Electoral Systems

Typologies of Electoral Rules

Elections and the political parties that compete in them are at the heart of modern democracy. The study of elections and of the voting rules that are their engines has attracted the attention of many scholars and led to a literature, which, in the 4 decades since the publication of Douglas Rae's Political Consequences of Electoral Laws in 1967 (second edition, 1971), has become well developed, both empirically and theoretically. The study of electoral rules and their effects is made easier by the existence of variables that can be precisely defined and usually made quantifiable, for example, votes and seats. Because of the close connections between the study of electoral rules and the study of topics such as party systems, representation, and constitutional design, success in understanding electoral rules and their effects can have what Rein Taagepera has called a “Rosetta stone” linkage function for more general theory building in political science.

But there are also very practical reasons for trying to understand electoral system effects. Of the fundamental aspects of constitutional design, for example, along continua such as unitary versus federal systems or parliamentary versus presidential systems, electoral rules are the easiest to change. In most countries, electoral rules are not constitutionally embedded, or at least many key details are left for legislative determination. There [Page 750]are myriad different ways of conducting elections, and there is widespread belief, backed by empirical evidence, that choice of electoral rules matters a great deal for who gets what, when, and how—the questions that lie at the heart of all politics. Thus, manipulation of electoral rules seems an obvious tool of institutional engineering.

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