ABSTRACT
Democracy demands a connection between citizens’ preferences and society’s collective decision. The monotonicity criterion could be defined in a more or less demanding way, but the gentlest variant demands that an alternative should never be disadvantaged by an increased support among the voters. The utilitarian method is built upon the idea that the individuals, in addition to ordinal information, also can connect each alternative with a subjective cardinal utility value. In Sweden the parliamentary seats are distributed according to the proportional plurality rule. There are several modifications and variations of the proportional method but the fundamental principle is always that the distribution of seats should be proportional to the distribution of votes. Parliamentary fragmentation is related to parliamentary action capability or a strong government. An objection to the fragmentation analysis is that this technique disregards ideological patterns of co-operation between parties.
