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.¹ 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.² 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.

1. Depending on ballot access rules.
2. The original TDP blog post is here.

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.

Toward a more stable Italian left?

A quick thought on the Italian election¹.

There is reason to believe we are witnessing a seismic shift in the Italian party system. The next time a center-left coalition comes to power, it has a good shot at finishing its term.

Division on the Italian left has been persistent. While more extreme factions were not the most proximate cause of Prodi’s most recent fallen government, the outgoing PM had been governing by confidence votes in order to squelch ideological polarization in his coalition. Indeed it was the Communist Refoundation Party that brought down Prodi’s last government in 1998. Speaking at the Brookings Institution on April 10, La Stampa’s Maurizio Molinari noted moderate/extreme leftist compromise had been a staple since 1921 and perhaps as far back as 150 years. Many locals during my trip to Italy last month told me the electoral law, which centers on a “majoritarian prize,” was una truffa [a scam] designed by Berlusconi to exploit the left’s internal division².

Berlusconi’s anticipated victory in both houses may belie growing unity on the left. MSS in the comments of his blog suggests this second election under majoritarian rules has reduced the number of parties in Italy. And Tom Round in the same notes no Communist³ was elected to either house for the first time in a very long time. Where did the hard left go?

Walter Veltroni’s decision to shut the hard left out of his apparentement was telling. At Brookings, Molinari pressed the historical significance of the decision to stop accommodating this faction. While doing so hurt Veltroni’s (not very good) chance of winning in the short term, it may mean more cohesive leftist governments in the long term, under two conditions:

1) Voters did and will continue to strategically desert hard left factions for the center-left;

2) Veltroni’s decision to marginalize the hard left sticks.

Berlusconi has long stressed how his “majority prize” electoral system is meant to bring Italy closer to a two-party system. Scam or not, maybe it will.

1. Subject to revision based on exit polls to be consulted and a spreadsheet to be built.
2. Short description: the apparentement winning a plurality of votes is topped up to about 55% of seats in the Chamber. In the Senate, this “prize” is allocated at the level of the multi-member district corresponding to each region.
3. Capital “C” intended; PD’s Veltroni is a former Communist, at least nominally.