Electoral Systems in Emerging Democracies in Comparison with Established Western Democracies

Electoral Systems in Emerging Democracies in comparison with established Western Democracies.

Introduction:

The United States Presidential Election is the topic of the hour in the US and around the globe for the important and vital role the United States plays on the world theater.

As and international development profession that have played a role in assisting countries hold election after emerging from authoritarian regimes; I realized it would be a good time to highlight the differences of election systems around the world, especially how electoral systems work.

I will attempt to give a modest reading of elections in new and emerging democracies versus long lasting and well established democratic process in the United States.

Emerging Democracies:

Electoral systems, or the manner in which votes cast in a general election are translated into seats in the legislature, matter because they influence key governance dimensions and dynamics. Electoral systems provide different kinds of incentives to appeal to voters in order to yield electoral pay‐offs. For example, in country‐wide elections where voters vote for closed party lists, party leaders have considerable power because they determine the ranking of each of the candidates on that list. Under that kind of system, parliamentarians are likely to feel more accountable towards the party leadership than to voters, given that their political future lies with the party rather than with the electorate.

Electoral systems based on a majority principle generate the opposite kind of incentive, as they are much more focused on the individual candidate, and less on the party they belong to. Electoral systems also can help shape the calculations of politicians about policy choices, and they also provide different incentives to make narrow or more broad based appeals to the population.

For example, in Afghanistan, Iraq and Liberia electoral systems come in many different varieties. There is a rich, and growing, body of literature, most of it theoretical but also increasingly based on empirical analysis, exploring the relationship between electoral systems and governance; in most parts, this literature has largely been based on assumptions and experiences derived from well‐established democracies in the developed world focused largely on the experiences of countries in the West, particularly in Europe and the United States.

In some of these emerging democracies, however, there are indirect elections that the voter elects a political party, which in turn will appoint its members to the parliament or national assembly depending on the number of seats earned in the assembly.

It is this assembly, later, will appoint the president and the prime minister. The prime minister’s cabinet must be approved and ratified by the assembly.