African Democracy: Mozambique

The Mozambican elections of 2009 really sparked my interest in elections. Much of the media these days is focused on the upcoming general elections in the United Kingdom, so with the help of a friend studying constitutional law in the UK, I was able to further understand the British electoral system, as well as the structure of Britain's parliament, and the role of the European Union.

The British Electoral System

The First Past the Post System Determines the House of Commons (Erin Britton)

British Members of Parliament are elected to the House of Commons through the First Past the Post system. The electoral system used through Britain is the single member constituency with simple majority, better known as the First Past the Post system.

The Mechanics of First Past the Post

For the purposes of general elections, Britain is divided up into single constituencies. Each party who wishes to contest the constituency (also known as a seat) must put forward one candidate or representative to stand. Each voter in the constituency then has one vote which they can cast for the candidate or representative of their choice. The candidate with the largest number of votes is elected as the Member of Parliament for that constituency. The party which has the greatest number of elected Members of Parliament then generally forms the government.

The Advantages of the System

As far as electoral systems go, the First Past the Post system is relatively simple and easy for voters to understand. It is also an inexpensive system to run and its simplicity means that a result can be produced fairly quickly. Since each constituency elects only one representative, that person is easily identified with a particular area and voters know who to approach when they have a problem. The First Past the Post system tends to lead to one party gaining a majority in the House of Commons and so voters know which party will form the government and so what policies to expect.

The Disadvantages of First Past the Post

The First Past the Post system is a far from perfect electoral system and, in fact, 5 main disadvantages can be identified:

1. Since the winning candidate needs only to secure a simple majority, it is possible that more people in total may have voted for other candidates than the winner.

2. A party which regularly comes second or third in the constituency votes but that wins very few outright can find themselves with a very high percentage of the total vote but relatively few seats.

3. It is theoretically possible that the party which forms the government may actually have won fewer total votes that their nearest rival.

4. Since there is no uniform number of voters in a constituency, the winner in a small constituency can have received fewer votes than the runner up in a larger constituency.

5. A number of constituencies are considered ‘safe’ for particular parties. In such cases, voters who do not support the dominant party may feel that there is no point voting at all.

It is important to remember that all electoral systems have some disadvantages and in Britain, where tradition has dictated the use of the First Past the Post system, the advantages of the current system are thought to outweigh the disadvantages.

References:

McLean, I. and McMillan, A. (2003) The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (2nd Rev Ed.) (Oxford University Press)

Jones, B. et al (2006) Politics UK (6th Ed.) (Longman)

Kingdom, J. (2003) Government and Politics in Britain: An Introduction (3rd Ed.) (Polity Press)

The British electoral system is based on the "First-Past-The-Post" (FPTP) system. In recent years, reforms have occurred in places such as Northern Ireland where a form of proportional representation has been used in elections and in the devolution elections surrounding Scotland and Wales. However, for the most part, Britain has used the tried and tested FPTP system.

In the past, this system and the whole structure of elections, created absurd anomalies with the existence of "rotten boroughs" such as Old Sarum, Dunwich and Gatton. Old Sarum was by local reckoning "one man, two cows and a field" and yet returned two MP’s to Westminster! Gatton, a village in Surrey, returned one MP yet had just one voter in it.

The 1832, 1867 and 1884 Reform Acts changed a lot of the more absurd abuses that surrounded the electoral system so vividly described by Charles Dickens in "Pickwick Papers". However, the principle of FPTP was kept.

Arguments For FPTP

In a ‘normal’ British national election or by-election (i.e. excluding the newer formats that have been used in recent regional elections for devolution), those who wish to fight an election register to do so. When the election takes place, for example a by-election for a constituency MP for Westminster, the person who wins the highest number of votes within that constituency, wins that election. FPTP is as clear and as brutal as that. Only in the very rarest of cases has a re-count been ordered due to the closeness of that specific result, but in the vast majority of cases, FPTP allows for a clear winner.

As an example; a by-election for the constituency of Make-Up. The three main candidates are from the three most prominent national parties. The result is as follows :

Candidate A (Labour) : 22,000 votes

Candidate B (Tory) : 17,000 votes

Candidate C (Lib Dems) : 13,000 votes

In this example, the clear winner is candidate A with a majority over Candidate B of 5,000. FPTP is a cheap and simple way to hold an election as each voter only has to place one cross on the ballot paper. Counting of the ballot papers is usually fast and the result of a British general election is usually known the very next day after polling. Ballot papers are usually simple (though they can drift towards being confusing if the number of candidates is large) and the voter only needs to put one clear mark on their paper which should be easily counted thus removing the prospect of the confusion that haunted the American 2000 election which degenerated into "when is a mark not a mark ?"

The speed of the process usually allows for a new government to take over power swiftly or if the incumbent government wins the general election, allows for a swift return for the continuation of government without too many disruptions to the political life of the nation.

FPTP has created within Great Britain a political system that is essentially stable as politics is dominated by just two parties. The chaos of the political systems of Italy and Israel is avoided using FPTP. Minority governments have occurred in the UK using FPTP, but the life span of those governments was limited. In recent years, governments have been strong as a result of the clear mandate given to it using the FPTP system.

In a constituency, one MP is elected and therefore, the people of that constituency will know who to ask or pursue if they have a query etc. In a multi-member constituency, in which a number of parties are represented, this would not be as easy.

Arguments Against the FPTP

As the above example shows, FPTP questions the whole issue of "democratic elections" in that the majority will of the people within one constituency may be reflected in the electoral outcome. But in overall terms, if more people vote against a candidate than for him/her, is this democratic in terms of popular representation in Westminster?

In the example above, 22,000 voted for the candidate that won that election but 30,000 voted against the winner. In recent years, national or by-elections have frequently thrown up the instance of the winner having more people vote against him/her. Therefore, that victor cannot claim to have the majority support of the people within the whole constituency concerned. Therefore, the total popular mandate for the winner does not exist. A counter-argument against this is that one of the over-riding beliefs in democracy is that the winner should be accepted by all and the losers should have their concerns listened to by the victorious party.

The same is true at a national level. If the national government does not have the majority of the nation behind it (as expressed in the final votes for that government) it cannot claim to truly represent the people of that nation. In 1951 (Tory) and in February 1974 (Labour), the nation voted in governments that had less people vote for them but won more seats than their opponents. Neither government could claim to truly represent "the people".

In the 1997 election, the victorious Labour Party gained 43.2% of the total votes cast and won 63.6% of seats at Westminster. The combined number of votes for the Tory and Liberal Democrats represented 47.5% of the total votes (nearly 4% more than Labour) yet between them they got 32.1% of the seats available at Westminster.

In the 2001 election, Labour got 43% of the total popular vote whereas all the other parties got 57% - yet Labour maintained its very powerful position in Parliament with 413 MP's out of 659. The same trend was seen with the 2005 election result.

It can be claimed that such a percentage of votes should not have given Labour such large Parliamentary majorities – but the workings of the FPTP system allows for just such an occurrence. In fact, no government since 1935 has had a majority of public support as expressed through votes cast at a national election.

Lord Hailsham once referred to this system as an "elective dictatorship" in that a powerful government can be created with overwhelming Parliamentary power which can usually push through its required legislation - but with only a minority of the country supporting it.

An argument put forward against FPTP is that it might put people off of voting in an election for a minority party as they know that their vote will be wasted. This discriminates against minority parties who will lose out as a consequence of this. It is possible that minority parties might have greater political support than their election figures show.

FPTP has discriminated against the Parliamentary power of the Liberal Democrats at national elections. Both the Tories and Labour have benefited from the system.

At the 1997 national election, the Liberal Democrats gained 16.8% of the votes but only got 46 seats. The Tories gained 30.7% of the votes but gained 165 seats. Labour won 43.2% of the votes and gained 419 seats. At a proportionate level, the Liberal Democrats should have got around 106 seats in Westminster if their representation was based on similar support for the Labour Party.

In the 2001 election, the Lib Dems got 52 seats and 19% of the total votes cast. Using the most basic form of proportional representation, 19% of votes cast would equate to about 120 seats in Parliament.

The continuation of the FPTP system can only favour the Tory and Labour parties and work against the Liberal Democrats - so it is argued.

In polls carried out between 1999 and 2000, more than 60% of the people asked claimed that they would favour a system of proportional representation (PR) to make the electoral system more fair and the results more representative. But would a party in power that benefits from such a system introduce something that could only damage its own political power?

Parliamentary sovereignty

Parliamentary sovereignty is a principle of the UK constitution. It makes Parliament the supreme legal authority in the UK, which can create or end any law. Generally, the courts cannot overrule its legislation and no Parliament can pass laws that future Parliaments cannot change. Parliamentary sovereignty is the most important part of the UK constitution.

Parliamentary sovereignty and the UK constitution

People often refer to the UK having an 'unwritten constitution' but that's not strictly true. It may not exist in a single text, like in the USA or Germany, but large parts of it are written down, much of it in the laws passed in Parliament - known as statute law.

Therefore, the UK constitution is often described as 'partly written and wholly uncodified'. (Uncodified means that the UK does not have a single, written constitution.)

Developments affecting Parliamentary sovereignty

Over the years, Parliament has passed laws that limit the application of parliamentary sovereignty. These laws reflect political developments both within and outside the UK.

They include:

• The devolution of power to bodies like the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly.

• The Human Rights Act 1998.

• The UK's entry to the European Union in 1972.

• The decision to establish a UK Supreme Court in 2009, which ends the House of Lords function as the UK's final court of appeal.

These developments do not fundamentally undermine the principle of parliamentary sovereignty, since, in theory at least, Parliament could repeal any of the laws implementing these changes.

British electoral system is 'unjust'

Less than three per cent of British voters have a fair share of power in elections, according to new research.

The New Economics Foundation think tank, which carried out the study, called for urgent action to reform the "unjust" UK parliamentary electoral system.

The "democratic index" is based on an analysis of British voters' ability to influence the results of elections from 1954 to 2005.

"The structure of the British electoral system is undemocratic and unequivocally unjust," said NEF research chief Nic Marks.

"It is hugely inefficient at translating the will of the electorate into the structure of government, and as a result people are simply not bothering to vote."

Marks added: "For some time voters in the UK have felt that their vote does not count. Our index reveals for the first time, just how well-founded their fears are."

The study argues that the current system is not only structurally unjust but has an inbuilt inertia to change.

"The winning party in an election is likely to have the safest seats, and its candidates are best placed to come second where there is a change," said Marks.

"In the 2005 election, the 100 constituencies where the voters with least power live were all safe Labour seats.

"The Conservatives benefited from a similar phenomenon in the 1980s. In fact, the only people who can change the electoral system in Britain are its main beneficiary, members of the party in power."

"Urgent action is needed to ensure that the British electorate is given a fair share of democratic power

Parliamentary elections in the United Kingdom should be seen as a referendum on the performance of sitting MPs, not merely as a snapshot nationwide opinion poll determining party voting weights for the next Parliament. The electoral system affects the degree to which voters may hold their representatives to account for their actions in the previous Parliament; changes which would diminish this accountability mechanism should be resisted.

The UK presently has a legislature whose unelected chamber better reflects the relative strength of the Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat and None of the Above parties. Conversely, if Labour and the Conservatives each won 50% of the vote, the other chamber would have a sizable Labour majority. 51% of the seats in the Lower House delivers 100% of the power, and this can be captured by Labour on about 40% of the vote. Nevertheless, whenever Labour runs into opposition from the chamber which, in any other context, would be described as more "representative" by people who go in for that kind of thing, it threatens to force its legislation through under the Parliament Acts, on the grounds that the Lower House is more "democratic".

The Lower House is more democratic.

Contrary to the self-serving views of the Liberal Democrats and other jejune supporters of electoral "reform", what matters for democracy is not representativeness or proportionality, so much as accountability and responsiveness. When MPs behave in accordance with their constituents' wishes, this is to be preferred to their merely existing in party groupings of such sizes as best reflect their constituents' choices at the previous election.

When discussing electoral reform in the UK, retaining a "constituency link" is often posited as a requirement. That is to say, it is felt to be necessary that everyone should have an MP who is in some sense "theirs", normally meaning that people are grouped into geographical areas and each area gets its own MP. A weaker version of this permits multiple MPs for each area. This is supposed to be good because it means that there's automatically someone in Parliament to go to with one's grievances. There is a much better reason why it happens to be good.

If we merely say that everyone must have one or a small number of MPs, that does not imply that every MP must have his own constituency. The German federal electoral system and its antipodean imitator in New Zealand affords MPs who have no constituencies: they are elected from party lists and assigned in such numbers as ensure that the proportion of MPs in each party in the chamber match the proportion of the vote each party won. This category of MPs shares the same vice as MPs in a chamber fully elected by a proportional system: they can't be voted out of office directly.

If your MP decides to go against the wishes of his constituents, they can contact him and say, "Hi, your majority at the last election was 2000; we, the undersigned 1001 who voted for you last time will vote against your party next time unless you buck the whip on this issue we care about." The easier it is to do this, the more likely the behaviour of an MP will reflect the wishes of constituents.

Don't believe the canard about votes not counting: every vote against the person who won counts against his majority and makes him more susceptible to pressure from his constituents before the next election.

The electoral system can restrain this tactic. It works well under First Past The Post, and similar systems. Generally, increasing the number of MPs who represent a single constituency has the effect of making this tactic harder, as the punishment from electors may be spread across several MPs, especially if the electors cannot choose which MPs from a paricular party get the benefit of their vote. This is a notorious problem with the European Parliamentary elections in Great Britain: if some MEP is the ringleader for a particularly odious policy, she cannot easily be voted out without voting out the colleagues from her party. Even when a free choice on the preferential ordering of MPs is permitted, it is difficult to stop the disliked MP from riding back to election on the coattails of his more popular colleagues.

So, in order of preferability, the electoral systems rank as follows:

• First Past The Post, and Alternative Vote

• Single Transferable Vote in multimember constituencies

• Proper Proportional Representation systems with open lists

• Proper Proportional Representation systems with closed lists

Having said all this, it must be stressed that electoral reform for the House of Commons should not be considered in isolation from the composition of the other chamber, and the relation between the Commons and three other institutions: the executive, the House of lords, and the courts.

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Some notes:

Alternative Vote is the Australian name for a system which when used in single-member constituencies is identical to STV: electors rank the candidates in order of preference, and the least popular candidate is repeatedly eliminated until someone has over 50%; essentially, once a candidate is eliminated, a vote is regarded as counting for whichever remaining candidate was most preferred by its caster. The effect of this system tends to be obliteration of extremists without penalising or "wasting" protest votes.

It should be noted that in the British debate, "Proportional Representation" is used to mean proper PR systems and STV/AV. The Australian Electoral Commission used to have an excellent webpage with a classification of all the electoral systems used in Australia's twenty-odd legislative chambers, but they've apparently improved it off their site now.

Other fallacious views on electoral systems which it is useful to rebut at this juncture include the contention that FPTP entrenches a two-party system (in fact, the number of parties is contingent on the geographical concentration of voters), that AV in the UK in 1997 would have led to a larger Labour majority (only if you didn't tell people and the parties what the electoral system was in advance, otherwise the parties would have behaved differently), and that geographical constituencies are a relic of a bygone age and are being replaced by PR across Europe, or at least the world. FPTP is described by Hilaire Barnett in her militantly Anglosceptic tome on the British constitution as "still" existing in some dusty English-speaking corners of the planet; in fact some countries using PR have been moving towards constituencies: Italy did in the 1990s, and the Dutch are considering a similar move.

Europe and UK Parliament:

The UK is one of 27 member states of the European Union and is subject to European Union (EU) legislation. UK government ministers are involved in deciding this legislation and should not agree to proposals before Parliament has examined them.

What is Parliament’s role in Europe?

• Scrutinising EU draft legislation and other EU documents.

• Changing UK law to reflect agreed EU legislation and treaties.

• Holding the government to account on its EU policies and negotiating positions in the EU institutions.

Can the European Union change the law in the UK?

The EU has the authority to apply legislation in the UK but actually putting it into action may require Parliament to pass new or amended legislation.

More On Parliamentary Sovereignty:

Another classic exposition was that of Albert Dicey, in his book Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution (1885):

Parliament... has... the right to make or unmake any law whatever; and further, that no person or body is recognised by the law of England as having a right to override or set aside the legislation of Parliament. Parliament is not bound by its predecessor.

The doctrine of parliamentary supremacy may be summarised in three points:

• Parliament can make law concerning anything.

• No Parliament can bind a future parliament (that is, it cannot pass a law that cannot be changed or reversed by a future Parliament).

• A valid Act of Parliament cannot be questioned by the court. Parliament is the supreme lawmaker.