Suchergebnisse

The issue of a majority electoral system versus proportional representation has been debated for years. It rears its head after every British election, and it is increasingly discussed in Malta. But the effects of electoral systems on local government have all but been ignored, as have the respective merits of the systems in underdeveloped areas. ; peer-reviewed

The single transferable vote system of proportional representation as operated in elections to Dail Eireann is one of the most sophisticated electoral systems, maximising the capacity of the voter to determine the outcome of an election and allowing multi-dimensional representation of party political and other interests. Its most significant drawback is the fact that it retains an element of chance in certain circumstances, although this has been reduced to insignificance in the comparable electoral systems of Tasmania, Northern Ireland and the Irish Senate. The random element may occur as a consequence of surplus distribution. If the surplus votes of an elected candidate are fewer than the number of transferable votes in the parcel being examined, Irish electoral law provides, in effect, for a random selection of papers to pass to continuing candidates. Further preferences on these papers may affect the final outcome of the election. This problem could be overcome by amendment of the electoral formula, but in an electoral system where the formula is already very complicated this would place a heavy extra burden on the agencies responsible for the election count. Technological development may, however, allow introduction of the computer in elections, and this could permit the elimination not merely of the random element but also of certain other arbitrary provisions that violate the norms of social choice theory.

A number of proposals for electoral reform have been advanced, ranging from simple alterations of the present Electoral College system to comprehensive reformations such as adopting a district plan, proportional division of the electoral vote, or direct popular election of the president. In this paper we investigate how the influence of various social groups on the outcome of a presidential contest would be altered under each of the reform proposal.

Voter loyalties to the established parties in the Irish political system are quite strong, but by no means unconditional. Shifts in voter support do occur over time. The most vivid instance of the Irish voter's ability to discriminate between party and policy was afforded by the Referendum of 1959, which was combined with a Presidential election. The electorate returned Mr. de Valera, while simultaneously rejecting his party's proposal to replace Proportional Representation as the constitutionally established electoral system.

How proportional are the results of electoral systems designed to ensure proportional representation? How large is the deviation from proportionality for relative majority systems? Does a given system favor large, small or medium‐sized parties? Are some parties consistently advantaged? Is the system predictable or erratic? Plotting the percentage of seats–percentage of votes ratio versus percentage of votes for all parties, is found to be a simple and yet powerful graphical method to answer such questions. Application of such "proportionality profiles" to West European multi‐party systems leads to a typology of electoral systems based on their actual effect (rather than their formal procedure or intended effect). District magnitude, the number of rounds, and nationwide adjustment rules are found to be more important than formal seat distribution rules such as d'Hondt or Sainte‐Laguë. Copyright © 1980, Wiley Blackwell. All rights reserved

This article is essentially a case study of voting patterns in an Irish Dail Constituency. But in this analysis we also deal with a larger question: how a stable party system exists in a constituency characterized by feelings of religious separatism and where elections are conducted under a system of Proportional Representation (PR) and multi-member constituencies. It is usually argued that PR, by encouraging the representation of minorities, facilitates the development of a weak multi-party system. Following the institutional argument, the system of multi-member constituencies should, by diffusing power, add structural incentive to intra-party factionalism at the constituency level. Yet the constituency we look at contains one of the strongest local party systems in the Republic. Our evidence suggests that the operation of electoral systems is played upon by historical circumstance and the ingenuity of politicians. Strong sociological forces, such as partisan feeling and parochial loyalties, were harnessed by the political parties to a system of party bailiwicks which mitigated much of the structural conflict inherent in the system of multi-member constituencies. As events developed, by the time of the General Election of 1969 the religious cleavage in the constituency came to serve the ends of a competitive two-party system.