Skip to main content

Currently Skimming:

Electoral Systems and Conflict in Divided Societies
Pages 420-482

The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.


From page 420...
... In addition, the electoral system that is most appropriate for initially ending internal conflict may not be the best one for longer-term conflict management. In short, while electoral systems can be powerful levers for shaping the content and practice of politics in divided societies, their design is highly sensitive to context.
From page 421...
... Institutions, Conflict Management, and Democracy The study of political institutions is integral to the study of democratization because institutions constitute and sustain democracies:2 as Scarritt and Mozaffar succinctly summarize, "to craft democracies is to craft institutions" (1996:3~. Perhaps most important for newly democratizing countries is the way that institutions shape the choices available to political actors.
From page 422...
... (ii) Regardless of how they perform economically, democracies that have more coherent and effective political institutions will be more likely to perform well politically in maintaining not only political order but also a rule of law, thus ensuring civil liberties, checking the abuse of power, and providing meaningful representation, competition, choice, and accountability.
From page 423...
... The extent to which institutional rules place a premium on the representational roles of such figures, or rather seek to break down the overall salience of ethnicity by forcing them to transcend their status as representatives of only one group or another, is central to the scholarly debate about political institutions in deeply divided societies. The Validity of Constitutional Engineering There is little dispute that institutions matter, but there is much greater dispute regarding how much one can (or would wish to)
From page 424...
... However, the promise of constitutional engineering rests on the assumption that long-term sociopolitical stability is the nation's overarching goal; and the institutions needed to facilitate that goal may not be the same as those which provide maximum short-term gain to the negotiating actors in the transitional period. Thus, institutional choice and constitutional engineering are, in practice, compatible approaches.
From page 425...
... As Lijphart notes, "if one wants to change the nature of a particular democracy, the electoral system is likely to be the most suitable and effective instrument for doing so" (1995a:412~. Nevertheless, the fact that electoral system design has not proved to be a panacea for the vagaries of communal conflict in many places has shed some doubt upon the primacy that electoral systems are given as "tools of conflict management." What we attempt to do in this paper is assess the cumulative evidence of the relationship between electoral systems and intrasocietal conflict, and determine under what conditions electoral systems have the most influence on outcomes.
From page 426...
... Elections may be "the defining moment," but while some founding elections have forwarded the twin causes of democratization and conflict resolution, such as South Africa and Mozambique, others have gone seriously awry, such as Angola and Burundi. While it is important not to overemphasize the importance or influence of political institutions (and particularly of electoral systems)
From page 427...
... Given this, is it possible to outline criteria that one might use to judge the success or failure of any given electoral system design? In light of the multicausal nature of institutions, democracy, and political behavior, it would be foolhardy to say with absolute certainty that a particular electoral system was solely, or even primarily, responsible for a change for better or worse in ethnic relations in a divided society.
From page 428...
... This is even more so if we are mindful not to ignore the important lessons of nineteenth-century emerging democracies such as the British dominions (Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand) , with their divisions between and within "settler" and "indigenous" groups, or the multiethnic societies of continental Europe (Belgium, Austria-Hungary, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg)
From page 429...
... And that factor will often determine whether institutional engineering is able to dissipate ethnic conflicts or merely contain them. There are two dimen
From page 430...
... on the other (see Shils, 1957; Geertz, 1973; Young, 1976; Anderson, 1991; Newman, 1991; Esman, 1994~. Clearly, if ethnic allegiances are indeed primordial, and therefore rigid, then a specific type of power sharing, based on an electoral system which primarily recognizes and accommodates interests based on ascriptive communal traits rather than individual ideological ones, is needed to manage competing claims for scarce resources.
From page 431...
... Challenging conventional wisdom, he argues that "the South African case is important for the contemporary study of ethnicity in politics precisely because it is an ethnically heterogeneous society without significant ethnic conflict." The election of April 1994 also lent credence to the claim that the inclusive institutional incentives of the interim constitution helped make politicized ethnicity far less salient. All parties (bar the Afrikaner Freedom Front and the National Party in the Western Cape)
From page 432...
... By contrast, under the "open-list" proportional representation (PR) system used for parliamentary elections in Sri Lanka, research has found that Sinhalese voters will, if given the chance, deliberately move Tamil candidates placed in a winnable position on a party list to a lower position a factor which may well have occurred in South Africa as well, had not the electoral system used been a "closed" list, which allowed major parties such as the ANC and the NP to place ethnic minorities and women high on their party list.
From page 433...
... In Spain and Canada, asymmetrical arrangements for, respectively, the Basque and Quebec regions, have been used to try and dampen calls for secession, while federalism has been promoted as an institution of conflict management in countries as diverse as Germany, Nigeria, South Africa, and Switzerland. All of these arrangements have a direct impact upon the choice of an appropriate electoral system.
From page 434...
... This has considerable implications for electoral engineers: it means that any system of election that relies on single-member electoral districts will likely produce "ethnic fiefdoms" at the local level. Minority representation and/or power sharing under these conditions would probably require some form of multimember district system and proportional representation.
From page 435...
... Electoral laws also affect the size and development of political parties. At least since Duverger, the conventional wisdom among electoral scholars has been that majoritarian electoral rules encourage the formation of a two-party system (and, by extension, one-party government)
From page 436...
... In recent years, first-past-the-post (FPTP) has facilitated the fragmentation of the party system in established democracies such as Canada and India, while PR has seen the election of what look likely to be dominant single-party regimes in Namibia, South Africa, and elsewhere.
From page 437...
... This is not to diminish the importance of electoral systems for these other institutions (for example, presidencies or federal legislatures) ; rather, it highlights the fact that constitutional engineering becomes increasingly complex as power is devolved away from the center.
From page 439...
... 3. The Party Block Vote (PBV)
From page 440...
... For many new democracies, particularly those that face deep divisions, the inclusion of all significant groups in the parliament can be an important condition for democratic consolidation. Outcomes based on consensus building and power sharing usually include a PR system.
From page 441...
... 11. The Single Transferable Vote (STY)
From page 442...
... Either political actors lack basic knowledge and information, and the choices and consequences of different electoral systems are not fully recognized or, conversely, political actors do have knowledge of electoral system consequences and thus promote designs which they perceive will maximize their own advantage (see Taagepera, 1998~. In both of these scenarios, the choices that are made are sometimes not the best ones for the long-term political health of the country concerned; at times, they can have disastrous consequences for a country's democratic prospects.
From page 443...
... Huntington's first wave, from 1828 until 1926, saw several examples of deliberate electoral engineering that are now well-established electoral institutions. The alternative vote system introduced for federal elections in Australia in 1918, for example, was intended to mitigate the problems of conservative forces "splitting" their vote in the face of a rising Labor Party.
From page 444...
... In recent years, transitions to democracy in Hungary, Bolivia, South Africa, Korea, Taiwan, Fiji, and elsewhere have all been accompanied by extensive discussion and debate about the merits of particular electoral system designs. A parallel process has taken place in established democracies, with Italy, Japan, and New Zealand all changing their electoral systems in the l990s.
From page 445...
... , which would have ensured the overrepresentation of whites in the new Constituent Assembly. After expressions of unease that South Africa was promoting PR solely in order to fractionalize the assembly, the UN Institute for Namibia advised all political parties interested in a stable independence government "to reject any PR system that tends to fractionalize party representation" (see Cliffe et al., 1994:116~.
From page 446...
... Many fledgling democracies in the 1950s and 1960s adopted copies of the British system, despite consistent misgivings from Westminster that it was "of doubtful value as an export to tropical colonies, to primitive societies in Africa and to complex societies in India." The sorry history of many such choices has underlined the importance of designing electoral and constitutional rules for the specific conditions of the country at hand, rather than blithely assuming that the same "off-the-shelf" constitutional design will work identically in different social, political, and economic circumstances. ELECTORAL SYSTEMS AND CONFLICT MANAGEMENT The comparative experience suggests that four specific systems are particularly suitable for divided societies.
From page 447...
... In a discussion of the proposals for South Africa he noted that STV might indeed be superior for reasonably homogeneous societies, but "for plural societies list PR is clearly the better method" because it: (1) allows for higher district magnitude thus increasing proportionality, (2)
From page 448...
... , South Africa (1994) , Mozambique (1994)
From page 449...
... As it is easy to mobilize support by playing the "ethnic card," major parties in Bosnia have every incentive to emphasize ethnic issues and sectarian appeals. Bosnia's 1996 elections were effectively an ethnic census, with electors voting along ethnic lines and each of the major nationalist parties gaining support almost exclusively from their own ethnic group (see Reilly, 1998b)
From page 450...
... The way in which power sharing requires geographically concentrated groups who have autonomy, not only in regional affairs, may ultimately increase the segmental divides. The tension remains: How does one recognize segmental groups, while at the same time attempt to diminish their importance?
From page 451...
... Centripetalists argue that the use of particular electoral rules which encourage politicians to campaign for the votes of members of rival groups, via "vote pooling" and "preference swapping" can induce interethnic bargaining and promote accommodative behavior. At the core of this approach, as developed by Donald Horowitz (1985, 1990, 1991)
From page 452...
... Under AV, vote pooling took place in three primary ways, all of which were predicated on the assumption that most voters would invariably give their first preference to their own clan or "home" candidate. The most common and successful method of vote pooling was for a candidate who had a limited "home" support base to campaign widely for secondlevel support among rival groups.
From page 453...
... . AV was also recommended for elections to postapartheid South Africa (Horowitz, 1991)
From page 454...
... and that, "although vote pooling is theoretically compelling, there is simply insufficient empirical evidence at the level of national politics to support claims that subsequent preference voting can lead to accommodative outcomes."25 In fact, there is a considerable range of evidence from PNG, Australia, Sri Lanka, and elsewhere which demonstrates centripetalism in action, although much of this material remains relatively obscure (see Reilly, 1998a)
From page 455...
... attempts to build on the philosophies underpinning both consociationalism and centripetalism, by retaining the key consociational planks of mandatory executive power sharing and a PR electoral system, but utilizing the centripetal electoral system incentives of STV rather than rigid list PR. Indeed, one of the two most important institutional planks of integrative consensualism is the STV electoral system (the other being the rejection of institutions which entrench ethnic or cultural political blocks within the party system)
From page 456...
... The argument is that if the institutional incentives embedded within integrative consensual democracy work as hypothesized, they will allow the space for and, indeed, provide incentives for, the growth of multiethnic political parties, but they will not guarantee that such parties flourish. It follows, therefore, that integrative consensus democracy is only an option in plural societies which show signs that ethnicity need not endure as the sole driving force of politics.
From page 457...
... While consociationalism is nearly always based on a list PR system, integrative consensualism requires the use of the single transferable vote to encourage party appeals beyond defined ethnic boundaries. Under this system, segments of opinion would be represented proportionately in the legislature, but there would be a great incentive for political elites to appeal to the members of other segments, given that second preferences on the ballot paper are of prime importance.
From page 458...
... The size of the constituencies, already small in population, means that a candidate will only need 2,000-3,000 votes to be elected. Other integrative consensus arrangements include obligatory power sharing in the executive (the first prime minister will come from the largest community, while the deputy will come from the minority community)
From page 459...
... Each of these will be described below. Communal Rolls The most straightforward way of explicitly recognizing the importance of ethnicity is to utilize a system of communal representation.
From page 460...
... reserve parliamentary seats for identifiable ethnic or religious minorities. Representatives from these reserved seats are usually elected in much the same manner as other members of parliament, but are often elected by members of the particular minority community designated in the electoral law.
From page 461...
... Quota seats may also breed resentment on the behalf of majority populations and increase mistrust between various minority groups. Ethnically Mixed Lists Some countries use variations on a block vote to ensure balanced ethnic representation, as it enables parties to present ethnically diverse lists of candidates for election.
From page 462...
... , in general most multiethnic societies need political institutions which help to break down the salience of ethnicity rather than predetermining it as the basis of electoral competition. CONCLUSIONS Divided societies, like Tolstoy's unhappy families, tend to be divided in different ways.
From page 463...
... The systems we concentrate upon, as integral parts of the four "engineering packages" we identified in the section on Electoral Systems and Conflict Management, are: list proportional representation (e.g., Belgium, Switzerland, and postapartheid South Africa) , the alternative vote (e.g., Papua New Guinea, 1964-1975, and Fiji since 1997)
From page 465...
... . The exception to this rule has been the use of STV for various elections in Northern Ireland, which is clearly a deeply divided society and where interethnic vote transfers have not historically been a factor in conflict management (see Elliott, 1992~.
From page 468...
... It is no surprise, then, that countries with a few large, geographically concentrated groups (Belgium, Switzerland, South Africa, much of post-Dayton Bosnia) have typically chosen PR electoral systems, while countries with more intermixed populations were more likely to choose mixed or majoritarian models (pre-war Yugoslavia, India, Trinidad and Tobago, Fiji)
From page 469...
... Minority representation and/or power sharing under these conditions would probably require some form of multimember district system such as proportional representation. Contrast this with the highly intermixed patterns of ethnic settlement found as a result of colonial settlement, labor importation, and diaspora populations found in some Asia-Pacific (e.g., Singapore, Fiji, Malaysia)
From page 470...
... For one thing, almost all of the "extreme"-intensity conflicts from Table 11.3 Bosnia, Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland, and Lebanon suffered a breakdown in democracy under the specified system, which serves as a sobering reminder of the limits of constitutional engineering. Second, there is a clear regional concentration of electoral system choices: virtually all the countries of continental Europe, whether ethnically divided or not, use list PR systems (which are also common in Latin America and Southern Africa)
From page 471...
... 471 Do ON CD ~ _ o ~ U CD CD CD o En ~ MU cry o u cry o 5CD ·_1 ·_1 ¢ ~ o .
From page 472...
... Unfortunately, the use of STV in divided societies has been extremely limited and inconclusive to date. Nonetheless, there is some encouraging evidence from Northern Ireland's 1998 elections, where STV formed part of a wider prescription for power sharing between the Catholic and Protestant populations, that STV served to advantage the proagreement, nonsectarian center (Wilder, 1998~.
From page 473...
... South Africa, which successfully conducted its transitional 1994 election using a national-list PR system and a mandated "Government of National Unity," has moved away from power-sharing measures and may change to some form of constituency-based PR system for its next elections in 2004. The differences between the needs of transitional and consolidated democracies are represented diagramatically at Table 11.5.
From page 474...
... It should also be remembered that, although conflict management packages based on consociationalism, centripetalism, consensualism, and explicitism do represent alternative approaches, they are not mutually exclusive. In fact, creative constitutional engineering that utilizes appropriate levers from a number of divergent approaches may well offer the
From page 475...
... This constitution mandated a centripetal approach to electoral competition (via the alternative vote) , but also included provisions borrowed from consociationalism (mandated power sharing)
From page 476...
... 14For example, South Africa used a classically proportional electoral system for its first democratic elections of 1994, and with 62.65 percent of the popular vote the African National Congress (ANC) won 63 percent of the national seats.
From page 477...
... 23Connors argues that in South Africa consociationalism "rather than mitigating ethnic conflict, could only wittingly or unwittingly provide a basis for ethnic mobilization by providing segmental leaders with a permanent platform" (1996:426~. 24Horowitz, 1990:47125Sisk, 1996:62.
From page 478...
... Connors, Michael Kelly 1996 "The Eclipse of Consociationalism in South Africa's Democratic Transition." Democratization 3:420-434. Constitution Review Commission 1996 The Fiji Islands: Towards a United Future.
From page 479...
... 1985 Power Sharing in South Africa. Policy Papers in International Affairs No.
From page 480...
... Mattes, Robert B 1995 The Election Book: Judgement and Choice in South Africa's 1994 Elections. Cape Town: IDASA Public Information Centre.
From page 481...
... Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Reynolds, Andrew, ed 1994 Election '94: South Africa An Analysis of the Results, Campaigns, and Future Prospects.
From page 482...
... Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1996 Power Sharing and International Mediation in Ethnic Conflicts.


This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More information on Chapter Skim is available.