even reach the quota for a single seat. While approaching entire proportion-
ality for the parties, the method can give undue power to the party e ́lite which
controls the ordering on the list, and removes the ability of voters to express
any preference for particular candidates. Also, a major aspect ofrepresenta-
tive democracyis weakened the further away from single-member consti-
tuencies the system moves. Variations of the list system can ameliorate these
problems, and allow some degree of voter choice for individual candidates.
Perestroika
Perestroika was one of the two main elements of Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev’soriginal plans for wide-ranging reform in the then Soviet
Union, along withglasnost. Technically perestroika simply means ‘restructur-
ing’, but it rapidly took on extra ideological meaning. The proposal for
perestroika was made in January 1987 at a meeting of theCommunist Party
of the Soviet Union (CPSU)Central Committee, and combined plans for
both economic reorganization and some limited democratization, mainly in
local government. These were linked, because the politburohad been
convinced by Gorbachev that the reason earlier attempts at economic reform
had not worked was the absence of grass roots level democracy. Thus even at
the industrial level perestroika was essentially political, requiring, for example,
the election of factory managers by the workers. More directly political, a
limited degree of choice was to be allowed to voters in local elections, where
they would now be given a choice of candidates, though they would all still be
nominated by the CPSU. The important point is that perestroika was, initially,
a plan to reform the existing economic system of state control, and not to
replace it, so policies were aimed at increasing the incentives to operate the
current system more efficiently. Perestroika was extended, in theory, to all state
organizations. The Soviet military, for example, was called upon to apply
perestroika, though as democracy is incompatible with military authority it was
never very clear what they were supposed to do. In general, perestroika was
what a Western manager would think of as an efficiency drive. The CPSU itself
was supposed to become more democratic, although this did not mean, even to
Gorbachev, that it should cease to be an all-pervading controlling force. Even
these very moderate reforms were hotly contested by many inside the
Politburo and the Central Committee, and it is unclear how effective they
were, or ever could have been, in the industrial and administrative structures. It
is hard to know how far the coverage of the term perestroika should be
stretched, but it was certainly not originally intended to imply the much more
far-reaching democratization of the political system that finally led to the
disintegration of the Soviet Union. In contrast to glasnost, which proved
unstoppable, perestroika achieved very little. The modernizations to the Soviet
Perestroika