Suchergebnisse

SHOWS HOW THE IRISH ELECTORAL SYSTEM HAS TRANSFERRED VOTES WON BY POLITICAL GROUPINGS INTO SEATS AT GENERAL ELECTIONS JUNE 1927-1973. DESCRIBES PATTERNS AT AGGREGATE LEVEL WITH COMPARATIVE REFERENCE TO OTHER COUNTRIES. MEASURES IMPACT OF CHANGES IN NUMBER AND SIZES OF CONSTITUENCIES FOLLOWING EACH ELECTORAL ACT. FINDS LITTLE DELIBERATE GERRYMANDERING BY PARTIES. CITES UNIQUENESS OF IRISH PR SYSTEM.

IN 1982 JAPAN BROKE WITH ALL PRECEDENT AND ENACTED A PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION SYSTEM FOR THE ELECTION OF PART OF THE UPPER HOUSE. THE MOTIVES OF THE PARTIES WERE MIXED AND THE NEW ARRANGEMENTS RAISED MANY PRACTICAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL PROBLEMS. ESSENTIALLY THE NEW LAW CONFUSED THE CONCEPTS OF EQUALITY AND FAIRNESS. HOWEVER, IN THE FIRST ELECTION UNDER THE NEW SYSTEM ON 26 JUNE 1983 PARTY STRENGTHS WERE VERY LITTLE CHANGED.

Denemark reviews 'New Zealand Adopts Proportional Representation: Accident? Design? Evolution?

AbstractThis article examines the recent impact of proportional representation on women's parliamentary presence in four Australasian political systems: New Zealand, the Australian Senate, the lower house in the state of Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory's (ACT) Legislative Assembly. The question asked is: Why have women not achieved an equal presence in these parliaments, given the presence of proportional electoral systems? While it is evident that there is now a critical mass of women standing as candidates in all four constituencies, in only four of the 12 elections reviewed here, has the proportion of women elected reflected the proportion of women candidates. Moreover, women have yet to constitute more than 35 percent elected to these legislatures. Overall, the representation of women in these four systems seems to have stagnated, suggesting that proportional representation should be seen as only part of the solution to the under-representation of women.

Several of the earliest advocates of proportional representation upheld the "principle of free association": that electors should be free to choose the constituencies to which they belong. This article analyzes this principle in game-theoretic terms and investigates how far the free association "game" can be simulated through proportional representation. It is assumed that each voter's prime concern is that his most-preferred candidate should be elected. If preferences are single peaked, the outcome of an election based on free association can be predicted; the same outcome would result from a modified form of the single transferable vote.

While various authors have appealed to Dalton's Principle of Transfers, the Lorenz curve, and the Gini Coefficient to assess disproportionality in proportional representation systems, some additional clarifications are warranted with regard to these concepts and their proper application to the disproportionality issue. This article shows that the three concepts keep their full power and internal consistency if one considers the proportional representation problem as one of maximizing equality of seat/vote ratios among individual voters. Inconsistencies arise if parties are taken as the relevant unit of account. If one insists on comparing parties, then the appropriate concern is rather with their 'deviation from proportionality'. To assess that concept, measures of seat mobility are better suited than genuine inequality measures. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright 2008.]