Fixing Iraq’s party system: Take two
No word yet on what electoral system will be used to elect Iraq’s 18 governorate councils. I want to revisit the point because now is an historic opportunity to be proactive. Using another high-magnitude list system is alarmingly likely to reinforce the zero-sum disaster that is Iraq’s party system.
Last week I argued for open-endorsement SNTV in governorate-wide districts. Under that system, parties would have little control over nominations.33 Each district would seat several members. Each voter would get one vote. He or she would cast it for a person, not a party.
That system could foster clientelistic constituent linkages. Such linkages would get parliamentarians talking about more than sect. This must be the goal because religious disputes are intractable under democracy.
Ayad Allawi ran a topical op-ed in the NY Times last November.33 Mainly because of closed-list PR, Allawi argued, “the vast majority of the electorate based their choices on sectarian and ethnic affiliations, not on genuine political platforms.”
I propose that a new electoral law be devised to move Iraq toward a completely district-based electoral system, like the American Congress, or a “mixed party list†system like that in Germany, in which some representatives are directly elected and other seats are allotted based on the parties’ overall showing. In either case, the candidates must be announced well in advance of the election, and they must be chosen to represent the people in their locality.
Furthermore, a new law should ban the use of religious symbols and rhetoric by candidates and parties — these have no place in democratic elections [...]
This restructuring of the electoral process will be the beginning of the end of the sectarianism that now dominates Iraqi politics and our dysfunctional government [...]
Allawi is onto something in advocating for a large nominal tier. But Iraq does not need to ban religious campaigns. Supplying incentives to talk about something else could suffice. SNTV would do a better job of that than MMP or FPP. Both MMP and FPP would require boundary delimitation that’s impossible given the lack of census data. Both systems moreover would be easy for current parties to game.
Open-endorsement SNTV can generate pork-barrel campaigns. It avoids the districting nightmare. It empowers individual candidates at the expense of the current parties. It could make Iraqi politics about more than religion.3
3
Bob Richard on 25 Apr 2008 at 8:42 pm #
This post and the preceding one on Iraq, plus the discussion over at Fruits and Votes, seem based on the premise that the only alternative to the current chasms separating the religious communities is localism and patronage/pork barrel machine politics. Is that really true?
There may not be an electoral engineering solution to the problem of introducing “cross-cutting cleavages” (I have hated the sound of that expression ever since I was a graduate ever so long ago). But I think that is what’s needed — not local political patronage machines. Especially since, in the context of Iraq, “cross-cutting” means primarily social class.
Jack on 26 Apr 2008 at 12:08 pm #
I think the unstated premise is that getting sectarianism ‘back in the box’ is virtually impossible. Once a party system has an organizing principle, it’s hard to replace. Moreover, sect probably is an especially tenacious principle.
MSS on 30 Apr 2008 at 11:17 am #
What Bob said.
I am also skeptical that you’d really have candidates talking about things other than religion, even under SNTV, if that is what voters and their leaders really care about.
Religious organizations are powerful enough to command their followers to divide their votes among multiple candidates of their sect, thus there is no necessary reason why SNTV would have to introduce ‘pork’ and local constituent servicing into campaigning at the expense of sectarianism. (Leaving aside whether that might be a good idea, which I am unsure of, but am willing to concede could be so.)
Tom Round on 01 May 2008 at 1:35 pm #
I’ve observed something of a tendency over the years for politicians and pundits to assume that German-style MMP is a panacea for all flaws. Whether because it’s credited by association with the 1950s-60s German “economic miracle”, or because it seems to have the best of both worlds,[1] but either way, you get pro-PR reformers claiming it will ensure a representative multi-party system for the UK, USA, NZ, Canada, etc at the same time as you get anti-PR reformers claiming it will ensure a stable two-party system for Spain, Italy, France, and now, it seems, Iraq.[2]
[1] Me, I think MMP ensures the worst of both worlds - unlike a straightforward list system, the selection of individual candidates is neither known in advance nor rationally affected by the voters’ choices; instead, it fluctuates with local variations in party support. And unlike a straightforward single-member system, it doesn’t guarantee voters power to finally remove non-performing local representatives. Full disclosure: I’m a known shill for STV.
[2] I believe STV can do either of these things - but not both at once. However, the choice of which it does (single- vs multi-party majority govt) is determined by the voters. If they want a two-party system or a single-party majority, they can get it at the next election by voting for it; whereas if the majority under a single-member system want a multi-party govt, they need to change the whole electoral law, which runs into constitutional obstacles and incumbent politicians’ self-interest. What I think is doomed to disappointment with the MMP proposals is the idea that the proposer knows in advance what is semper et ubique best for that country - single- or multi-party - and wants an electoral system that will impose this result from the top down.
Jack on 01 May 2008 at 1:54 pm #
I’m sympathetic to Tom’s concerns about MMP. One reason it tanked in Ontario, while not endemic to the system, is precisely his point about the list tier.
I don’t fully understand his point about throwing the bums out being more difficult under an MMP nominal tier than under an all-SMD system.
I’m also a known shill for STV and, frankly, I find the innumeracy concerns overblown. Put some thought in the ballot design, and make good faith efforts to educate voters. Iraq never struck me as a country so under-educated as to need to “circle the soccer ball” when voting.
If increased seat turnover is an argument for STV, however, I have to confess: I don’t buy it. In Cambridge, “PR” for some people stands for “perpetual representation.” Granted, it is easier for a shift in opinion to change the majority composition of an STV-elected delegation, but incumbent advantage is everywhere. It is the political equivalent of celebrity.
And on the inability of SNTV to raise the salience of cross-cutting cleavages, I don’t disagree. I suspect Iraq’s party system is more locked-in than not. STNV (open-endorsement) at least holds out the possibility of bringing non-religion issues to the table in a meaningful way.
Tom Round on 02 May 2008 at 12:04 am #
Thanks, Jack. I meant, with MMP you can vote out a local MP (with great effort) but s/he may very well end up back in the legislature via the party list - ie, is not “finally” removed. Unless you either…
(a) ban local-seat candidates from also appearing on the list - but this would encourage the party leaders to scramble for the list and avoid dirtying their hands in a local contest. (Unless you then lay down that only local-seat MPs may serve as Cabinet Ministers or Committee Chairs…)
or
(b) (perhaps) lay down that a local-seat MP who holds a seat and then loses it, is simultaneously deleted from the list, but a local candidate who has never won a seat can still get into the legislature via the list. This could be rationalised by arguing that polling 40% is “rejection” for a sitting MP but polling, say, 20% is a very good show for a Green or Libertarian or other minor-party. However, as with (a), I can’t see any existing polity using or considering these changes.
Though I did once read a British book, published circa 1950, where the author (a Henry Georgist or Distributivist, I think, but his name and the book’s title escapes me) proposed parallel (non-compensatory) seats for the Commons - one per every whole fixed “packet” (ie, quota) of 50,000 votes, individual candidates selected by lot from the list to fill its seats, and (”of course”) a ban on lists including local constituency candidates.
The Democratic Piece » Another candidate-centric Iraq proposal on 09 Jun 2008 at 5:26 pm #
[...] have been making the same basic argument since April. The parties are the problem. Institutional choices made in [...]