Whether the subject is political transition in the former Soviet Union, South Africa, Romania, or Iraq, the movement toward democracy has been, and continues to be, symbolized by elections. If "the people" do not have a say in determining who governs, through free and fair elections, one does not recognize that country as a democracy. Elections are so central to this basic idea of democracy that once elections have been adopted, suffrage is generally universal for citizens eighteen and older. This generality holds for countries thought to be more restrictive of civil liberties and civil rights: Iran (a theocracy)—which even drops the age to fifteen—and China (still communist). A few exceptions exist: Felons lose their suffrage in the United States while in prison or on parole, and lose it completely in fourteen states upon conviction. In Guatemala active members of the military are not allowed to vote and must remain inside their barracks on election day. In Kuwait women cannot vote; in Saudi Arabia no one can vote. The larger concern about free and fair elections in many parts of the world derives from unwritten rules or illegal actions that hamper turnout or render electoral results suspicious. These violations include intimidating voting environments, insecure ballot boxes (ballot stuffing), nonsecret voting, threats of retaliation, a lack of independent supervision of polling centers, and government monopoly of the media.
This is not to say that one only encounters elections in democratic systems. Elections have been used by many types of authoritarian or totalitarian regimes to legitimize leaders and systems. In such regimes, this is the only role of elections. Although elections also legitimize nonauthoritarian regimes, they do much more than confer the right to govern. Elections provide the official, universal connection between citizens and their government. They allow citizens the opportunity to provide input into the governing process (a prospective force), and they allow citizens to hold a government accountable for its policies (a retrospective force). Perhaps most important, elections provide for the peaceful, legitimate transfer of power between groups, without which political, social, and economic stability could be threatened. How do elections accomplish these goals in practice?
AT AN ELECTION MEETING IN KIRKUK, IRAQ IN 2005, AN IRAQI MAN REVIEWS A BALLOT PAPER. Despite overwhelming fears of violence, nearly 60 percent of Iraqi citizens exercised their right to vote for the first time in a free election on January 30, 2005. The 275-member Iraqi National Assembly, the country's transitional legislative body, was chosen. (SOURCE: MARWAN IBRAHIM/AFP/GETTY IMAGES.)
Types of Elections
Although a number of variations exist throughout the world on these basic themes, most electoral systems in democratic countries follow the general rules outlined by two approaches: single-member district (SMD) representation or proportional representation (PR). A third approach (e.g., the system in Germany and New Zealand) combines the two (SMD-PR). SMD representation works as follows. A given territory is divided into political pieces, and the number of those pieces is equal to the total number of representatives called for in one of the houses of the legislature. SMD is often used in "lower" houses and other selection measures are often used in "upper" houses (state or regional representation, appointment). In the United States, a bicameral system, the number of political pieces created equals the number of representatives in the House of Representatives. Senate membership is based on geography, with two representatives per state. Elections are held within each piece and one winner is chosen. The winner in SMD systems is often the candidate who receives the most votes (a plurality, not necessarily the majority). For the U.S. House, the representative body is composed of 435 individual winners.
Proportional representation systems differ from SMD systems in two main ways: geographic area of representation and vote choice. Take the same political territory and erase all the dividing lines for the pieces discussed above. One now has a single large area without small subsections; however, more than one representative is wanted. The Israeli parliament, the Knesset, is a good example in this regard because the nation-state of Israel is a single electoral district (with 120 members). When elections are held, the voters choose a preferred party, not a preferred candidate. All the votes are counted (in most PR systems a minimum threshold exists for any party to overcome before it may be counted at all) and the parties are ranked by the percentage of the total vote received. Each party is allowed to translate that percentage of vote received into a percentage of all possible seats in the house/parliament in question. In the Israeli example, a party receiving 20 percent of the vote would send twenty-four representatives to the Knesset. This vote-to-representative translation process continues until 100 percent of the seats are filled. Thus, 120 winners result instead of just one, but these winners did not all win individual contests; each party won something and the individuals sent to the legislature represent that win. Mixed systems (sometimes called personalized proportional systems) combine these two strategies to take advantage of the benefits of both. In the lower house of the German parliament, the Bundestag, about half its members are chosen by SMD and about half by PR.
The advantages of SMD and PR can be summarized as follows. SMD systems connect the voters to representatives who are local, who have traits voters like to evaluate in elections, and who can be held directly responsible for their actions in the legislature. PR systems provide for a wider variety of interests to be represented because there is more than one winner per election; they focus voters' attention on ideas and policies rather than the traits of specific individuals; and they are a more realistic reflection of the distribution of political preferences in a population.
SMD and PR electoral systems do more than give voters different kinds of choices in the voting booth. They also shape the party structure that is likely to emerge once a system is put into place. Two major parties usually dominate SMD systems. When there is only one winner and that winner must win the most votes, few incentives exist for any party representing a small segment of the population to expend the time, energy, and resources to contest an election. If that party is never likely to receive the most votes, it will never claim any share of the representative body. This leads to the formation of two general, or catch-all, parties, both capable of generating support from a broad segment of the population, both capable of winning any given election with the help of a few undecided or independent voters. PR systems have the exact opposite effect on the number of parties participating in elections. With multiple winners, and when winning means getting some percentage of the total popular vote greater than a minimal threshold, parties of all kinds have an incentive to contest elections. Some larger, more general parties form, but many parties stay focused on specific constituencies (like farmers or workers) or issues (like the environment). These are called particularistic parties. The overall result is this: SMD systems lead to middle-of-the-road, or centrist, political parties and political cultures and PR systems tend to lead to a more diversified, or wider, variety of parties and political cultures.
Given these basics, how do these electoral systems affect leadership? Leaders in PR systems are forced to compromise with competing political forces because they often have to govern with a coalition; that is, two or three parties must band together to gain a functional majority in the legislature, and in parliamentary systems, to select a prime minister. Given the need to satisfy these coalitions, PR leaders are more likely to have a diverse executive branch (or "government") by including members of several parties in the cabinet of ministers. These leaders, then, cannot focus simply on what they want to do; they must balance their constituents' desires with those of their coalition partners' constituents. This can slow down the legislative process, but the resulting legislation is often more widely accepted among all constituencies. SMD systems promote the opposite: less need to compromise, a more single-minded executive, and more polarized legislation.
PR systems focus elections on ideas, so leadership is more often affected by how citizens assess the successes and failures of the parties in power. A focus on the effectiveness of the coalition encourages voters to think along the lines of maintaining the status quo of the government as a whole or replacing it. SMD systems focus on individuals, so leadership is more often affected by how citizens assess the competence and integrity of their specific representative (that one representative of 435). This parochial perspective downplays the importance of thinking about maintaining or changing the government as a whole. Overall, one finds more frequent change in the leadership structures of PR systems than SMD systems. Stability is the rule of the day, however. The differences in leadership changes between PR and SMD become muted when the fact that most parties in governing coalitions stay in governing coalitions over time is considered. More often a change occurs in the rank order of the top two or three parties rather than the wholesale replacement of all the top parties with a set of all new parties.
Although there are many exceptions to the rule, these different approaches appear to affect voter turnout: It is generally lower in SMD systems than PR systems. Setting aside complicated models, giving people a wider choice of viable parties, connecting a wider variety of voters to their leadership by including more groups in governance, and allowing for the greater possibility of dramatic change in those controlling the levers of government (or promoting the appearance of a greater ability to hold leaders accountable)—these are all factors that seem to strengthen the connection between citizens and leaders. This does not mean political cultures could be changed easily by electoral rules, or that PR is necessarily more democratic or better than SMD, but it should provide some insight into why citizens of some countries interact with their leaders in very different ways than citizens of other countries.
