The link to my book: https://press.umich.edu/Books/D/Dividing-the-Rulers
Coupon code for the paperback version: UMWEB30
Video script:
I talked about my book before, but this time I’m really gonna talk about it, because 7 years after it was published, my publisher finally decided to do a paperback version.
This is the tricky thing about academic publishing. Normally, the number of copies in the first print is very small. Nobody has the patience to read the jargon. So they’re mostly sold to libraries. Because of the small scale, the average cost of each copy is really high.
Also, they can’t just find anyone to edit the book. The editor has to be trained in that subject. So yeah, the first print is always insanely expensive. This little guy had a price tag of 70 dollars.
That’s why I was reluctant to beg people to buy it. I’ve never spent that much money on a book in my life. How can I give that burden to you, right?
But, the second print is another story. The fixed costs are already covered by the first print. So this little guy is only 25 dollars. And the University of Michigan Press also gave me a coupon code:
Of course, that code is only valid on the publisher’s website, not on Amazon.
Since I’m not a scholar anymore, I haven’t really done any updates. So the data in there may be a little old. But I’m pretty sure the conclusions are still valid.
These are two key messages I wanted to convey in the book.
First, in a democracy, when the majority is less unified, it’s actually a good thing because the winners and the losers will alternate more easily.
For the book, I conducted a little experiment like this. People are randomly assigned to three-person groups. Each group repeatedly divides a dollar based on majority rule. In some groups, the rule of the game discourages defection, which means if you switch partners, you pay a cost. In some groups, the rule of the game doesn’t discourage defection.
And as expected, the second type of groups has much more unpredictable voting outcomes. And as a result, their players tend to have much more equal payoffs at the end.
So, it means, if we can design a political system where the legislators in a winning coalition are from different parties, and can easily defect to the other side w/o being punished, then the policy outcome in that country will probably be more pro-equality.
The 2nd point is that such a system is easily achievable. Why?
Because when you look at the entire data of the world’s elections, you’ll see that proportional electoral systems can always guarantee the lack of a majority party. There’re very few things in political science that are guaranteed. Normally, there’s a “maybe”, “likely”. But this pattern I just mentioned is pretty much guaranteed. It’s just too obvious in the data. It’s so obvious that most political scientists don’t even bother talking about it because, you know, what’s the fun? What’s the novel contribution?
But I was never a typical scholar. You know. I was less interested in finding new things than telling a good story from what’s already found. I’m a storyteller, not a hard-core data analyst.
So I show that, in countries with more than a million people, you can almost never find a party that can win a majority of the votes without institutional bias. Americans take large parties for granted. But the American parties are highly abnormal. They are so big only because the US Constitution is extremely unfriendly to small parties. I talked about this weird fact on pages 121 - 125.
In other democracies, you just can’t find parties that big. South Africa used to be an exception where the ANC constantly won a majority of the votes because of the legacy from the anti-apartheid movement. But in the most recent election, even the legendary ANC only got 40% of the votes. So guys, the United States is now the only sizable democracy where parties can stay that big. The only one.
What does this general pattern mean? It means voters always have diverse tastes. There is no such thing as a “majority group”. So as long as a country’s electoral system is proportional enough, there is no such thing as a majority party either. It’s just guaranteed. As long as you make your electoral system proportional, the winning coalition will always consist of two or more parties. It also means winning coalition can easily break apart, and as a result, the winners and the losers will alternate more frequently.
In other words, political equality can be engineered. And it’s not like rocket science. It’s actually pretty easy. Just make it proportional. The difficult part is not the design. The difficult part is how to overcome the resistance from the existing parties. That’s why I want more people to know about the idea.
A lot of kids on TikTok talk about “revolutions”. But what does it even mean? Where is your design? How do you want the government to be elected? Personally, I think talking about “revolutions” w/o a design of a new system is pretty cringe. Sorry for the honesty.
However, a reform like this would be way more tangible. The effectiveness is almost guaranteed, given other countries’ experience. New Zealand had a similar reform in the 90s to introduce a proportional system. At first, 53% of the voters voted for the reform. After a 15-year trial period, 57% voted to keep the new system. And among those who didn’t want to keep the new system, only less than half wanted to go back to the original first-past-the-post system. So the verdict was pretty clear. People want proportionality. They just need a chance to try it.
So please, give this book a read. I only get like 1 dollar from each copy. So I’m not promoting this for money. Maybe for fame, I don’t know, but mostly because I’m tired of this shitty system.
Share this post