Rational, reverential or experimental? The politics of electoral reform in Oceania

Abstract

Oceania, with the exception of New Zealand, has received little comparative attention in studies of electoral reform. This article uses evidence from Fiji, Tonga, Papua New Guinea and Nauru, as well as New Zealand and Australia, in order to: understand the process of electoral reform at national and regional levels; examine variation in the process and consider whether theories of electoral reform from elsewhere apply to Oceania. It finds that electoral reform is a highly complex process that is influenced by the self-interest of parties, democratic values and diffusion.

除了新西兰，不大有人从比较选举改革的角度关注大洋洲。本文使用斐济、汤加、巴布亚新几内亚、瑙鲁以及新西兰和澳大利亚的资料，目的是在国家和地区的层面上理解选举改革的过程；探讨过程中的变异，并思考其他地方的选举改革理论是否适用于大洋洲。

Keywords:

• Australia
• electoral reform
• electoral systems
• Fiji
• institutional change
• Nauru
• New Zealand
• Oceania
• Papua New Guinea
• Tonga

Notes

¹Here, Oceania refers to the 13 sovereign members of the Pacific Islands Forum: Australia, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, New Zealand, Palau, PNG, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Fiji, which was suspended from the Forum in 2009.

²This study excludes dependent territories, so the following reforms are not included in the analysis: the shift in the Cook Islands from block voting to SMP in 1981; French Polynesia's adoption of a 30-per-cent bonus for the winning party in 2004; New Caledonia's replacement of the two-round system with a party-list PR system in 1952 and Norfolk Island's introduction of the cumulative vote, where voters have as many votes as seats and can cast more than one vote per candidate, to replace SMP in 1979.

³Under SMP, voters express a preference for a single candidate, and the seat is won by the candidate with a plurality of votes.

⁴AV operates in single-seat constituencies and requires voters to rank-order candidates. Where no candidate has a majority of first-preference votes, the lowest-placed candidate is eliminated and their votes redistributed to the next-preferred candidate. This process continues until one candidate has a majority or there are no votes left for distribution.

⁵A ticket vote entails approving a ranked listing of candidates drawn up by the voter's preferred party, foregoing the need for voters to rank all candidates.

⁶Block voting is a form of plurality voting that operates in multi-member constituencies. Voters have as many votes as seats.

⁷STV is similar in operation to AV, with the exception that it uses multi-seat constituencies to achieve more proportional outcomes.

⁸The Borda count, however, is used in Kiribati for intra-parliamentary elections to select presidential candidates (Reilly 2002).

⁹MacSporran had been involved in cross-country athletics, where a similar method was applied to teams of runners (personal communication with Ben Reilly and Peter MacSporran).

¹⁰MMP is a hybrid of a list system, where seats are awarded to parties proportional to their vote share, and SMP. Voters have two votes: one in their local constituencies (electorate seats) and one for a party list of candidates.