Dear subscribers,
Politicians have a vested interest in preserving bad institutions that give them power, so any meaningful reform in any country relies on the public’s understanding of different institutional alternatives and their collective will for change.
So, if possible, please spare a few dollars to help me create more video content like this.
Video script:
First, a disclaimer. I’m not a scholar anymore. I just don’t have the physical strength for those all-nighters. But in my PhD years, I did study the shit out of electoral systems and even published a book about it. So you need to hear me out on this. As far as I know, I’m the only electoral system guy on TikTok. So you don’t have a lot of choice.
Let me put it straight: America’s electoral system is one of the worst, which is natural, because it’s also one of the oldest. What do you expect, right? It’s like using a cell phone from the 90s.
Last week, I talked about how countries with a proportional representation system almost never have to worry about gerrymandering. In fact, they don’t even have to worry about redistricting.
Today I want to show you that preventing gerrymandering is far from the best part of proportional representation.
What’s the best part? That is the central thesis of my book. Proportional representation makes the majorities unstable. And that instability is the fundamental safeguard against the tyranny of the majority.
Have you thought about why democratic countries tend to have things like due process and judicial independence? It’s not because the majority of the voters are always good people. It’s because elections alternate winners and losers, which motivates the winners to build safeguard mechanisms in case they become losers.
But, just relying on the turnover from elections is not enough. What about the time between the elections? Do you really want the losing side to have zero power for several years in a row? That’s scary. What if the winning side goes crazy? I don’t have to remind you of that possibility.
In countries with proportional representation, however, almost no party can have a majority of seats. So the winning coalition at any moment is always made of two or more parties. That means if your party is on the losing side today, you can always try to exploit the disagreement within the winning side and strike a win in the next round. In each round of the legislative battle, the winning coalitions can be different depending on the issues, but sometimes also depending on pure luck.
Now, this unpredictability of voting outcome is called “cycling”. Political scientists used to think it was a bad thing. Some books may still say that. But more people in recent years, including myself, believe that it’s actually a good thing. Why do we want everything to be predictable? My kids don’t even want their breakfast to be predictable. In politics, some limited chaos is definitely good because it prevents a permanent majority.
So technically, how does proportional representation create more parties?
Firstly, this is America’s first-past-the-post system.
Let’s say this area has 10 districts. You have a party that earned 10% of the votes in each district. How many seats do you get? Zero. I’m sorry. Your votes are spread too thin. They don’t help.
But, what if we switch to proportional representation, remove the district boundaries and make this whole area a big district with 10 seats? How many seats does your party get? 10 X 10% =1 . Just by removing the district boundaries, your small party will magically gain a foothold in the parliament. What? The same voters, but more parties. But that’s not over. When voters notice that your party has the ability to win seats, more of them will start voting for you because they don’t have to worry about wasting their votes on a party that’s too small.
After a while, your party may become the kingmaker that determines which big party will be able to form a winning coalition. You may not always get what you want, but you may be able to negotiate some policy concessions. And you don’t have to worry about spoiling the election because after you get the seats, your party can still feel free to cooperate with the “lesser of the two evils”.
Let’s say, if the lesser of the two evils fails to get a majority because of your party. It’s OK because your legislators can still form a post-election coalition with theirs. You can still vote with them on most of the bills. So there is no such thing as spoiling.
So under proportional representation, you can easily form new parties. And almost no party can acquire an outright majority. Isn’t that amazing?
Unfortunately, the proportional representation system can only apply to legislative elections, but not presidential elections, because there’s only one president. You can’t divide the presidency into different seats.
So proportional representation doesn’t always prevent an abusive presidency.
But again, think about it, why does a country need a president anyway? Half of the world’s democracies, Western Europe, Japan, Australia, Canada, India, South Africa, Malaysia etc, all these countries don’t have presidential elections. Their parliament simply appoints a guy among them to make executive decisions. This guy, the prime minister, is essentially an agent of the parliament. The parliament can remove the PM just like the board of directors of a company can remove a CEO. I think that’s a much better system than directly voting for a president, which has a good chance of turning into a cult leader.
But that’s an issue we can save for next time.
Share this post