Linking Party Preferences and the Composition of Government: A New Standard for Evaluating the Performance of Electoral Democracy

Abstract

We propose a new standard for evaluating the performance of electoral democracies: the correspondence between citizens’ party preferences and the party composition of governments that are formed after elections. We develop three criteria for assessing such correspondence: the proportion of citizens whose most preferred party is in government, whether the party that is most liked overall is in government, and how much more positively governing parties are rated than non-governing parties. We pay particular attention to the last criterion, which takes into account how each citizen feels about each of the parties as well as the intensity of their preferences. We find that proportional representation systems perform better on the first criterion. Majoritarian systems do better on the other two.

Why electoral reform might improve representation and why it might make it worse

“…While a proportional system with coalition governments should increase the proportion of citizens whose preferred party enters government, that proportion should still be limited. As noted, Blais, Guntermann and Bodet () found that, on average, 50.2% of citizens find their preferred party in government in proportional systems. Table shows the proportions of Canadians whose preferred party was in cabinet in actual governments as well as in simulated single‐party and coalition governments.…”

“…While evidence suggests that electoral systems make little difference to how well citizens’ ideological preferences are reflected in government, a recent study finds that electoral systems do matter to another aspect of citizens’ preferences. Blais, Guntermann and Bodet () considered how well citizens’ party preferences are reflected in government. This approach to evaluating representation considers the extent to which parties citizens like more are better represented in government, while those they like less are less well represented in cabinet.…”

“…This approach to evaluating representation considers the extent to which parties citizens like more are better represented in government, while those they like less are less well represented in cabinet. Blais, Guntermann and Bodet () focus on three criteria: (1) the proportion of citizens whose preferred party (the party they rate highest) ends up in government, which comes closest to operationalizing the proportional or consensus vision of democracy, developed by Lijphart () and Powell (), which aims to maximize the proportion of citizens whose representatives participate in policy‐making; (2) whether the party citizens rate highest overall enters government; and (3) the difference in weighted evaluations of government and opposition parties, where weights are the proportion of seats each party has among government and non‐government parties respectively. These last two criteria come closest to the majoritarian view of democracy which focuses on representing in government the single party that wins an election and excluding all other parties.…”

“…Blais, Guntermann and Bodet () find that proportional systems perform better on the first criterion because governments under PR are generally coalitions, which include more parties and, therefore, represent a wider range of citizens’ preferred parties. There are limits, though, because as has long been argued parties have an incentive to minimize the numbers of parties that participate in coalitions to maximize their control over power (Riker ).…”

“…A recent study of representation has much to offer the debate on changing the electoral system. Blais, Guntermann and Bodet () have considered the representation of citizens’ party preferences in a variety of proportional and non‐proportional democracies. Using their measures of representation, they find that electoral systems do make a difference.…”