ABSTRACT
Are electoral systems permanent? In the introduction, I pointed out that the electoral system is easier to change than other political institutions. However, it has been claimed that the likelihood of electoral reform should not be overestimated (Taagepera and Shugart 1989: 2). According to the academic literature, electoral system change has been quite rare in the democratic world. In the mid-1980s, Nohlen (1984: 218) maintained that electoral reforms occur in extraordinary historical situations only. In the same volume, Lijphart and Bernard Grofman addressed the following question: how likely is electoral reform? Their answer to the question was that electoral system changes are possible but they may not be highly probable (1984b: 11-12). Many other scholars have characterized electoral institutions as ‘sticky’, implying that they are difficult to change (e.g. Birch et al. 2002: 1; Geddes 1996: 31). Several reasons for this stickiness have been given. An apparent reason why major changes are unlikely is that those who are capable of reforming the electoral system are those who have been successful under the current system. Conventional wisdom among political scientists has stressed that electoral institutions reflect deep-rooted aspects of society and political life across democracies – therefore, countries change their electoral rules very rarely, if at all. Electoral systems reflect the politics of the time of their creation and are only altered when radical political change occurs; a change that makes the existing electoral system too restrictive (Taagepera and Shugart 1989: 234). However, major reforms in several established democracies since the early 1990s have seriously challenged the notion that electoral systems are permanent. In addition, electoral system change among democracies before the 1990s was not as rare as many authors intimate. And what is more, little attention, if any, has been given to electoral reforms in non-democratic countries. This book covers all major electoral system choices for parliamentary elections in the world during the post-war era. A total of 278 cases of electoral system choice were indentified. Of these, 140 are first choices in (for the most part) newly independent countries, whereas the remaining 138 observations are cases of major electoral system change. Considering that several authors have emphasized the stickiness of electoral systems, in the sense that major changes
of electoral rules are rare, the observed frequency of electoral system reform is quite astonishing. To be sure, the permanent nature of electoral systems concerns democracies – however, the findings in this study show that electoral reforms are almost as frequent in democracies as in non-democracies. Of a total of 66 cases in the democratic sample, 28 constitute major electoral reforms, that is, a change from one of the four main systems to another. Of these, 13 have taken place in the 1990s and 2000s. However, before 1960, France, Italy and Greece changed their electoral systems several times. Furthermore, major electoral reforms undertaken by a democratic regime have taken place in Iceland (1959), Lebanon (1953) and Turkey (1961). Also, the electoral reforms in Sri Lanka (1978) and Cyprus (1981) qualify as democratic cases. A great majority of the long-standing democracies have certainly retained their electoral systems for nearly a century (or more) but there is plenty of evidence for dismissing the notion that electoral rules are very difficult to change.
