‘first-past-the-post’ systems have often been debated at length.
Fascinating though the topic may be to many political scientists and
armchair reformers, it seems of much less fundamental importance
than many of the less discussed issues involved in achieving free
elections which we have just considered.
In fact, few electoral systems are either based simply on a single-
member constituency ‘first-past-the post’ system traditionally used
in British general elections, or on a national constituency divided
proportionally between the parties as in Israel. Many single-member
constituency systems incorporate ways of ensuring (or increasing the
likelihood of) a majority at constituency level. Thus France has a
second ballot in any constituency in which no candidate gains an
overall majority. The USA has a preliminary ‘Primary’ election
within each of the two major parties so only two serious candidates
are likely to emerge for the election proper. In Australia voters record
preferences for candidates in order so that the votes of the weaker
candidates can be transferred until one candidate obtains a majority.
Most ‘proportional’ systems have area or regional (rather than
national) constituencies, several combine single-member consti-
tuencies with a national ‘pooling system’ (e.g. Germany and in
elections for the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly). Almost
all have a minimum quota of votes to obtain seats in the legislature.
It is worth echoing the conclusion of Rae’s excellent (1967) study:
that all existing electoral systems are less than perfectly proportional
(even Israel has a minimum vote quota for a party to be represented
in parliament) and that the major factor affecting proportionality is
the size of the constituency employed. To achieve perfect propor-
tionality between seats allocated in parliament and votes for each
national party a single national constituency would have to be
employed. However, the cost of this might well be thought too high
in terms of breaking the links between individual voters and specific
representatives – and the power it would give to national party
organisations in determining candidates’ places on the national list.
Relatively less proportional systems, like Britain’s, may be
defended as yielding strong or stable government. In recent years the
authors have felt that ‘strong’ government has come to mean a
government which is rather too unrepresentative and unresponsive
in Britain, a criticism levelled at both the Thatcher and Blair admini-
strations. Certainly, however, the viability of the executive produced174 DEMOCRACY