Contextual Determinants of Electoral System Choice - Ã bo Akademi

Proportional systems will continue to be popular, because they provide a ratherstable parliamentary arena for the parties involved, thereby making thereplacement of PR systems with especially majoritarian systems rare. Thepopularity of the single-member plurality formula depends on whether severalautonomous British and American territories will become independent or not. Inmost countries implementing electoral reforms in the future, the formula willhardly be considered a real option. The other plurality formulas are already quiterare in the world. An increase in the popularity of the two-ballot majority formulais not likely. Most of the existing cases are non-democracies in Africa, Caucasusand Central Asia. Possible democratization processes in these countries are likelyto result in the replacement of two-ballot majority with more inclusive electoralprovisions, which has already taken place in several other countries in theseregions. The alternative vote will hardly be very popular in the future, because ithas always been regionally restricted to the South Pacific. Mixed systems ingeneral, and superposition, also called mixed-member majoritarian, in particular,have been frequently adopted in recent years. The apparent question is whether thepopularity of mixed systems with an independent combination of plurality/majorityand PR will persist. The popularity might well continue for a while, but a plausiblescenario is that more and more countries will come to agree with Sartori (1994: 75)who has described these mixed systems as a bastard-producing hybrid thatcombines the defects of majoritarian and PR systems. A logical consequence ofthis insight is to introduce a corrective mechanism to the mixed system, or toreplace the hybrid with a proportional list system.232