The Politics of Electoral Reform: The State of Research

Abstract

This article examines three approaches – rational choice, historical-comparative and institutional – used to study the politics of electoral reform. The first part is dedicated to a review of explanations for stability of electoral systems while the second part looks at the analysis of the causes for electoral reform. This examination of the literature reveals that rational choice is especially beneficial when explaining the stability of electoral systems, whereas the rare occurrence of significant electoral reform in established democracies is better understood using the more detailed historical-comparative approach. The institutional approach can be seen as an important supplement to both other approaches. The general lesson – and one that might apply beyond the study of the politics of reform – is that it is beneficial to employ a combination of approaches rather than to stick to a single one.

Notes

Indeed, the final formulation of the reform reflected an attempt of the old parties to control the expected electoral damage (Katz, 2001).

It is true that large parties (or significant forces within them) can perceive the status quo as preferable over reforms that can empower their main rivals and harm their close allies. This was the case in Italy until the 1990s, when majoritarianism could encourage the creation of a governing alternative – most likely of the communist party – which would have threatened the continued domination of the Christian Democratic party and its close allies.

This barrier to reform seems to be valid, in general, for consensus democracies – one of the main features of which is PR electoral systems (see Hooghe and Deschouwer, 2011; Nikolenyi, 2011).

Similar findings, that seem to have motivated the larger n comparative study, are presented in Pilet's (2008) in-depth study of the failure to promote a majoritarian system in Belgium.

See the collections edited by Norris (1995a) and Shugart and Wattenberg (2001). For a book-length example, see Jackson and McRobie (1998).

One example of a recommendation made following the cross-national comparison was the idea to distinguish between the rationales for preserving majoritarian systems and those for preserving PR systems (Rahat, 2008).

For further explanations, see Rahat (2004, 2008).

For a proposal for an integrative research strategy, see the barrier approach of Rahat and Hazan (2011).