Includes supplements. ; Includes supplements. ; Mode of access: Internet. ; Organ of the Proportional Representation League (called, 1914-1920, American Proportional Representation League). ; The Proportional representation review (v. 1-3) was issued in Chicago from Sept. 1893 to Mar. 1896, when it ceased. In Dec. 1901, it was revived as a department of the Direct legislation record with which it continued till Jan. 1906, when it became the Proportional representation department of the Equity series.
Continued as a department of: Direct legislation record and the proportional representation review. ; "A quarterly magazine, devoted to the reformation of the method of electing representatives." ; Title from cover. ; Mode of access: Internet. ; Revived and absorbed Dec. 1901 as part of: Direct legislation record and the proportional representation review.
This paper considers basic constitutional questions about how to elect a legislature. Electoral systems that require blocks of voters to coordinate their votes create a need for pre-election leadership and raise barriers to entry against new parties. Such barriers to entry can rigidity the political systems and decrease the incentives for established political leaders to serve the public honestly and effectively. So we consider an axiom of coalitional straightforwardness, which asserts that an electoral system should minimize the need for pre-election coordination of voters who share simple dichotomous preferences. Axioms of nondivisiveness, neutrality of party labels, responsiveness, and homogeneity (or coalitional autonomy) are also formulated. It is shown that only two kinds of electoral systems satisfy these axioms: winner-take-all approval-voting systems (AV), and single-divisible vote-proportional-representation systems (PR). Thus, AV and PR are seen to be uniquely compatible in terms of the incentives for party structure that they create, although AV and PR may differ in their incentives for party positioning in issue space. Possible use of AV and PR together in a bicameral legislature is discussed.
In a democratic proportional election system, it is vital that the mandates in the parliament are allocated as proportionally as possible to the number of votes the parties got in the election. We formulate an optimization model for allocation of seats in a parliament so as to minimize the disproportionality. By applying separable programming techniques, we obtain an easily solvable problem, and present a method for solving it optimally. The obtained solution is the feasible solution that has the minimal disproportionality (with the measure chosen), even in the presence of a parliament threshold, which is not always the case for the practical procedures used in many countries. We apply the approach to real life data from the last three elections in Sweden, and show that the result is better, i.e. more proportional, than what was obtained with the modified Sainte-Laguë method, which is presently used. A natural suggestion would be to use our method instead. We also consider the issue about constituencies, and suggest a procedure, based on the same kind of optimization problem, for allocating mandates in the constituencies, without changing the overall allocation with respect to parties. The numbers of mandates for the constituencies are based on the number of votes given, not on estimated numbers of inhabitants entitled to vote. This removes the need for compensatory mandates, and makes the question about sizes of the constituencies less important.
We introduce a model with strategic voting in a parliamentary election with proportional representation and uncertainty about voters' preferences. In any equilibrium of the model, most voters only vote for those parties whose positions are extreme. In the resulting parliament, a consensus government forms and the policy maximizing the sum of utilities of the members of the government is implemented.
Most of the theoretical work on purely redistributive taxation has presumed a two-party model in which the parties choose (affine) tax policies to attract a majority of voters. However, while majoritarian decision rules are the norm in legislatures, relatively few democratic electoral systems use simple majority rule at the electoral stage, adopting instead some form of multiparty proportional representation. Moreover, aggregate data suggest that average income tax-rates are higher and distributions of post-tax income flatter, in countries with proportional representation than in those with plurality rule. While there are other differences between these countries, this paper explores how variations in the political system per se influence equilibrium redistributive tax-rates and income distributions. In particular, a three-party proportional representation model is developed in which taxes are determined through legislative bargaining among successful electoral parties, and the fundamental economic decision for individuals is occupational choice. Political-economic equilibria for this model and for a two-party, winner-take-all, majoritarian system are derived and compared.
I consider the decision of a parliament that might change the electoral system for the forthcoming elections from plurality rule to proportional representation. Parties are office-motivated. They care about winning and about the share of seats obtained. I consider two di¤erent scenarios of how parties in the government share the spoils of office: Equally or proportionally to their share of seats. If the government is formed by a single party and parties expect that each party will obtain the same share of votes in the next election the electoral rule will never be changed. That is, for a change to occur the government should be formed by a coalition. I ?nd that a change is more likely to occur when the number of parties is larger and also when the spoils of o¢ ce are shared equally among the members in the governing coalition. I extend these results to analyze the decision of a change from a less proportional rule to a more proportional one.
"First published in 1911." ; --The House of commons as an expression of the national will.--The direct results of majority systems.--The indirect results of majority systems.--The representation of minorities.--The second ballot and the transferable vote in single-member constituencies.--Proportional representation.--The single transferable vote.--List systems of proportional representation.--A comparison of list systems with the single transferable vote.--Proportional representation and party government.--Objections to proportional representation.--The key to electoral and constitutional reform.--Appendices. ; Photocopy. ; Mode of access: Internet.
This article shows that for a single-vote electoral system for a representative body to treat all voters and all parties equally, it must produce results essentially identical to list proportional representation (PR). Democratic theory has often been agnostic concerning representative institutions. Different institutions have been compared in terms of behavioral outcomes rather than axiomatic properties. Building on van der Hout (Annual meeting of the Public Choice Society, San Diego, 2002) result, we show that for an electoral system to completely respect the principle of liberal political equality and popular sovereignty, its results must be equivalent to those of list PR.
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
There has been a longstanding debate about the link between political representation and health. In this article, I provide novel evidence that electoral reforms that shifted from a majoritarian to a proportional system of voter representation generated substantive health benefits for the general population. Using the exemplary case of Switzerland, I first show that the spread of proportional representation between 1890 and 1950 increased political participation and gave the working class, represented by left-wing parties, greater weight in the political process. Consistent with theories of the electoral system, proportional representation increased public investments, esp. in basic education, with few effects on redistribution or total spending. Based on comprehensive archival mortality statistics since 1890, I then demonstrate that the observed shifts in representation and public finances were associated with substantial declines in child mortality by 15% and in mortality from infectious diseases, the major killer of the time, by 10-15%.
In a democratic proportional election system, it is vital that the mandates in the parliament are allocated as proportionally as possible to the number of votes the parties got in the election. We formulate an optimization model for allocation of seats in a parliament so as to minimize the disproportionality. By applying separable programming techniques, we obtain an easily solvable problem, and present a method for solving it optimally. The obtained solution is thus the feasible solution that has the minimal disproportionality (with the measure chosen), in contrast to the heuristic procedures used in many countries. We apply the approach to real life data from the last three elections in Sweden, and show that the result is better, i.e. more proportional, than what was obtained with the "adjusted odd number rule", which is presently used. A natural suggestion would be to use our method instead. We also consider the issue about constituencies, and suggest a procedure, based on the same kind of optimization problem, for allocating mandates in the constituencies, without changing the overall allocation with respect to parties. In our approach, the numbers of mandates for the constituencies are based on the number of votes given, not on estimated numbers of inhabitants. This removes the need for fixed and equalization mandates, and also makes the question about sizes of the constituencies less important.
