Modest Responses and Their Limitations

I demonstrate that a set of well-known objections defeat John Stuart Mill’s plural voting proposal, but do not defeat plural voting as such. I adopt the following as a working definition of political equality: a voting system is egalitarian if and only if departures from a baseline of equally weighted votes are normatively permissible. I develop an alternative proposal, called procedural plural voting, which allocates plural votes procedurally, via the free choices of the electorate, rather than according to a substantive standard of competence. The alternative avoids standards objections to Mill’s proposal. Moreover, reflection on the alternative plural voting scheme disrupts our intuitions about what counts as an egalitarian voting system. Undue emphasis on Mill’s version of plural voting obscures three important reasons to reject plural voting in favor of strictly egalitarian voting systems: (1) that certain choices that generate inequalities of political power are morally impermissible; (2) that even chosen inequalities may undermine the potential epistemic benefits of democratic decision-making; and (3) that such choices may undermine citizens’ commitments to democracy understood as a joint project.

Beyond personal vote incentives: Dividing the vote in preferential electoral systems

We examine the association between a country's electoral system and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission intensity of firms and explore whether this association is influenced by corporate political donation. The study draws on the neo‐pluralist theory of power in society to examine how possible corporate influence in the electoral systems relates to corporate environmental performance. Using a cross‐country panel dataset, we find that companies operating in countries using majoritarian electoral systems (MAJ), where corporations have a relatively low influence on election outcomes, are associated with lower GHG emission intensity than those in proportional electoral systems, after controlling for macro‐economic factors and variations in firm characteristics. Further, our findings show that corporate political donation positively moderates the association between MAJ and GHG emission intensity. Our results suggest that corporations are likely to utilise political donations as a component of business strategy to ease the regulatory actions of the state on companies. The results are robust to alternative variable measurements and tests of sensitivity.

A remarkable progress in women's participation in politics throughout the world was witnessed in the final decade of the 20th century. According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union report, there were only eight countries with no women in their legislatures in 1998. The number of women ministers at the cabinet level worldwide doubled in a decade, and the number of countries without any women ministers dropped from 93 to 48 during 1987-96. However, this progress is far from satisfactory. Political representation of women, minorities, and other social groups is still inadequate. This may be due to a complex combination of socioeconomic, cultural, and institutional factors. The view that women's political participation increases with social and economic development is supported by data from the Nordic countries, where there are higher proportions of women legislators than in less developed countries. While better levels of socioeconomic development, having a women-friendly political culture, and higher literacy are considered favorable factors for women's increased political representation, adopting one of the proportional representation systems (such as a party-list system, a single transferable vote system, or a mixed proportional system with multi-member constituencies) is the single factor most responsible for the higher representation of women.

Since 1999, all member states have employed some form of proportional representation to elect representatives in the European Parliament. The introduction of Spitzenkandidaten and greater policy and campaigning coordination within Europarties sought to create a common European ground of party competition. However, the actual election of MEPs remains a national endeavor, determined by a national electoral framework. The electoral success of an Europarty in a given member state is shaped by the conditions set by the national electoral model for European elections. Different national models also give rise to different electoral strategies employed by parties wishing to maximize their number of MEPs. While electoral alliances might reflect cooperation of ideologically similar parties (such as list combinations in the Netherlands) or presidential majorities, like the coalition list of parties that support the French President, sometimes, especially in newer member states (e.g., Croatia), they might represent a strategic choice of ideologically divergent parties to work together in order to pass the threshold and win seats in the European Parliament. This paper seeks to compare different national playing grounds in which Europarties, i.e., their member parties compete, as well as electoral strategies that accompany such different frameworks. Apart from Ireland and Malta, which use the single transferable vote system, all other (current) member states use list proportional representation. However, the choice of a national electoral district or division in regional electoral constituencies can have a significant impact on electoral outcomes. Further, the employment of an electoral threshold and its interaction with district magnitude can create different electoral conditions. Finally, methods of seat allocation have an impact on prospects of smaller parties. A comparison of national electoral models will uncover different conditions and levels of (dis)proportionality that all weave together into the ultimate makeup of the European Parliament.

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Show Your Flag or Be Everyone's Friend?: The Effects of District Magnitude on Vote-Securing Strategies

In a democratic state, power is exercised by elected bodies through free and fair elections. The choice of the political class that will exercise political, economic, etc. power by the sovereign (the people) is one of the most important moments in the way how a state works.The sovereign and the expression of his will by voting for those to be elected to the governing or governing bodies. The first part will address and analyze the election campaign, the day of voting until the moment of the results, is the period when the sovereign exercises his power directly by voting which political class will lead the state.Political classes seeking to govern and govern governing bodies disclose their programs, their policies during the election campaign.Election campaigns in modern and capitalist society require funding as they are associated with costs, expenses. Election campaigns cannot be done without capital, without money. The second part will analyze the power of money in election campaigns is related to the expenses political parties or candidates make to their program, to disseminate their political and governing ideas, so money power is used to influence the sovereign to be informed on election day. who to vote for and who to choose in the governing bodies. The use of money in election campaigns forces a democratic state to set rules on how to finance, spend, etc., so setting rules such as how the power of money will affect election campaigns and their control by the responsible bodies.In a country with a fragile and transitional democracy such as the Albanian state, the control of money power during election campaigns is extremely difficult, however the manner of controlling election campaign financing is clearly defined in legislation. In this paper I will contribute by analyzing the impact of money on the Albanian state policy, first in terms of electoral financing, financing of political parties and individuals in electoral campaigns In this paper I will address and analyze how money affects constitutional principles during election campaigns, how it affects the principles of free and fair elections. The third part will address and analyze how entities participating in electoral campaigns are financed.The use of illegal money during campaigns affects the violation of constitutional principles for free and fair elections.I will address and analyze the criminal policies in the field of illegal financing of electoral campaigns. The Criminal Code of the Republic of Albania in relation to free and fair elections. llegal financing of election campaigns is a current phenomenon of the Albanian society, bringing about the incrimination of Albanian politics.Illegal financing of entities participating in electoral campaigns comes from organized crime or suspects in criminal activities, and this brings about the establishment of those persons who protect the latter's interests and not the interests of the constituents or democratic interests of a state .Intensify the fight against illicit financing of electoral campaigns by creating not only a complete legal framework for preventing illicit financing but also creating practical mechanisms for not only law enforcement but also the practical prevention of uncontrolled funding of electoral subjects.Setting criminal penalties for illegal financing of electoral campaigns and revising the Criminal Code in incriminating all illegal financing actions that violate free and fair elections may be the most important step in the fight against illegal financing of electoral campaigns. Illegal financing of electoral campaigns in Albania calls for free and fair elections and questions the basic principles of the representation of political entities in governing institutions and therefore the interference in law and penal policy is current and immediate.

Debate—Proportional RepresentationPR and Democratic Statecraft Quentin L. Quade (bio) In "Constitutional Choices for New Democracies," Arend Lijphart sets out to describe and evaluate some of the primary institutional alternatives available to new democracies. Lijphart knows that the choice of electoral system is especially important, since it will likely determine whether many or few parties will compete, and whether coalition or single-party governments will result. He also knows that once chosen, the electoral system will be hard to change. Lijphart favors proportional representation (PR), welcomes proliferated parties, and esteems coalitions. I have publicly defended the opposite view. I urge plurality voting in single-member districts, hope and expect that this will encourage a two-party system, and applaud the single-party government that would result.1 How is it that two democrats with similar starting points like Lijphart and myself could come up with such starkly contrasting practical advice for newly emerging democracies? As in real estate, the key is to inspect the premises. Even a brief and selective inspection, as this one must be, will show why our recommendations differ so sharply, and why I think Lijphart's position rests on questionable, even utopian, foundations. Advocates of proportional representation typically describe it as more "fair" and more "just." Lijphart's article says PR produces "consensus" politics, promotes "conciliation and compromise," and is more "representative" than plurality voting. In fact, each of these good words applied to PR begs a question and calls for a rarely given philosophical argument to establish a meaning for "fair," "just," "representative," and so on. No such arguments are presented or even summarized by Lijphart. The only thing certain about PR is that it will tend to re-create society's [End Page 36] divisions and locate them in the legislature. That is its purpose, logic, and result.2 Whether a system that encourages party proliferation is any of the good things its proponents call it—fairer, more just, more representative—depends on a theory of statecraft and democratic form. What is the purpose of the state? Does the adoption of democracy eliminate or even lessen the traditional requirements of state action? In particular, does democratic statecraft have a diminished responsibility to synthesize society's parts, unify and defend its people, or identify and pursue the common good—meaning those values that no particular part of society will ever seek as its own but on which all particular parts depend? Or does democratic politics exist to do all the things states exist for, but to do them in a new way, a responsible and accountable way? If it does, then the first test of fairness, justice, and representation that democratic politics must pass will be the test of excellence in state action. The second and no less important test will be that of accountability. But for Lijphart and his fellow PR advocates, the first question appears to be: how well are society's natural divisions recreated and relocated in the legislature? Where he equates the number of women in legislatures with representation of women's interests, for example, Lijphart uses the term "representation" as identical to recreation. In his uncritical implicit reliance on the "picture theory" of legislative representation, Lijphart writes as if Edmund Burke had never lived. To prove that PR's tendency to re-create divisions and proliferate parties is indeed a good thing, an extended argument is required. It must explain how a political system will be "fair" if it succumbs to the centrifugal pull of interests, how it can advance the general welfare if it "represents" only minute and particular aspects of society, and how a government cobbled together out of postelection splinters by a secretive process of interparty bartering can be considered responsible and accountable. Only by doing this can PR advocates escape the charge of question-begging. Easy Cases and Unfounded Speculations I have suggested that PR advocates generally, and Lijphart in particular, tend to make their work easy by eliding from PR's tendency to re-create societal divisions to an unexamined designation of such recreation as good. Another labor-saving approach, greatly evident in Lijphart's article, is to build the argument for PR on...

This essay reasses the assumptions of the Brams-Fishburn theory of approval voting, and proposes modifications to make the theory correspond better with likely voting choices. With a small number of candidates, voters who use the ‘inadmissible’ strategy of voting for all candidates can help to produce a result that better reflects the voters' wishes than is possible with ‘admissible’ strategies, so we propose a widening of the definition of admissibility to encompass this case. With more than three candidates, we define ‘first-order admissible’ strategies, which are the most likely strategies to be used in practice, and are also strongly sincere, in that a vote for any candidate is always accompanied by votes for all more or equally-preferred candidates. Their number is less under approval voting than under plurality voting. Both proposed modifications strengthen the technical arguments favoring approval voting over plurality voting.

Parameterized complexity of candidate control in elections and related digraph problems

The strategic effect of the plurality vote at the district level

This chapter places ranked choice voting (RCV) within the context of electoral systems. Preferential voting elections include the alternative vote (AV) for choosing a single winner and the single transferable vote (STV) to select multiple winners. Electoral systems for parliamentary elections in Australia and Ireland provide the rationale and history of these forms of RCV. Plurality or first-past-the-post elections serve as the benchmark for comparisons, and other broad electoral systems such as proportional representation and mixed-member proportional systems are introduced and contrasted with ranked choice. Similar electoral systems with complementary goals are discussed. Cousins to RCV include the supplementary vote, approval voting, cumulative voting, and the Borda count. Examples are introduced and compared to preferential systems. The philosophical origins of STV and RCV from Thomas Hare forward are outlined. RCV may lead to computational paradoxes such as Condorcet cycling and violations of fundamental assumptions such as monotonicity.

Single Transferable Vote (STV) is used in large political elections around the world. It is easy to understand and has desirable normative properties such as clone-proofness. However, voters need to report full rankings, which can make it less practical than plurality voting. We study ways to minimize the amount of communication required to use single-winner STV. In the first part of the paper, voters are assumed to report their top-k alternatives in a single shot. We empirically evaluate the extent to which STV with truncated ballots approximates STV with full information. We also study the computational complexity of the possible winner problem for top-k ballots. For $k=1$, it can be solved in polynomial time, but is NP-complete when $k\geq 2$. In the second part, we consider interactive communication protocols for STV. Building on a protocol proposed by Conitzer and Sandholm (2005), we show how we can reduce the amount of communication required in practice. We then study empirically the average communication complexity of these protocols, based on randomly generated profiles, and on real-world election data. Our conclusion is that STV needs, in practice, much less information than in the worst case.

This article suggests that in most semi-democracies, the same solution might not be that favourable to minorities. Many semi-democratic countries either restrict party competition or limit parties of ethnic minorities, including: Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kirgistan, Cameron, Equatorial Guinea, Tanzania, Gabon, Kenya, Mauritania, and Congo (Brazzaville). This article highlights the impact of the electoral system and the importance of political plurality and electoral district design in such contexts. The article argues that the interests of minorities are best protected if they can elect their representatives in small, ethnically homogeneous electoral districts. Plurality or majority voting systems offer minorities the possibility to run with independent candidates. The case study in this article elections to municipal councils in Georgia in 2006 under a mixed electoral system seem to reflect the hypothesized pattern.