Iraqi governorate elections: thank the open lists

Widely lauded gains for secular forces in Iraq’s provincial elections last month were largely a function of the candidate-centric, open list proportional representation system used.¹

Following the certification of results today, Michael Allen for the NED writes:

People voted on the issues rather than according to identity, and for individual candidates rather than anonymous lists. The poll represents an important step towards consolidating the country’s fragile democracy, but the real test will come with national legislative elections later this year.

And:

Iraqis voted strongly against religious sectarian parties widely perceived to be corrupt and to have failed to deliver security and basic services. “No party in the elections ran with the slogan ‘Islam is the Solution’ since voters were much more interested in who could actually provide services at the local level,” writes the Washington Institute’s J. Scott Carpenter.

Finally:

“Iraq was once defined by sectarian tensions pitting Shiite against Sunni,” writes Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Washington-based Project on Middle East Democracy. “Now, intra-Shiite competition may take greater precedence.”

In sum, personalistic campaigns revolved around everyday governance issues, and there was competition among members of the same sectarian groups. The thread uniting each of the points above is the electoral system. Iraqis did not suddenly take governance to heart. We can assume voters were as concerned with service delivery in 2005 as they were last January. The open list proportional representation system, however, freed candidates to campaign on governance and reduced the costs for Iraqis of voting on those issues.

As this insightful paper points out, moving from closed to open list PR fundamentally changes campaign dynamics.

The 2005 national elections proceeded under closed lists, and sectarian parties dominated. There are institutional reasons for this. First, candidates in closed list systems must curry favor with party leaders for high ranks on party lists. Second, since voters choose among labels and not people, party leaders have incentives to appeal to sect and ethnicity in order to maximize vote (and therefore seat) shares. Third, because the combination of social division and party-centric electoral rules politicizes identity, voters who would have voted on governance issues instead support the party representing their group. After all, what if the other group captures the state? The outcome of the 2005 elections was consistent with these incentives: a system of disciplined parties organized around religious affiliation.

Open lists change the game entirely. A candidate’s prospect for winning depends on his personal level of popularity.² He or she has an incentive to campaign against co-ethnics or co-sectarians. Such a campaign is likely to focus on issues ‘below’ the level of the group. Therefore, it is more likely to focus on “who could actually provide services at the local level,” in Carpenter’s words.

Unless the system changes, national elections later this year again will use closed list proportional representation. It will be interesting to see whether the secular organizations emerging from provincial elections reproduce their gains nationally, or whether Iraqis get another “national identity referendum.”

1. Questions nonetheless remain about the finer details of that open list system.
2. Depending on the way personal votes contribute to the party’s total, or “pool,” a candidate’s success may even depend on being more popular than fellow co-partisans, with more personal votes raising his position on the party list.

Voter choice in the Iraqi provincial vote

Early voting is underway in Iraq’s provincial elections. Financial Times offers evidence that the set of candidates is much more diverse that which contested both national elections in 2005:

Yet today, it is as if they have been injected with a new lease of life as they stand plastered with colourful posters that highlight both the different faces of Iraqi society and the battle hotting up for tomorrow’s provincial elections. Alongside images of austere looking bearded men in clerical robes are headshots of women in brightly coloured veils and businessmen in western-style suits, each vying for a seat in Basra’s regional government.

And:

For war-weary Iraqis, fed up with corruption, mismanagement, killing and kidnappings, the polls offer a glimmer of hope that a new generation of politicians may emerge, with a focus on people’s needs rather than the corrupt and sectarian politics that have dominated in the post-Saddam era.

This happy development is due in part to the so-called “open list” system Iraqis are using to elect governorate councils. Greg is right to point out that institutional change does not change voters’ preferences. Electoral systems do affect actors’ strategies, however. This new candidate-centric system has enabled candidates to run on a wider set of platforms.

Unfortunately, information on the details and politics of this electoral system have been impossible to track down. Is it really open list proportional representation, or is it single non-transferable vote? Going by a photo of a ballot (slide number five) at Financial Times, it doesn’t look like either.¹ Who held the bargaining advantage in choosing the system: the legislature, activists, or the occupying forces? As of this writing, there is no record of the law on the Council of Representatives’ English-language legislation page.

The question of who decided is the more interesting one. If it was the Council of Representatives, Iraq’s party system would appear in flux. Recall that Iraq used closed list PR in 2005 because that’s what clerics wanted. They knew it would give them control of access to office. Now someone is undoing that arrangement? If American pressure explains “open lists,” on the other hand, we have evidence of successful, post-conflict electoral engineering. If you can help answer either question above, please leave a comment!

Whether institutions are driving or only enabling the apparent sectarian de-alignment, the outcome is good for democratic consolidation in Iraq.

1. I do not read Arabic. Someone who does may have a better idea about what’s going on in the photo. Are those names of people or parties? If they’re of people, this looks like SNTV.

Repairing Iraq’s party system

As I write, democracy assistance groups are helping lawmakers develop an electoral system for Iraq’s 18 governorate councils. Some creative electoral engineering could take the sectarian sting out of Iraq’s party system. One proposal worth serious thought is using the single non-transferable vote (SNTV) with open endorsements in governorate-wide districts.

Reuters last week claimed that “Iraq’s local elections could reshape power structure.”

Major players — such as the movement of populist Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and Sunni Arab tribal groups — will be competing for the first time and are expected to make gains at the expense of those now in power.

“New alliances will form, old ones will fall. Everything will change. It will redraw the political map of Iraq,” said a senior Shi’ite government official on condition of anonymity.

Really, Reuters means reshaping a balance of power, not an underlying power structure. A party system that continues to revolve around sects will not help consolidate Iraqi democracy. Luminaries from Lipset to Lijphart have taught that stable democratic politics are about more than race, religion or language.¹ The challenge is to get Iraqi elites talking about more than sectarian interest. What candidates need are incentives to cultivate a personal vote. Campaigns need to be about what’s-in-it-for-me: jobs, schools, roads and, as a colleague quipped, a shawarma machine in every kitchen.

Thankfully, beltway rumor has it that the chosen system will be candidate-centric. This is a major step away from the closed-list PR systems that blew open Pandora’s box in 2005.

That leaves us with a few basic options:²

First-past-the-post: As long as parties don’t control who gets on the ballot, this system might work. Yet the number of votes needed to win is fairly high, meaning current parties likely would fare best, unless there were numerous candidates in each district, in which case outcomes would be wildly unpredictable. Ultimately, the lack of reliable census data would make fair apportionment virtually impossible.

Open-list PR: Basically, the system modifies list PR so that voters control who ends up being a party’s most popular parliamentarian. While it gets around the apportionment problem, it is unlikely to change much. The list logic would preserve current parties, the logic of party discipline would remain the same, and we would expect the most popular person under such circumstances to be a sectarian leader.

STV: For all its virtues, this is not appropriate for the context. Illiteracy and innumeracy are likely to cause widespread voter error. The only way to get around the apportionment problem is to use one big district in each governorate. Can we really ask Iraqis to rank up to, say, 200 candidates?

Bloc vote: Two words. Palestine 2006.³

SNTV: With open endorsements, of course. If the parties controlled who got on the ballot, there would be little chance for a shawarma machine in every kitchen. The system would stimulate hyper-personalistic campaigns, party fragmentation and pork-barrel politics at its finest. On one hand, these are ugly dynamics. On the other, they’re just what are needed to break the grip of sect on Iraq’s party system.

Using SNTV in governorate-wide districts would obviate the apportionment problem. If each council were the cube root of its respective governorate’s population, council sizes (and district magnitudes) would hover around 100, meaning each candidate would need about only one percent of votes to win.⁴

Open endorsement SNTV is not a magic bullet. Its efficacy depends on federal-governorate linkages, ballot access rules and the (in)abilities of current parties to coordinate in local contests, to name just a few variables. Iraq nonetheless faces a tradeoff. As long as its electoral rules stimulate disciplined, programmatic parties, sect is likely to be the dominant cleavage. Legislative politics will remain zero-sum with negative implications for the country’s future. On one hand, electoral engineers can reinforce the nasty equilibrium that is Iraq’s party system. On the other, they can try to force it open by stimulating fragmentation and clientelism.

1. ADDENDUM 4/17: Some have read this sentence as my suggestion that the “luminaries” advocate pork-inducing systems in order to activate non-sectarian cleavages. That is not my intention. I drew on the “luminaries” for their emphasis on the importance of such cleavages.
2. Of course, varying factors like endorsement control, pooling, ballot access restrictions, and less feasibly, district magnitude give us far more permutations.
3. For two interpretations of this disaster, see F&V and FairVote.
4. Using data from FairVote.