Lessons from Quebec's Near-Adoption of PR in 1984
Henry Milner
Throughout democratic countries,
electoral reform has been under some considerable discussion in recent years, with Japan,
Italy and New Zealand instituting major changes. In Canada, the 1993 federal election
exposed the distortions built into its winner-take-all voting system based on legislators
elected by plurality from single-member districts.
In the election, Canadians clearly wanted
to show the ruling Progressive Conservatives that they had lost confidence in them, and
the party won only 16% of the popular vote. However, the workings of the voting system
turned a show of non-confidence into a massacre. Rather than electing 46 of 295 members
that a proportional system would have provided, the Tories elected only two. By contrast,
two regionally-based parties, the Bloc Quebecois and Reform, with 13% and 19% of the
popular vote respectively, elected 54 and 52 Members. The voting system also turned the
victorious Liberals' 41% of the vote into a very solid majority of 177 seats.
Despite several such results at a federal
and provincial level in recent years, there is no perceptible clamor for electoral reform.
And while there is much dissatisfaction with the representativeness of Canadian
legislators, the link to the electoral system is seldom drawn. More typically, and
especially in the 1993 campaign rhetoric, party discipline was blamed for the perceived
unaccountability of the elected politicians.
Recall has been proposed as a solution by
the program of the fledgling Reform Party, which came second in the popular vote in the
1993 federal election; indeed, according to a March 1993 Gallup Pool, recall is endorsed
by almost 80 percent of Canadians. The closest PR came to finding its way to the Canadian
national political agenda was in a proposal by the Pepin-Robats Commission in the late
1970s calling for a mixed electoral system with 60 (of 342) MPs to be elected from party
lists.
This recommendation, like the rest of the
Report, fell on deaf ears. Indeed, when the Mulroney government created the Lortie
Commission on electoral reform and party financing in 1990, the mandate was narrowly
interpreted from the outset, so changing the electoral system was expressly excluded as a
non-starter.
Quebec: A Broken Promise to Adopt PR
As far as the provinces are concerned,
the situation has been no different -- except in Quebec, where the appearance of the Parti
Quebecois (PQ) at the end of the 1960s changed the equation. A mass party committed to
Quebec independence, the PQ could not ignore the injustice inherent in an electoral system
that allowed it only a handful of seats in the Quebec assembly despite its winning 24 and
30 percent of the vote in the 1970 and 1973 election campaigns respectively.
The PQ's program promised to incorporate
PR into Quebec's electoral system and, in fact, the governing Liberals added a commitment
to electoral reform to their program in the 1970s. When he won power in 1976, Rene
Levesque set up a Ministry of State for Parliamentary and Electoral Reform, its mandate
including consideration of alternate voting systems for Quebec.
The Ministry took up this mandate in
earnest at the beginning of the PQ's second term of office and, in 1982, it proposed a
regionally based PR system not unlike that used in a number of European countries. Parties
would present a list of candidates in each region and voters would choose the party, as
well as to indicate preferences within the lists, which would determine the order of
candidates elected. The seats were to be allocated to the parties by the d'Hondt divisor
system.
The proposal was favorably received by
Levesque and his cabinet -- in part, perhaps, because the popular support of the PQ had
been falling. Beset by a deep recession and severe conflicts with its supposed trade-union
allies, it could count on barely one-third of the voters, a situation guaranteed to
produce far fewer than one-third of the seats under plurality voting.
In June 1983, the National Assembly
unanimously requested Pierre F. Cote, Quebec's Chief Electoral Officer, to chair a
commission to investigate reforming Quebec's electoral system. During the Commission's
four weeks of public hearings, a large majority of the briefs presented called for a form
of PR. In a report presented to the National Assembly in March 1984, Cote recommended a
system of territorial proportional representation (PR) similar in nature to that proposed
by the Ministry. The main difference was that electoral district boundaries would largely
conform to MRC (county) boundaries, which meant they would be smaller in size with
twenty-one regional districts with three to fourteen seats per district.
It is difficult to imagine more favorable circumstances for electoral reform in the Canadian context than those of Quebec in the early 1980s |
The Cote report took up the Ministry's
argument that not only did PR allow for the fair representation of different political
organizations, but also that it promoted the election of women and visible minorities, as
well as strengthening regional political institutions.
While received favorably among
intellectuals and well-informed journalists, there was no sign of any groundswell of
popular support for the proposal, however. Given its solid lead in the polls at this
point, the Liberal opposition refused to enter any discussion of principle over electoral
reform, stating simply that is could not support an unpopular government's tinkering with
the electoral system in order to hold on to its seats in the legislature. Despite this,
the government tried to press on ahead. Would it be possible to get sufficient popular
support to make it impossible for the Liberals to block reform? The first obstacle proved
to be within the Parti Quebecois itself.
The PQ executive had itself presented a
brief to the Corte Commission. Declaring itself in favor of PR, it nonetheless sought a
moderate form that would maintain single-member districts. Its proposal was for a
compensatory system based on the German model -- except that, unlike Germany, where half
the seats are drawn from party lists and added to constituency results to bring the
overall totals to proportionality, it would allocate only a quarter of the seats for this
purpose, which would give an advantage to the party winning the most of the single-member
seats.
Thus the party executive found itself in
disagreement with its own government. The issue was placed before an enlarged meeting of
the caucus at a retreat in August 1984. But the Cabinet failed to gain endorsement for the
Plight recommendations. Even the fact that the PQ had sunk below 25 percent in the polls
by this point -- which would have spelled total electoral collapse if an election were
held under plurality -- was insufficient to convince the majority of the deputies.
For its part, the cabinet rejected the
mixed member PR (MMP) proposal, which might have won support from a majority of the
caucus. The main reason given was that, since it was publicly identified with the party,
MMP could not gain the kind of bipartisan, above-politics approval needed to win
acceptance for a reform of this magnitude.
A party-government committee composed of
three cabinet ministers, the deputies and three members of the executive was created to
come up with a solution. But after intensive meetings over a two-month period, no solution
was achieved and, in the end, the proposal was dropped.
The issue soon faded as the PQ split over
whether to put Quebec independence on the back burner. When the next election came late in
1985, Levesque had resigned and his successor, Pierre-Marc Johnson, made a creditable
showing in a losing effort under plurality, winning twenty-three of 122 seats with 38
percent of the vote. No one has raised the banner of electoral reform since.
Political Psychology Behind the Failure
It is difficult to imagine more
favorable circumstances for electoral reform in the Canadian context than those of Quebec
in the early 1980s -- and yet nothing came of it. To get at the explanation, we must look
at the workings of the plurality system at the level of the constituency and the
perceptions and interests of the actors there.
It is well known that single-member
constituencies provide incentives for catering to narrow local interests. For example, a
German study found the legislators elected from single-member districts to be far more
concerned with obtaining and locating specific government projects than those elected from
the list.
But there is much more that distinguishes
politics at the base when that base is made up of single-member constituencies. William
Irvine's analysis of the Canadian electoral system and its weaknesses in Does Canada
Need a New Electoral System? (1979) is the most thorough and insightful on this.
Irvine's argument starts from the nature
of party support under plurality, which he describes as overvaluing the behavior of the
least-partisan citizens. The logic of the system is for parties to appeal to the
"volatile voters," those who can make the difference between winning and losing
marginal seats -- since that is what counts -- at the expense even of their own
traditional supporters.
As a result, in the long run, more and
more voters become "volatile;" that is, they loosen and then lose their ties
with the party. The parties that "purport to be 'everybody's instrument'" are in
fact "nobody's instrument. . . . The party is robbed of its institutional usefulness
to the electorate."
Moreover, the voters' volatility means
rapid turnover among legislators, making it difficult for individuals to envisage a
political career through continuous service to the party and the electorate. (Irvine cites
figures showing only 10 percent of defeated Canadian party candidates running in the next
election.)
There is thus little party continuity at
the local level: missing are the local party activists to serve as representatives,
antennae and organization-builders between elections. Lacking such persons, the party
under plurality turns to "experts" and pollsters to tell it how to appeal to the
voters, thus further alienating traditional supporters. Irvine concludes by endorsing PR
as the system under which parties have reason to build faithful voting blocs around
individuals who are in the process of advancing their political careers.
To take this argument even further, let us
consider the party whose candidate was successful in the plurality district. The party
relies on that Member of Parliament (MP) as its link at the base with its supporters. But
that link is an uncertain one, for the MP needs the party organization only to assure
renomination. In between, she or he emphasizes a different role, that of liaison between
the local population -- irrespective of political stripe --and governmental institutions.
It is only during the general election that the party is the primary -- practically the
only -- factor at play in the relationship between elected and elector.
Indeed, anecdotal evidence from Quebec
suggests that in by-elections, in contrast, local factors can play a more important part
in determining the outcome, giving active local candidates an advantage over nationally
known "prestige" candidates. In sum, the normal, everyday activities of the
local MP contradict his or her partisan identity -- the very identity which was the basis
of his or her election in the first place.
This provides the context for
understanding the response of the PQ's Quebec legislators to the proposals of their PQ
leaders. First of all, being attuned to local elites and not to the intellectuals writing
on the op-ed pages, they perceived no preoccupation with electoral reform among the
electors.
It is not impossible to overcome such
apathy -- as the New Zealand case shows -- but it requires a special coordinated effort to
educate the public on the often subtle effects of electoral arrangements. One factor for
the success of such a campaign would be the involvement of local legislators from
favorable parties.
Had the PQ deputies actively supported
electoral reform, they might have created a sufficiently positive climate for public
discussion. In such a climate, the Liberal opposition might have been forced to enter a
debate over the merits of the electoral system. In sum, while support from the PQ
legislators would not have guaranteed passage of the reform, failure to do so ensured its
being passed over.
Institutional Reasons for Legislators' Inertia
Let us look more carefully at the
legislators' lack of sympathy. Their failure to support electoral reform cannot have been
simply a matter of partisan political advantage, for the deputies understood -- and had
the simple mathematics explained to them by proponents of the reform if they did not --
what the numbers meant for the party.
At 20-25 percent popularity in a two-party
contest under plurality, every PQ seat was in jeopardy. Yet only a small minority of
deputies favored adopting the proposed proportional system of representation. Why? The
answer lies in part in inertia, in the legislators' desire to maintain existing
structures, since these were the structures that got them elected in the first place,
structures with which they were familiar and comfortable, structures almost certain to
guarantee them renomination.
This inertia is what made them more open
to the party executive's compensatory formula which allowed the retention of -- albeit
larger -- single-member constituencies. But while true insofar as it goes, this
explanation is insufficient. For once the compensatory formula was ruled out, the deputies
still refused to accept the territorial PR system.
Clearly, they managed to combine their
preference for the existing structures with some expectation that they could be reelected
under them at close to the same likelihood of their being elected under territorial PR
which they knew would guarantee their party 20 to 25 percent of seats.
Based on discussion with many of these
legislators at the time, I came to understand their reasoning. Though they could not deny
the general effect of the low standing in the polls on their party's fortunes, they each
believed themselves to be sufficiently immune to these effects. "Moi, je suis
correcte dans mon comte," they said.
What seem to be rational choices are in fact short- sighted, both in terms of the narrow interests of the individual or party, and the wider public interest in increasing informed participation in the political process. |
The reasoning expressed their
particular vantage point. Their own standing in the district, as they saw it, was solid.
After all, they were dedicated and hard-working, always available to their constituents
for local functions and the like. They were well-known, constantly in the local public
eye; the local opposition was virtually absent. Their reasoning was reinforced by frequent
encounters with constituents who never expressed anything but satisfaction.
This distorted reasoning parallels that
taking place in Parliament due to the unrepresentative nature of parliamentary
representation under plurality. Just as all the signals the governing party receives from
its parliamentary environment mislead it into thinking that it has the mandate of the
majority of the population, so the member elected by plurality in a single-member district
sees a world in which there is nothing but support for his or her actions.
Because of this, what seem to be rational
choices are in fact short-sighted, both in terms of the narrow interests of the individual
or party, and the wider public interest in increasing informed participation in the
political process.
By contrast, a deputy elected along with
candidates of other parties on a proportional basis in a multi-member regional district is
far less prone to lose sight of the fact that it is party that links her or him to the
electorate, just as a governing party elected under PR -- lacking an automatic majority
either in the legislature or in the population -- is far less prone to lose sight of the
fact that majority support is never automatic and must be built anew for each important
legislative initiative.
The irony is, then, that in the rare case
-- as in Quebec between 1982 and 1984 -- when a governing party under plurality overcomes
its disincentive to engage in electoral reform, the distorted perception at the district
level under plurality can be expected to come into play to abort the process. If this
proved true of legislators elected under the banner of the PQ, a party as close to a mass
movement as any that have governed recently in western democracies, it is surely even more
true of those elected from more traditional parties.
A Ray of Hope
Is there any hope, then, of
instituting PR in Canada? Before responding negatively, we should remind ourselves that
anyone asked to assess similar prospects in New Zealand fifteen years ago would have
dismissed them as remote at best. New Zealand had over the years developed the
"purest" form of plurality voting, with two highly-disciplined parties
alternating periods of majority government. How are we to explain the choice just taken
there? Ostensibly, there is much to compare the political situation in New Zealand with
that in Canada in the last 1980s. Jack Nagel has described New Zealanders' frustrations
quite similar to those of Canadians: New Zealanders had become "embittered and
disillusioned with 'elective dictatorship'. . . [which] imposed radically disruptive
policies without first winning broad-based consent. . . . [They were] repelled by the
petty, stridently partisan quality of Parliamentary debate."
Unlike in New Zealand, though, which
experienced the special circumstances of am influential Royal Commission report and
political opportunism in promising a referendum, Canadian discontent was not channeled
toward the electoral system except in the support of the radical, non-parliamentary --
indeed, American -- idea of recall. Still, in responses to questions posed by pollsters in
1991, Canadians indicated dissatisfaction with the distortion built into the electoral
system.
For example, only 42 percent of those with
an opinion found it acceptable that, under the existing electoral system, a party can form
a majority government without winning a majority of the votes. (Quebec was lowest among
Canadian regions with only 33 percent finding minority rule acceptable.) Yet a Gallup poll
reported in the same La Presse poll found 64 percent of respondents to be pleased
with the fact that the 1993 election resulted in a majority government.
This may explain the failure of the losing
parties, the conservatives and, especially, the New Democratic Party (NDP), to raise the
banner of PR despite the evident unfairness of the result. In the case of the NDP which,
when compared to its popular vote, has been under-represented in the number of seats it
has been able to win in every federal election in which it has taken part -- and which has
raised the matter of electoral reform in the past -- it may be that its nationalist
ideology and resulting fear of falling prey to American domination makes it reluctant to
support an institutional reform certain to result in minority government.
Two things, at least, are clear from all
this. First, if PR is to come anywhere in Canada, it will be in Quebec because of the
recent currency the idea has had there. Second, the reform, if it is to have any hope of
making it through the legislative process, will have to be based on the German
compensatory model, since it is the only proportional system which allows people to have
their own representative.
This was what made Mixed Member
Proportional acceptable to a majority of New Zealanders, and why the majority of PQ
deputies were willing to support a compensatory system but not a regional list-based
system. From the point of view of optimizing informed participation taken here, MMP is
inferior to the list-based system, but it is certainly an improvement over plurality.
Yet what are the concrete prospects? As
this is written, the PQ is leading in the polls a few months before the next Quebec
election [editors' note: the PQ won a majority of seats with 44% of the vote]. In
the first chapter of its program, that party commits itself to institute a system of
compensatory PR elections once achieving power.
But the matter is deeper than the words of
party programs. Quebec had gone farthest in North America in the direction of
"concertation;" that is, of bringing business, labor, and government to work
together toward common objectives. And it is well-documented that there is a close link
between such "corporatist" institutional arrangements and the prevalence of
mechanisms of consensual democracy such as PR.
In any case, with the sovereignty question
again on the front burner in Quebec, electoral reform is hardly making headlines. Clearly,
and assuming a PQ victory, nothing will happen before the 1995 referendum on sovereignty.
Still, it is quite conceivable -- especially in the eventuality of Quebec becoming a
sovereign state and thus coming to politically as well as socio-culturally resemble the
small corporatist societies of Europe -- that electoral reform will return to the agenda
of Quebec politics.
Henry Milner is a professor of
economics and political science at Vanier College in St.-Laurent, Quebec. This piece is
excerpted from a longer article that appeared in the American Review of Canadian
Studies, Spring 1994.