Electoral Systems in 27 Democracies

Arend Lijphart leads a team of political scientists in a study of the electoral system in 27 democracies between 1945 and 1990, The group analyzes some 70 electoral systems as used by these countries and classifies them by means of comparative and statistical analysis. The group reports its findings in the book Electoral Systems and Party Systems and concludes that these various systems are not as complex or as diverse as is usually believed.

The group sets out its goals and methods clearly in the first chapter. The electoral system is said to be "the most fundamental element of representative democracy" (1) because the most necessary task in a representative democracy is achieved by the electoral system, defined as "the set of methods for translating the citizens' votes into representatives' seats" (1). This opening chapter is especially important in that the methodology provided enables the reader better to judge the data gathered and the conclusions drawn from that data in the rest of the book. The author states in the opening that certain choices have been made as to the type of system to study and the specific systems to be included in the selected category. Lijphart first notes that he will place his emphasis on those electoral systems found in the most successful democracies, meaning the European democracies that have been in place for a long time. He will also place an emphasis on what he says are the three most basic properties of these democracies: 1) the

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y variables and too many potential outcomes. The complexity of the system seems greater than Lijphart has indicated at the outset, yet his conclusion will be that it is actually less complex and that the number of outcomes possible are also fewer than is assumed. However, the systemic approach is clearly complex in that it is certain that no system remains static and that it changes over time. Lijphart himself addresses this when noting the difficulty in focusing on the small changes occurring within a particular electoral system. He says most of these are "neither a clear change of electoral formula nor a change of 20 per cent or more in the effective threshold or the assembly size" (92). Lijphart feared that these changes would have a major or significant effect on the outcome of certain variables, but he says that the results were entirely negative: The changes in disproportionality and in the effective numbers of elective and parliamentary parties were all about evenly divided between changes that confirmed and that disconfirmed the basic hypothesis (94). Lijphart says that this testing of the hypothesis showed that the electoral systems have a high degree of internal uniformity: "This increases the confidence we can h

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