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Proportional Representation and Political Conflict
Daniel Kselman
Working Paper, Duke University Department of Political Science
ABSTRACT:
Authors in a variety of settings have argued thatproportional representationelectoral institutions help to reduce political conflict in tense political situations.Such studies generally reston two implicit assumptions, namely thatelections areparty-centeredand that the political-cleavage structures which define electoral campaigns are relatively fixed and predictable. This paper develops a game theoretic framework which endogenizes a country’s mode of accountability, demonstrating that the party-centered competition implicit in previous research emerges only under closed-list proportional representation. Furthermore, we argue that this very party-centrism has potentially deleterious consequences in country’s whose political-cleavage structures are subject to short-term variation, and propose a particular from of open-list proportional representation as the most suitable institutional alternative for peace and stability in fluid political environments.Historical evidence detailing parallel cycles of party system concentration and political conflict in Turkey provide a suggestive narrative in support of the paper’s basic claims.
I. Literature Review
Over the past three decades theoretical studies in both political science and economics have investigated the consequences of formal electoral institutions for various aspects of political-economic life. Most such studies address the ‘classical’ distinction between majoritarian(MAJ) elections and proportional representation (PR). The most common MAJ system employs ‘winner-take-all’ contests in single-member districts, while in multi-member PR systems a district’s numerouslegislativeseats are allocated to political party lists in rough proportion to the parties’ district-level vote shares. Authors in a variety of settings have argued that, in potentially divisive political contexts, PR systemsgenerate a less confrontational form of political competition than their MAJ counterparts.[1]The primary mechanism linking majoritarianism to political conflictis its tendency to exclude important social minorities from governance.[2]Faced with this perpetual political exclusion, minority groups are more likely to pursue their interests in extra- or quasi-legal ways, resulting in socialunrest and at times devastating violence.
In contrast, scholarship grounded in West European political history has highlighted PR’s stabilizing influence on political competition inethnically divided societies (Lijphart 1977): in PR systems a minority comprising 20% of a country’s populationshould receive roughly 20% of its legislative seats, rather than the parliamentary exclusion characteristic of MAJ elections.In guaranteeing a parliamentary presence for members of ethnic minorities, PR was foundational for a form of coalitional politics known as consociationalism, whose central feature is the collective adherence to a mutually beneficial ‘social pact’ presided over by a disciplined political elite.[3]
As well, recent work on the comparative political economy of advanced industrial democracies identifies PR’s role in generating left-leaning coalition governments with substantial representation of organized labor(Iversen and Soskice 2006). This foothold in government, which is absent in MAJ systems,[4] provides labor movements the capacity to pursue workers’ interests in the parliamentary rather than the industrial arena, which in turn generates less conflictual capital-labor relations.[5]By fostering labor movement participation in the governmental process, PR hasplayed an important role in sustaining what some have recently labeled cross-class coalitionsin most Northern European democracies,[6] coalitions which bear analytic similarity to cross-ethnic consociational pacts. These coalitions have not formed in MAJ democracies, which since WWII have tended to experiencehigher levels of industrial conflict(Korpi and Shalev 1979).[7]
II. Theoretical Framework
In both cases the mechanism linking proportionality to conflict reduction iscoalition politics, which provides ethnic minorities the chance to participate in multi-party governments, and helps to constrain the expropriating tendencies of working-class parties.The following paper argues that, while making invaluable contributions to our understanding of electoral institutions’ political consequences, this coalition-driven literature rests on a series of implicit assumptions as to the nature of political party competition in PR systems. Firstly, the above reviewed research characterizes elections as party-centered. In such contexts, voter choice tends to be governed by citizens’ national-level preferences for a country’s various competing political parties, and has little to do with thelocal reputation of individual legislators from within these party organizations. Partly as a consequence political parties tend to be highlydisciplined, such that executive leaders can count on the support of their members of parliament (MP’s) who form a loyal legislative voting bloc.[8]
Sections III, IV, and V below develop a game theoretic model which moves a step beyond the ‘classical’ MAJ-PR dichotomy;and in so doing identifies the institutional conditions under which this party-centered political competition should in fact emerge. More particularly, they investigate the importance of aninstitutional distinction within PR systems: that between closed-list and open-listproportional representation (CLPR and OLPR respectively). In CLPR systems, candidates’ chances of securing re-election are largely dependent on intra-party processes which unfold prior to the general election, and which govern their eventual position on party lists. In equilibrium, this leads to a situation in which individual candidates have almost no incentive to invest effort in developing a personal following in specific regions or localities. On the other hand, in OLPR systems a candidate’s electoral fortunes depend on both: a.) her party’s aggregate success, and b.) the success of her own voter mobilization efforts vis à vis those of her list-mates. This combination of inter- and intra-party incentives leads to a cartel-like situation in which all candidatesdevote just enough effort to voter mobilization so as secure one another’s mutual re-election. Put shortly, in OLPR systems incumbent legislators ‘collude’ on Mutually Assured Re-election Nash Equilibria.
As a consequence of these equilibrium properties the party-centered electoral competition required for ‘consociational pacts’ or ‘cross-class coalitions’ should emerge in CLPR but not OLPR systems.However, this is not to say that OLPR will fail as a mediating device in all potentially conflictual situations; nor conversely that CLPR generates universally salutary political outcomes. To understand their respective strengths and weaknesses we must address a second assumption implicit in the above reviewed work, namely that a country’s political cleavage structureis more or less fixed and predictable. Political cleavages are the cultural and socio-economic divisions which become salient in political campaigns. The most oft-noted cleavage-structuredistinction is that between‘one-dimensional’environments, as found in elections structured by a single‘left-right’ political-economic dimension; and themulti-dimensional environments found, for example, in Belgium and the Netherlandswhere religiousdivisionscombine with social class distinctions to complicate political space.
This paper emphasizes a different distinction: that between fixed cleavage environments in which the social identity dimensions which define political campaigns are relatively stable over time;[9] and fluid cleavage environments in which these competitive dimensions are subject to greater short-term variation.[10]Section VIargues that the very party-centeredness which forms the basis of past arguments relating PR to conflict mediation is potentially destabilizing in countries with less predictabledimensions ofpolitical cleavage. The analysis thus suggests that CLPR may under certain circumstances aggravateethno-political tensions and instigatethe very social violence it was designed to avert. Furthermore, it demonstrates that OLPR institutions contain a number of analytic properties absent in nearly all previously proposed institutions for conflict mediation (Reilly 2004 discusses ‘hybrid’ alternatives to PR), and may represent the best alternative for peace and stability incomplex political environments. Historical evidence detailingparallel cycles ofparty system concentration and political conflict in Turkeyprovide a suggestive narrative in support of the paper’s basic claims.
Table 1 summarizes this discussion. The columns and rows capture a country’s extant electoral rule and the stability of its cleavage environment respectively, yielding a 2 X 3 typology with 6 basic system configurations.Past research on PR and conflict mediation applies most accurately to the comparison of cells 1 and 2, amounting to the argument that CLPR outperforms MAJ competition in relatively fixed political contexts.The current paper demonstrates the importance of distinguishing between CLPR and OLPR, arguing that the latter may generate a less conflictual form of politics in countries with less stablelines of political cleavage (cells 5 and 6). We thus identify the potential pitfalls of exporting an institution (CLPR) whose salutary consequences in one context may in fact represent the mirror-image of its deleterious consequences elsewhere.
(Table 1 here)
III. The Model
While the model isrobust to multi-party situations, a simple two-party game is sufficient to identify the fundamental distinction between CLPR and OLPR competition.[11]Consider a country comprised ofM evenly sized regions identified by the marker, in which two political parties compete for office. Furthermore, let the country’s Legislature contain M incumbent legislators, each of which belongs to one of the two competing political parties. Assume that each individual incumbent has the option of developing a personal voting bloc in exactly one of a country’s M evenly-sized regions, and that no two incumbents have this option in the same region.[12] More specifically, all incumbents possess 1 unitofeffort which they divide exhaustively between: a.)developing a personal reputation in their particular region (denoted);[13] and b.) developing an organizational reputation among key intra-party actors, for example their party’s executive leadersand national convention delegates (denoted ).In the following game, all M legislatorssimultaneously make decisions as to how to allocate their 1 unit of effort between and,after which point an electionis held and citizens choose between parties A and B.
Effort devoted to appears to regional constituents in the formof targeted fiscal transfers (i.e. pork-barrel projects), ombudsman services, local visits and public appearances, etc. The provision of such goods and services allows individual candidates to develop regional voting constituencies whose choice at election time has little to do with issues of national level public policy, and much more to do with their allegiance to a local politician with a reputation for constituency service. Behaviors associated with include supporting one’s party in legislative votes and bargaining, aiding in the development and implementation of a party’spublic policy initiatives,attending a party’s national-level social events andfundraisers, etc.This effort allows legislators to curry favor with powerful intra-party actors in control of both material resources and opportunities for career advancement within the organization.[14]
In specifying incumbent utility functions, we will make the natural assumption that legislators gain some measure of satisfaction from the material and professional rewards accrued by courting a party’s executive and organizational leaders. Formally, legislators’ utility will be increasing inthe amount of effort they devote to . On the other hand, constituents in region control a distinct resource of value to incumbent legislators: votes.Office-minded legislators may thus benefit from effort devoted to insofar as the consequent increased regional vote-shares might increase their chances of re-election. Definef≡ asthe strategy vector containing constituency effort levels chosen byall incumbent legislators from both parties.[15]Then define { f } as the probability that the incumbent affiliated with region j will gain re-election to the legislature (which will be a function of f).Finally, let R denote the fixed utility associated with gaining re-election.[16]One can thenwrite the incumbent affiliated with region j’s utility as follows:
= f } · R] . (1)
After incumbents make their effort allocation decisions, voters will evaluate both a political party’s national-level public policies as well asthe regional performance of its individual legislators. Most basically, assume a voter from region’s utilityincreases in, the effort invested by one of party P’s legislative incumbents in providing region-specific goods and services. As well, let denote voter in region’s relative satisfaction with party A’s national-level policy positionsas compared to those adopted by party B, where higher (lower) values of correspond to higher preferences for party A’s (B’s)policy positions as compared those of party B (A). For the moment, assumethese partisan preferences in region j vary according to a uniform distribution over the supportset ,such that < 0 (> 0) represents the bias of the voterin regionwho is least (most) inclined to vote for A.[17]
Voters’ attitudes towards A and B’s respective national-level policies will be determined not only by the relative ‘satisfaction’ captured in , but also by their expectations as to the parties’ relative emphasis on implementing nationally oriented as opposed to locally oriented public policy programs. Consider the following utility functions forvoter in region jover parties A and B respectively:[18]
= + [] and = – []. (2)
The function w(·)is a weighting functionwhose value will be determined by the average effort devoted by P’s legislative incumbents to supporting their party organization’s campaign and policy strategies, denoted . If one defines as the total number of seats P currently has in the legislature, then this average effort is written as:
= . (3)
By definition, when all incumbents from P choose = 1 this average effort will be = 0; and when they all choose = 1 it will be = 1.
We will assume throughout that w(0) = 0, w(1) = 1, and w(·) is weakly increasing (i.e. non-decreasing) in . In words, the less effort that P’s incumbents devote to organizational campaign and policy strategies, the more voters will ‘discount’ P’s national-level policy positions. Conversely, the more P’s incumbents pursue the interests of regional constituencies rather than the goals of their party organization, the less consideration will be given to P’s national-level policies at election time. Political parties whose legislators maintain independent local reputations will tend to be less disciplined, more factionalized, and less ideologically consistent than parties whose legislators are oriented primarily to pursuing organizational goals. While often neglected in formal political theory, these intra-party dynamics occupy center-stageto voters in electoral campaigns. The assumption that w(·) weakly increases in states that voters use a party’s cohesion as one of many heuristics with which to evaluate its likely success in implementing public policy.[19]The results belowrequire no further assumptions as to w(·)’s functional form, i.e. the rate at which w(·) increases with a given increase in .
Turning to the model of electoral choice, note that (by construction)citizens in regions whose affiliated incumbents are from party A (B) receive constituency-level goods and services only from this party’s representative and never from a representative of B(A).[20]It is thus convenient to model voter choice as the decision to ‘accept’ or ‘reject’ the party of one’s regional incumbent after observing the effort allocation.[21] The notion of a reservation utility provides a useful mechanism for capturing this dynamic. Define the reservation utility as the satisfaction level at which voters feel sufficiently pleased with the party of their incumbent legislator to choose that party in theensuing election. Voters from a regionwhose incumbent legislator is from party A will thus choose A if; otherwise they will choose B. Similarly, voters from regions whose affiliated incumbent is from B will choose B if and A otherwise.
With the simple calculus of uniform distributions, we can then derive the total support for party P in region jgiven any strategy vector f of incumbent effort allocations. Using as an example a region j whose affiliated incumbent is from party A,algebraic rearrangement (Appendix A) demonstrates that A’stotal vote share in region j is:
( f ) . (4)
As shown in figure 1, represents the ‘height’ of inj. B’s vote share in the same region will simply be ( f ).[22]The same process can be undertaken to derive( f ) and 1–( f ), B and A’s respectivevote shares in regions where the affiliated incumbent is from party B. These vote share functions capture a tradeoff faced by all incumbent legislators: while effort devoted to increases P’s vote share in region j, it also shrinks, which in turn costs party P votes in regions outside of .The relative rates at which these counteracting dynamics occur, along with the institutional mechanisms defining the role of personal voting constituencies in securing re-election, will dictate legislators’ equilibrium effort allocations.
(Figure 1 here)
To model proportional representation in its purest form, let the entire electorate (i.e. voters from all regions) residein a singlenational electoral district with M seats, as is the case in countries such as the Netherlands and Israel.[23]We then employ a simple quota and largest remainder rule to model theproportional allocation of seats toA and B. Define q = as the electoral quotaneeded to earn an individual legislative seat; in elections jargon this is the Droop quota.Consider the case in which (i.e. the national district contains 10 seats), such that q=10%. If party A wins 58% of the aggregate vote (i.e. votes summed across all regions) and party B wins 42%, then party A’s vote share contains 5 full quotas and party B’s vote share4, implying that in a first allocation they will receive 5 and 4 seats respectively. As for the final seat, it will go to A because her remainder of 8%, the vote share left over after her 5 quotas are subtracted, is larger than B’s remainder of 2%. As such, in a final tally A will win 6 seats and B will win 4. If both parties have identical remainders of 5%, the final seat will be allocated with a non-biased coin-flip.
IV. Legislative Equilibrium under Closed-List Proportional Representation
At election time both parties present a list ofM candidates to the electorate.Among these M candidates are the legislative incumbents from party P and challenger candidates. In this model, challengers are not endowed with a strategic move, though as Section V demonstratestheir mere presence has an important impact on intra-party competition in OLPR systems.[24]If a party wins some number legislative seats, these seats are subsequently allocated to the top X candidates on the party’s list. Under CLPR competition candidates’ list positions arefixed prior to the general electionaccording to their respective parties’ internal candidate nomination procedures.This papertreats these intra-party processes as exogenous, and simplyassumesthat incumbentsare aware of their list position whenchoosing effort allocations.[25]