I have often thought that flexible lists could be designed to offer a “best of both worlds” between open and closed lists, but in practice I doubt that has been achieved. Most actual flexible list systems require such high thresholds of preference votes to change the list order that few get elected who would have lost without the preference-vote provision. Then again, maybe that is not a bad thing (see first comment).

I must say that it is very gratifying to see mainstream reporters talking about list type, and to see people protesting on the streets over such matters! But one suspects it will be a while for what the academic community knows about these systems to filter on out. And granted, we are still learning, as the research on these sorts of questions is very under-developed. But the accountability aspect does not look so good, mainly because in any open-list system of moderate district magnitude, the typical pattern in a party is a few utterly “safe” legislators (with huge preference vote totals) and then a smattering of candidates with vote totals very similar to one another and thus few votes separating winners from losers. It is hard to hold legislators accountable in that context.

I will be posting some papers on this at my site in the near future, and there are already the works of David Samuels and John Carey on related themes.