Unusual Features and Prospects for Reform
Arend Lijphart
Probably the most surprising aspect of
the April 1994 parliamentary election in South Africa is that it took place at all.
Although I was one of a tiny minority of cautious optimists, most observers of the South
African political scene in the 1970s and 1980s did not believe that a negotiated
transition to democracy was possible.
The election was also unusual in the sense
that it was the first democratic election in the country -- and hence not just an election
but an affirmation of democratic liberation and a referendum, supported overwhelmingly, on
the new democratic system.
Highly Proportional List PR
I should like to call attention to yet
another highly unusual feature of the election: the almost purely proportional PR system
that was used. In fact, I believe that it can be called unique in this respect. To my
knowledge, no national parliamentary election has ever been held under an equally or more
thoroughly proportional system, with the exception of the short-lived East German
democratic parliament in March 1990. (PR itself is not unusual, of course; most of the
world's democracies use some form of it.)
The proportionality of PR systems depends
mainly on four factors: the electoral formula (such as plurality, different forms of PR,
etc.); district magnitude (the number of representatives elected per district), electoral
threshold (the legal minimum required for representation), and the size of the assembly to
be elected.
South Africa opted for maximum
proportionality: one huge, nationwide district for the conversion of votes into seats, no
electoral threshold at all and a very large assembly with 400 seats. The one small
exception was use of the slightly disproportional Droop formula (for the first five
remaining seats before switching to a modified version of d'Hondt) instead of the purely
proportional Hare formula.
A quick glance at the election results for
the
seven parties that won representation in the National Assembly shows the high degree of
correspondence between seat percentages and vote percentages. The African National
Congress (ANC) won 62.65% of the votes and 63.00% of the seats, while the respective
figures for the National Party (NP) were 20.39% and 20.50%, for the Inkatha Freedom Party
(IFP) 10.54% and 10.75%, for the Freedom Front 2.17% and 2.25%, for the Democratic Party
1.73% and 1.75%, for the Pan Africanist Congress 1.25% and 1.25% and for the African
Christian Democratic Party 0.45% and 0.50%.
A good way of measuring the overall degree
of proportionality or disproportionality of an election is the commonly used
Loosemore-Hanby index, which reveals the total percentage of over-representation (that is,
the total percentage by which the "over-represented parties" are
over-represented in terms of seats won compared to votes won).
According to this index, the
disproportionality of the South African election result was only 0.82% -- lower than in
all but three of the 384 elections that I examined in my Electoral Systems and Party
Systems: A Study of Twenty-Seven Democracies, 1945-1990 (Oxford University Press,
1994). If the more proportional Hare system had been applied, only two seats would have
changed hands: two small parties would have received one seat each at the expense of the
ANC and the IFP. This would have lowered the index of disproportionality a bit further:
0.53%. Nevertheless, while not perfectly proportional, South African PR came extremely
close to perfect proportionality.
Party List PR
An additional unusual feature of South
Africa's PR was that it was a party list system
-- unusual because in English-speaking countries and former British dependencies PR
normally takes the form of preference voting (e.g., choice voting or the single
transferable vote), in which voters vote preferentially for individual candidates. (Party
list PR is used in all non-English-speaking countries with PR systems.) The main
exceptions are Guyana, Zimbabwe (in the 1980 election), Sri Lanka (from 1989 on), Cyprus
(the Greek part of the island) and New Zealand (the electoral system adopted in 1993, but
not yet used).
Moreover, South Africa's list PR system
used closed lists, in which the voters did not have an opportunity to indicate
preferences for individual candidates. Being able to vote for individuals as well as
parties tends to be considered highly desirable in democracies with a British political
heritage, although it is worth noting here that the prevalent electoral system in these
countries -- plurality in single-member districts -- does not offer a choice of
individuals within parties either, because parties typically nominate only one
candidate each.
Moderate Multi-Partism
Because PR is associated with
multi-partism and because enemies of PR tend to worry about the dangers of extreme
multi-partism, it is worth emphasizing that South Africa's highly proportional PR system
did not lead to an extreme multi-party system. As indicated above, only seven parties won
seats; one party, the ANC, won an absolute majority of both votes and seats; and the three
largest parties (ANC, NP, and IFP) captured 94.25% of the seats (377 out of 400).
The best comprehensive and widely used
measure of the degree of multi-partism is the "effective number of parties,"
which weights parties according to size. For instance, in a two-party system with two
exactly equal parties, the index is 2.0. With three exactly equal parties, the index is
3.0. For three unequal parties, the index is less than 3.0; for example, in a three-party
system with parties holding 45%, 40% and 15% of the seats, the index is 2.6. The effective
number of parties resulting from the 1994 election in South Africa was 2.2 parties -- only
slightly more than in a pure two-party system! -- mainly, of course, because of the
commanding majority won by the ANC.
Finally it is worth noting that the list
PR system provided a strong incentive to the parties to be moderate and inclusive rather
than divisive. In order to appeal to as many voters as possible, the main parties made
strong efforts to nominate racially balanced lists of candidates. Somewhat ironically,
this made the NP -- the most racially exclusive party in the apartheid era -- into
the party with the most diverse voter support.
Prospects for Reform
The electoral system used in April
1994 is part of the interim constitution. In principle, therefore, it could be changed
drastically when the permanent constitution is adopted, but because the electoral system
is universally judged to have worked very well, wholesale changes appear to be out of the
question. However, a few minor reforms may well be introduced: in particular, the two
features listed above as unusual PR rules -- extreme proportionality and closed lists --
are sure to be considered for modification.
The high degree of proportionality can be
decreased by introducing an electoral threshold and/or reducing the district magnitude.
But anything except the most modest measures of this kind would immediately have a strong
impact and would be seen as unduly punitive to small parties. For instance, if there had
been a relatively low 2.5% threshold in the April 1994 election, four of the seven parties
that actually won seats would have been denied any representation.
The closed lists may well become partially
open lists, allowing voters to express a preference for an individual candidate on the
list, as in the Belgian and Dutch forms of PR. New Zealand's new PR system, fashioned
after the German model, also offers attractive possibilities for strengthening the element
of individual candidate choice: it combines plurality single-member district elections
with national list PR and over-all national proportionality.
A less far-reaching change would be to
combine national proportionality with PR in relatively small multi-member districts.
Actually, the South African system used in April 1994 was already such a system: while the
over-all election result was determined by converting the parties' national vote totals
into the 400 seats in the National Assembly, 200 of the representatives were elected from
separate provincial lists in each of the nine provinces. This means that, on average, each
province has 22 of its "own" representatives. This number can easily be reduced
-- and hence closer voter-representative ties fostered -- by dividing the larger provinces
into separate election districts.
It is clear that all of the above possible
or likely reforms are rather minor. South Africa's highly proportional list PR may be
moderated to some extent, but my prediction is that the electoral system used in the next
parliamentary election, scheduled to be held in 1999, will still be a list PR system with
a high degree of proportional purity.
Arend Lijphart is a professor of
political science at the University of California at San Diego and President-Elect of the
American Political Science Association. This article is part of a National Science
Foundation-funded research project with Bernard Grofman and Andrew Reynolds on Electoral
Laws, Electoral Lists and Campaigning in the First Non-Racial South African Elections.