The Terrible Two Party System, part 2

The Means: Contrasts in the Institutions of Both Models

Arend Lijphart explains that there are two dimensions in which we can distinguish the majoritarian institutions and consensus institutions (1999) The two dimensions, the executive-parties and the federal-unitary dimensions, reveal inherent differences between these two approaches to democracies.  The one dimension that I want to focus on is the executive-parties dimension because it deals with variables such as how does a society determine the winner, who has access to the government so that its policies can reflect his or her preferences, and how many people are in control.  The one single factor that is crucial to what type of government a democracy is practiced is the way that the officials are elected.  For example, we can label pre-March/2003 Iraq a dictatorship because Saddam Hussein “won” his elections through uncivil means by way of threats and violence.  We can tell which nation is a majoritarian democracy due to the fact that nearly all of these societies have an electoral process that is a zero-sum game.  A zero-sum game is one in which there is a clear definite winner that wins everything and a loser who definitely win nothing.  To this effect, elections in majoritarian democracies generally tend to be won in terms of pluralities.  Whichever party/ individual wins the election also wins the single-member district without any distribution or sharing of power.

The results in this system lead to disproportional representation; that is, that the majorities are often over represented. (Lipjhart, 1999) Situations can happen in which there is not a clear majority among the electorate but representatives become the majority in parliament, and thereby are able dominate policy without a true majority.  Unlike in a majoritarian society, it is important for as many people as possible to be represented in a consensus democracy.  To virtually ensure the nonexistence of overrepresentation, consensual democracies have election systems that divide districts among parties in proportion to number of votes they receive. (Lijphart, 1999) It is likely that the more winners there are, the more diverse the governing body and the more policy preferences there are going to be represented during the decision-making process. There are many different types of proportional representation but they all have the same goal of ensuring that there is more than one winner.  An incidental consequence of having a proportional representation (PR) election system is that it encourages the presence of multiple parties.  Lijphart (1999) discovered that the nations that had PR also were that the nations with multiparty systems.  The graph below indicates the correlation between electoral disportionality (or overrepresentation) and the number of effective parliamentary parties (Lijphart, 1999, p.169).

This revised version of Lipjhart’s graph indicates that the lower the disportionality, the more effective political parties that there will be: the higher the disproportionality, the fewer the number of effective political parties.   I believe that I would prefer to live in a country where there was a diversity of platforms that are offered.

Sources:

Lijphart, Arend. (1999) Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performances in Thirty-Six Countries. New Haven: Yale University Press.

RodtRDH

Formerly known as Rod of Alexandria, Rod the Rogue Demon Hunter Preacher of Hope | Black Scholar of Patristics | Writer for Nonviolent Politics. Destroyer of Trolls. It must be that angry puppy.

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