categories does notconstitute any problem, because each category is compared to all other categories separately.176