Iraq’s parliament gets bigger

Under the 2009 electoral law,¹ there will be 323 seats in the Council of Representatives. This is an increase from 275 in December 2005. As in December 2005, most seats will be allocated on the governorate level. In that election, however, there were 45 seats allocated nationally to minority groups and parties failing to meet governorate-level thresholds.² This time, there are only 16 compensatory seats.

And, of course, the new electoral system is open-list proportional representation.

More from Iraq and Gulf Analysis, including the distribution of seats by governorate.

1. Score!
2. These thresholds were not formal, but arose as a function of apportionment.

Open lists for Iraq

Reidar Visser reports. More at Fruits and Votes.

I am surprised. Then again, the political leaders who agreed to this are unlikely to lose their seats under the new system. See MSS’ comment on another post, the essence of which supports my prediction.

I do not know yet whether the lists are fully open or just “flexible.” The lists will be open. Candidates will not need quotas of preference votes as they did in the January 2009 governorate council elections. Voters, however, will have the option of voting for the party’s pre-ordered list.

Tom Friedman steals my idea

At least I’d like to think so. Here’s the key language:

Specifically, the Obama team needs to make sure that Iraq’s bickering politicians neither postpone the next elections, scheduled for January, nor hold them on the basis of the 2005 “closed list” system that is dominated by the party leaders. We must insist, with all our leverage, on an “open list” election, which creates more room for new faces by allowing Iraqis to vote for individual candidates and not just a party. This is what Iraq’s spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, is also demanding. It is a much more accountable system.

If we can get open list voting, the next big step would be the emergence of Iraqi parties in this election running for office on the basis of nonsectarian coalitions — where Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds run together. This would be significant: Iraq is a microcosm of the whole Middle East, and if Iraq’s sects can figure out how to govern themselves — without an iron-fisted dictator — democracy is possible in this whole region.

H/T to Barak of the thoughtful new blog Democracy & Society.

Update: Ranj Alaaldin at the Guardian is on board, and now is a good time to recall Ayad Allawi’s November 2007 op-ed that effectively called for a more candidate-based system.

Iraq’s endogenous institutional inertia

Reidar Visser of the Iraq democratization website historiae.org has an excellent post on his supplemental blog about electoral reform in Iraq. Until the close of legislative business on Friday, prospects were ostensibly good for a reformed electoral law including open-list proportional representation (OLPR) for Council of Representatives elections. Lo and behold, it increasingly looks like the sectarian forces occupying parliament will not gore their own ox by relinquishing control over their party lists to voters. Visser’s title captures the point: “A Closed Assembly Will Produce a Closed List.” I want to discuss the origin and likely impact of that “closed assembly.”

Prospects for OLPR looked good because Iraqis literally took to the streets to advocate for it last weekend. They were following cues from Grand Ayatollah Ali Husseini Al-Sistani, whose advocacy of the system began last summer and who suggested he might boycott closed-list elections, as well as from other political leaders initially opposed to but who later claimed to support the proposal. Successful OLPR elections for governorate councils last winter fueled proponents’ empirical case, and reform looked likely when Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki joined the choir of supporters.

As Visser notes, however, the reform clamor belies parliamentary leaders’ secret preference for the status quo. Despite the apparent public agreement on candidate-based elections, lawmakers adjourned for the weekend on Friday without taking action. Not having a new law means the old closed-list one will remain in force. One could hope that they come back Monday to vote for a new law, except that the Iraqi Independent Electoral Commission said October 16 was the last possible date to make changes in time for January 16′s polls. Moreover, lawmakers’ inaction has a precedent; the same thing happened last summer.

Why would open lists be a reform? An argument I have made often on this blog concerns candidate-based electoral systems as treatments for divided societies. When transitional elections are run under voting systems that induce disciplined, ‘programmatic’ parties – especially closed-list PR, which has been the treatment in an overwhelming share of post-conflict interventions since World War II or so – the emergent party system is likely to reflect the divisive religious or ethnic cleavages that fuel conflict in the first place.

Skeptics of the treatment argument suggest that institutions are unlikely to alter or mute divisive cleavages because powerful actors in the underlying society will choose democratic rules that reinforce the preexisting power structure. Put differently, institutions are endogenous to social context. Either actors will choose institutions that benefit them, or they will ignore the incentives presented by imposed institutions just as a sickly host rejects a nonetheless needed organ transplant. If the social conditions are bad for democracy and stability, the electoral behavior arising from them also will be. By implication, institutional design is not an effective scope for democratizing interventions.

While aspects of the point about institutional treatment are fair to concede, it overemphasizes the durability of social context. The fatalism of this perspective with respect to electoral rules risks blocking outcomes otherwise auspicious for democracy. Any elections held amidst violent, sectarian conflict are likely to generate a congruent party system, regardless of the electoral system chosen. Four years later, though, Iraqi political discourse has become more secular, more national, and more about government performance.¹ That was the lesson of January’s provincial elections, and, as Visser notes, a trend likely to persist into national elections next year. The difference between last and next January’s elections is that, while electoral rules in the former allowed voters to seat performance-oriented candidates, closed-list PR in the latter will not. Institutions eventually do matter, and regardless of the population’s shifting preferences, January’s national legislative elections are likely to be another polarized, sectarian census.

This is unfortunate because something could have been done to prevent it. Namely, occupying powers could have done more to impose a candidate-based electoral system on Iraq in January 2005. We instead granted sectarian actors’ wishes for a system shoring up their power to set the Iraqi legislative agenda, both then and into the future.²

Notwithstanding public demonstrations and party leaders’ pronouncements in favor of more voter choice, Iraq is on track for more of the same: another national election under closed-list electoral rules. If this is what happens, it will be the path-dependent outcome of a fateful choice made four years ago. Now in place is a feedback between social polarization and restrictive elections. Closed assembly, closed list.

1. Or private access to public goods, the developmental pathology called clientelism. How to deal with that is a big question for another post, but clientelism is present in all societies in varying degrees. For now, I will claim that the developmental challenge is twofold: generalizing clientelism while increasing aggregate wealth in order to sustain the generalized clientelism we call a welfare state.
2. Accurate understanding of the choice of closed lists has been a casualty in recent coverage of the reform debate. See, for example, this typical article by the WSJ where the personal security of candidates is cited as a reason for closed lists. Other arguments have included the simplicity of voting and administration with CLPR ballots. I am more inclined to believe this logic – CLPR is a fast, easy and cheap way to run an election mid-conflict – but not that it mattered more than the preferences of sectarian leaders.

Preference voting for El Sal?

The other day I had the opportunity to attend a talk by Juan Carlos Sanchez from the Foundation for the Study and Application of Law (FESPAD), a civil society organization that seeks to reform El Salvador’s electoral system.

He opened by arguing, quite bluntly, that El Salvador has “one of the worst electoral systems in Latin America.” To demonstrate this, he pointed to a number of specific facets of the system, such as the lack of absentee voting, the politicization of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), the laissez-faire approach to parties and campaign regulation, and feckless mechanisms for enforcing the rules of the game.

What struck me most about Mr. Sanchez’s talk was what he did not address: the actual processes by which voter preferences are translated into political representation.

El Salvador utilizes a system of closed-list proportional representation (CLPR), a system known for encouraging strong, often programmatic, yet sometimes deeply ideological and polarized parties, not unlike those found in El Salvador. Briefly, a closed list allows the party leadership to select candidates with little or no input from the electorate, while proportionality provides opportunities for parties to garner substantial representation without necessarily having to reach across the political aisle or even into the center aisle in order to acquire district-wide majorities or pluralities. While it must be recognized that the two main parties – Arena and FMLN – have made considerable strides in moderating themselves since the days of the civil war, they nevertheless remain deeply divided, so much so that many question the degree to which they will respect the legitimacy of a loss in the upcoming presidential election.

Of course, in a country where civil war wounds have not yet fully healed, and where substantial socioeconomic disparities remain a potent political reality, it would be misguided to attribute full blame for the country’s polarized politics to its electoral institutions. Yet, it seems reasonable to begin to question the degree to which this system may be exacerbating, or at least failing to ameliorate, the nature and dynamics of existing political divisions.

To be sure, PR has its virtues and it has been proposed as a means to alleviate the effects of deeply divided societies in a number of contexts. However, such proposals are almost always tied to the caveat of parliamentarianism and the assumption of more than two relevant political parties - two additional factors that would presumably contribute a more conciliatory executive, legislative coalition building and, by extension, a more consociational political atmosphere.

This model, however, does not reflect the political realities of El Salvador, where holdover Cold War manichaeism and deep class divisions have encouraged the emergence of two dominant parties, which are currently involved in a bitter, winner-take-all struggle for the powerful presidency.*

With this background in mind, I asked Mr. Sanchez whether anyone has ever recommended a move away from CLPR, towards a system that provides incentives for existing parties to moderate the selection of their candidates, and for individual candidates to soften their rhetoric, such as the Alternative Vote (AV) or the Single Transferable Vote (STV) (the latter would seem a more likely option for a country already accustomed to proportionality and multi-member districts). The virtue of these systems is that they allow voters to select not only their first choice, but their second, third, or however many candidates decide to run. If their first choice does not receive enough votes to win a seat, their second choice candidate then receives their vote. For this reason, AV and STV systems are both referred to as forms of Instant Runoff Voting (IRV). This can create strong incentives for parties and candidates to attract votes outside their traditional base by moderating their platforms, campaigns, and rhetoric, as they begin to recognize the value of being voters’ “next-best choice.” Given that upwards of 14 percent of the electorate remains undecided going into tomorrow’s presidential election, it seems plausible that there may be a significant underrepresented “center,” whose voice could serve as a force of moderation if amplified through one of these preferential systems.

To Mr. Sanchez’s knowledge, despite the near-universal recognition of the need for a less polarized political dynamic, no one has made such a recommendation. In fact, he confessed that he - ostensibly one of the foremost domestic experts on reforming the Salvadoran electoral system – was unaware of any electoral alternatives for diminishing polarization.

This response surprised me, and I was thus wondering if anyone out there reading this with knowledge of El Salvador or electoral systems has any insight with respect to this issue, especially since our computer time at the hotel is rationed, and opportunities for even basic research are extremely limited. Has anyone proposed a preferential model for El Salvador? Might it help temper the country’s polarized politics? Is it even a plausible option? To what degree are current power holders’ interests tied to existing procedures? Are there potential unintended consequences that one should consider? Might a simple shift from CLPR to open-list PR offer a less drastic means of achieving greater moderation, or might this have the opposite effect? Perhaps what is really needed is a focus on reforming the executive branch vis-a-vis other organs of the state, whether this means a move toward parliamentarianism or simply a curtailment of executive authority.

So many questions. With any hope, the conduct of the parties and their supporters during and after tomorrow’s election will make them all seem a little less relevant.

*The president of El Salvador is selected through a two-round system, which in other contexts has been credited for the success of more moderate candidates (according to the same logic of the aforementioned IRV systems). However, in tomorrow’s election, because none of the smaller parties have put forth candidates, it is understood that there will be no opportunity for a second round of voting.

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.

Open list PR for Iraqi governorate elections

Iraq’s governorates will elect councils under open list proportional representation on January 31. According to Election Guide’s latest email alert:

Iraqi electoral officials have deemed it safe enough for political candidates’ names to appear on the ballots for the January 31 provincial elections. In previous elections since the 2003 US-led nvasion toppled the late Saddam Hussein’s dictatorial regime, rampant sectarian and political violence kept candidates and their families at risk. As a result, only candidates’ political party affiliations appeared on ballots…

I didn’t know candidates’ personal security was the deciding factor in using closed list PR for both 2005 national elections.

Dawisha and Diamond’s 2006 Journal of Democracy piece (gated) has become my resource on how these choices were made (emphasis mine):

First, it fit with the power-sharing or “consociational” logic of institutional design that Iraq was moving to embrace. Proportionality had become a basic principle of Iraqi political life with the July 2003 appointment of the Iraqi Governing Council—whose 25 members represented a delicate balance among Shi’ites, Sunnis, and Kurds in numbers approximating their shares of the population (it also included one member each from the Turkoman and Assyrian Christian minorities).4 PR sustained the logic that each group should expect to have a share of power roughly proportional to its weight in society. This expectation—which quickly became an entitlement—was deeply worrisome to some Iraqis and foreign advisors, but once the logic was established it became inescapable.

Second, the leaders of the principal Shi’ite and Kurdish political parties were attracted to party-list PR because it promised to reinforce their weight in the political system and give them tighter control over who would run on their party label.PR also made it easier for the various Kurdish and Shi’ite parties to coalesce into common lists. Finally, advocates of a guaranteed quota for women’s representation in parliament—such as the Iraqi Higher Women’s Council—were drawn to PR because of its greater technical suitability to ensuring women’s representation. International experts estimated, for example, that if parties were required to place women at no worse then every third interval on their ranked lists, it was quite likely that a 25 percent minimum quota of female representatives in parliament—the target written into the interim constitution and retained, at least for a transitional period, in the permanent one—could be achieved, even if PR were conducted in a series of multimember districts. Devising a mechanism to ensure a minimum percentage of women in parliament would be much more difficult and cumbersome in a system of single-member districts, or even in a mixed system.

And there were operational reasons, according to the same. CLPR is ostensibly preferable in the absence of reliable census data for districting, where internal displacement rates are high and where these two factors complicate (1) assignments of voters to precincts and (2) the ability of identity groups to form cohesive parties.

CLPR is generally easy to administer under chaotic circumstances. Print one ballot for everyone (or one for each province, as in the second elections), and count all the votes.

Last year I argued using a candidate-centric electoral system might reduce the emphasis of ethnicity and sect in Iraqi politics. OLPR is such a system. Returning to the EGuide alert, some preliminary evidence:

Confident in the improved security environment, many candidates have felt safe enough to campaign openly and place their photos on campaign posters and banners in their respective cities.

What party systems will emerge after January 31? Will their contours differ from those of the national party system? Will legislative politics at the governorate level focus on sub-cleavage issues? How static will the national party system be going into 2009 national elections?