Lecture 4

Question 1

Institution

Answer 1

Rules that govern social interactions,

constraining the behavior of and the options open to actors.

Question 2

Formal institutions

Answer 2

rules and procedures that are created, communicated,
and enforced through channels widely accepted as officials” e.g. courts,
legislatures, bureaucracies, constitutions, laws, regulation, …

Question 3

Informal institutions

Answer 3

“socially shared rules, usually unwritten, that are
created, communicated, and enforced outside of officially sanctioned
channel” e.g. cultural orientation, corruption, legislative and judicial norms, …

Question 4

Political institutions

Answer 4

established guidelines for deliberation, the aggregation
of preferences into collective decisions, and the implementation of those
decisions

Question 5

Election

Answer 5

an institution (a set of rules and 
methods) for “converting citizens’ 
preferences into decision-making 
authority for members of the legislative, 
executive, and, sometimes, judicial 
branches of government”, in national or 
local levels

Question 6

Normative criteria for elections

Answer 6

1. Providing representation
   • Geographic, ideological, party, and descriptive (mirror of nation)
2. Making elections accessible and meaningful
3. Providing incentives for conciliation
4. Facilitating stable and efficient government
5. Holding the government accountable
6. Holding individual representatives accountable
7. Encouraging political party competition
8. Promoting legislative opposition and oversight
9. Making electoral processes sustainable
10. Meeting international standards

Question 7

Criteria of Democratic Elections

Answer 7

1. Suffrage: right of voting
2. Frequent: elections must be held regularly and periodically
3. Integrity: truthful vote counting, pre-established rules, independent
   observations, independent organization to solve disputes
4. Free: freedom of expression, information, assembly, candidacy,
   voting
5. Fair: fair competition, fair access of all candidates/parties to the
   public facilities and voters
6. Effective: elected officials are the main/real decision makers

Question 8

Scope

Answer 8

number of elected posts

Question 9

Franchise

Answer 9

who can vote

Question 10

district magnitude (M)

Answer 10

the number of seats per district

larger is more proportional

Question 11

Electoral formula

Answer 11

how votes are translated to seats

Question 12

vBallot structure

Answer 12

how voters can express their choices

Question 13

Families of electoral systems

Answer 13

• Majority (and Plurality) systems
• Proportional representation (PR) systems
• Mixed systems

Question 14

Majority (and Plurality) systems

Answer 14

winner-takes-all
system, the winner is the one receiving the greatest
number of votes in a constituency

Question 15

Proportional representation (PR) systems

Answer 15

proportionality between share of votes and seats for

parties in each constituency

Question 16

Mixed systems

Answer 16

combining plurality (for geographical 
representation) and PR (for party representation)

Question 17

Single Member Plurality: First-Past-The-Post (FPTP)

Answer 17

• Single member district election (district magnitude = 1)
• (nominally) Equal sized electoral district (in number of voters)
• Used in Britain and British-influenced states e.g. Canada, India, USA
• Can create “manufactured majority” for parties: (majority) first in seats but
(minority) second in votes!
• Encourages tactical voting (heart or head): the favored party has no chance of
victory in the particular district
• Beneficial to concentrated regional parties and disadvantageous to nationally-
dispersed (small) parties
• Wasted votes and high disproportionality
• Gerrymandering: drawing district boundaries in favor of a party
• Also used for presidential election, e.g. Mexico, Venezuela

Question 18

Two Round System (TRS)

Answer 18

• Also called second ballot or run-off voting 
• Majority (50%+1) or a Quota (e.g. 35%) required to win in the 1st
round, otherwise run-off 2nd round
• Produce party coalitions on left and right (for the 2ndround)
• Popular legitimacy of the winner
• Less need for tactical voting 
in the 1stround (heart and head)
• Mostly used for presidential elections
but also for parliamentary elections
• Used in France 
(both presidential and parliamentary 
elections)

Question 19

Alternative Vote (AV)

Answer 19

• Preferential voting: priority ranked voting (1st, 2nd, 3rd,etc.)
• Instant run-off: two rounds in one election
• Single member districts
• Majority (50% +1) required to win in 1stround,
otherwise eliminating the least-voted candidate
and count the second preference of votes
of removed candidate; continue the process
until a candidate reaches the majority.
• Used in Australia parliamentary election,
in the UK for election of parties’ leaders
• Also can be used in referendums

Question 20

Party List

Answer 20

• Multimember national or regional districts
• Proportionality between shares of votes and seats
• Sometime legal thresholdof votes for a party to secure seats
• Different formulas to allocate votes to seats
• Few wasted votes

Question 21

Closed List

Answer 21

• Vote only for party and not candidates

* e.g. Belgium, South Africa, Spain

Question 22

Open list

Answer 22

• Vote for party and select 
preferred candidate(s) from the list
• e.g. Brazil, Indonesia, Netherlands

Question 23

Single Transferable Vote (STV)

Answer 23

• Like the Alternative Vote but for multi-seat constituencies (e.g. 3 or 4
members in each electoral district)
• priority ranked voting (1st, 2nd, 3rd,etc.)
• a quota is defined to determine the minimum votes for a winning
candidate, e.g. Droop quota: [V/(M+1)] +1 (V= number of valid votes,
M=district magnitude)
• Redistribution in successive counts from surplus votes of a winning
candidate and excluded candidate with the least votes (like AV)
• Less wasted votes
• Used in Ireland, Australian Senate, Malta

Question 24

Electoral threshold

Answer 24

the minimum % of votes needed by a party to

secure representation; lower is more proportional

Question 25

Mixed system

Answer 25

• Also called hybrid, combined, or two-tiers system
• Half of seats (or any other portion) filled by plurality and other half filled
by proportional voting
• Voters have two separate votes: one for a candidate and one for a
party

Two types:
• Parallel or Mixed-Member Majoritarian (MMM): Allocation of seats from two votes are independent; e.g. Japan
• Mixed-Member Proportional (MMP)Allocation of seats from two votes
are dependent, to increase proportionality;
e.g. Germany, New Zealand

Question 26

Effects of electoral systems

Answer 26

• Proportionality of votes to seats (fair outcomes)
• Party competition and number of parties in parliament (Duverger’s law: plurality develops two party system, PR develops multipartism)
• Electoral turnout: weak support for PR, no conclusive effect
• Women & ethno-political minorities representation
• Strength of cleavage politics and fragmentation
• Constituency service
• On democratization and democratic models

Question 27

Advantages of referendums

Answer 27

• Purest form of democracy: sovereignty of the people and direct
power by the people
• Re-engage and improve voter understanding of the issue at stake
• Inform politicians
• Can resolve political problems, particularly for coalitions, when it is
incapable to reach a decision itself
• Referendums also have an indirect effect on politics: politicians will
have to take into account the possibility of a referendum when
proposing legislation

Question 28

Disadvantages of referendums

Answer 28

• Can be expensive to organize
• Referendums (Yes/No choice) can lead to simplification of very complex and nuanced issues
• Referendums may polarize the electorate, and encourage the ‘tyranny of the majority’ witch results in oppression of minorities
• Voters do not always have the knowledge required to make an informed decision about the issue at stake; they are badly informed, uneducated in politics and lack political experience
• The people do not make informed decisions in referendums, they vote based on emotions
• Reasonable chance of manipulation of the referendum through the question and public education campaign and the timing
• A very close referendum vote may result in an unsatisfactory conclusion and fail to achieve acceptance of the outcome
• It weakens representative democracy by undermining the role and importance of elected representatives