The Ethnic Implications of Preferential Voting

Around the turn of the century, political developments in Northern Ireland, Fiji and Papua New Guinea encouraged claims that preferential voting systems could steer polities in the direction of ‘moderate’ multi-ethnic government. Sixteen years later, we have a longer time period and larger volume of data to reassess these verdicts. This article investigates ballot transfer and party vote–seat share patterns in the seven deeply divided polities with some experience of preferential voting for legislative elections or direct presidential elections (Northern Ireland, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Estonia, Sri Lanka, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Southern Rhodesia). We find little support for centripetalist claims that such systems encourage ‘moderate’ parties. We argue that where district magnitude is low, where voters are required to rank preferences and where ticket voting prevails, departures from vote–seat proportionality may favour ‘moderate’ parties, but such heavily engineered systems may simply advantage the larger parties or yield erratic outcomes.

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The Effect of the Australian Ballot Reform on Split Ticket Voting: 1876–1908

American Political Science Review ◽

10.2307/1958367 ◽

1970 ◽

Vol 64 (4) ◽

pp. 1220-1238 ◽

Cited By ~ 119

Author(s):

Jerrold G. Rusk

Keyword(s):

Longitudinal Research ◽

Electoral System ◽

Turn Of The Century ◽

Party Competition ◽

Voting Systems ◽

Voting Rules ◽

Time Period ◽

Behavior Theories ◽

The Many ◽

Time Specific

In the last two decades of political science, there has been considerable interest in the determinants of electoral behavior. Theories have been developed and tested on the sociological, psychological, and political antecedents of the vote. Virtually neglected in this search for determinants have been the institutional or structural properties of the electoral system itself. With a few notable exceptions, such factors as electoral qualification requirements, registration laws, and ballot and voting systems have not generated much research enthusiasm. These institutional properties, however, provide the framework within which the effects of other independent variables must be judged. This applies to all basic electoral research—whether time specific or longitudinal—but especially to the latter. Too often longitudinal research tries to trace the causes of changing voting patterns without taking into account the institutional framework. A pointed example of this is Walter Dean Burnham's recent description of this country's “changing political universe” around the turn of the century—a change which he ascribed to a breakdown in party competition and consequent voter alienation, but which undoubtedly could be partially, if not largely, explained by reference to the many institutional changes in voting rules which occurred during this period. The effects of institutional properties must be sorted out if the researcher is to establish reliable baselines against which to measure the effects of other variables.The purpose of this study is to analyze the effects of one such institutional property of the electoral system—the Australian Ballot reform—on the changing split ticket voting patterns of the American electorate in the 1876–1908 time period.

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