Contextual Determinants of Electoral System Choice - Ã bo Akademi

disadvantage is that it presupposes a reasonable degree of literacy and numeracy tobe used effectively. Like all other single-member systems, AV suffers fromdisproportional seat distribution and vulnerability to gerrymandering andmalapportionment (Reynolds and Reilly 1997: 38). However, Reilly (2001: 176)argues that the common way of assessing proportionality on the basis of firstpreferences offers a misconceived and misleading interpretation of the truerelationship between seats and votes. Like Michael Gallagher (1986), he suggeststhat the final vote count should be used for measuring the proportionality of AV.2.2.3 Proportional Systems2.2.3.1 List PRThe principle of the proportional method – often simply called PR – is that theshare of seats awarded to each party should be equal to the share of votes. Thepreferences of the electorate should be mirrored in the legislature. There are twobasic types of proportional elections: list systems and the single transferable vote. 6In list systems, each party presents a list of candidates in each constituency. Thenumber of candidates on the list depends on the number of seats to be filled.Electors vote for a party, and the proportion of votes for each party determines theseat allocation. Winning candidates are normally taken from the lists in order oftheir position on the lists. In addition to the party vote, some list systems alsoinclude an element of preferential voting. The district magnitude varies a lotbetween PR countries: Chile, for instance, applies two-member constituencies,whereas Israel and Guyana, among others, apply nationwide constituencies. 7 Twomain seat allocation formulas have been used: the highest average and the largestremainder. The former determines the seat allocation by division, whereas thelatter does so by subtraction.6 There has been some disagreement among scholars whether STV should be regarded as a proportional formula ornot. In Norris’ classification, for instance, STV is treated as a semi-proportional formula along with CV and LV(1997: 297-312).7 Siavelis and Valenzuela (1996: 77-99) regard the Chilean electoral system as majoritarian despite the use of thed’Hondt formula for seat allocation. Because of the lowest possible district magnitude a PR system can have, thissystem operates very much like a majoritarian one. One reason for introducing this electoral system was to avoid thepolarized multiparty system that had characterized much of Chile’s pre-authoritarian history, and create a two-partysystem. Nevertheless, this is technically a PR system, and like Jones (1995), I classify the Chilean system as list PR.28