On Mar 10, 2010, at 11:35 PM, Raph Frank wrote:
On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 9:24 PM, Juho <[email protected]> wrote:
Another approach to systems between proportional representation and
the
two-party approach could be to have a proportional method but use
districts
with only very few representatives (2, 3,...). That would provide
rough but
in principle accurate proportionality and still give space only to
few major
parties. (Obviously my definition of full proportionality must be
"with 1/n
of the votes you will get one seat (where n = number of
representatives)".)
You mean a hybrid of multi-constituency PR and party list PR, or just
PR at the district level?
I didn't quite understand your question. The method could also be non-
party-list-based (like STV).
If the legislature was elected using 2 seat constituencies, then
balance of power in the legislature would be decided by the few
districts where one or other party is near to 2/3 majority.
If both parties were roughtly 1/2 each, then most districts would end
up electing one from each party.
Actually we have a continuum from single member constituencies to full
proportionality. Use of 2 seat constituencies provides a really rough
system, but still one step smoother than single seat constituencies.
In this kind of systems (1 or 2 seats) one must maybe include also
time in the model to understand how the system works. If voters are
not satisfied with the biggest (ruling / most dominating) party then
it will lose some seats in some constituencies (2/2->1/2, 1/2->0/2,
1/1->0/1). The fairness of the system is thus not really guaranteed in
one single election but voters can change the system still in time. If
the system still gives most seats to the big party that voters were
not happy with (thanks to appropriate allocation of its supporters to
the constituencies and resulting bias in the results) then voters may
wait for the next election and be even less satisfied with the party
and vote more against it and finally get the result that they wanted.
In this sense two-party systems are actually based on alternating
dominance and some approximate proportionality is offered in time when
one party stays in power longer than the other.
Juho
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