The 2016 Electoral Reform in Mongolia: From Mixed System and Multiparty Competition to FPTP and One-Party Dominance

2017 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 511-531 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pavel Maškarinec

This article tests the effects of a new electoral system that was introduced in Mongolia for the June 2016 elections. The decision to implement a first-past-the-post (FPTP) system instead of a mixed-member majoritarian (MMM) system, which was first and last used in the previous elections of 2012, was due to the April 2016 ruling of the Mongolian Constitutional Court on unconstitutionality of the list tier as one of the mechanisms for distributing seats within MMM. Through an analysis of national- and district-level results, this article addresses the question whether electoral competition at the district level was consistent with Duverger’s law and resulted in the restoration of bipartism, which had been disrupted in 2012 due to the use of MMM.

Author(s):  
Dashbalbar Gangabaatar

Mongolia introduced a new electronic voting system for the first time for the 2012 parliamentary election. E-voting empowers citizens by making voting simpler and providing better opportunities for certain groups of citizens to participate in the election process. The electoral reform was one of the major steps the parliament carried out in order to restore public trust lost in the violent protests against the 2008 parliamentary election results. A free, transparent, and fair electoral system was important to correct the fraud in the old election system. This chapter examines the effectiveness of the mixed system of election, the electronic voting system, the constitutionality of the electoral systems, and other changes to the electoral system in Mongolia.


1990 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 335-356 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven R. Reed

Japan uses simple plurality elections with multi-member districts to elect its lower house. This system tends to produce competition among n + 1 candidates per district. This ‘law of simple plurality elections’ is a structural generalization akin to Duverger's Law. Evidence from Japan also indicates that the causal mechanism behind this ‘law’ is not strategic voting, although strategic voting occurs, but elite coalition building. It is further argued that the connection between structure and behaviour is learning and not rationality. Equilibria are reached slowly through trial and error processes. Once reached, the equilibrium is unstable because parties and candidates try to change it. Even without rational actors and stable equilibria, however, this structural generalization accurately describes the dynamics of electoral competition at the district level in Japan.


2009 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel Centellas

This research note considers the effects of electoral system reform in Bolivia. In 1995, Bolivia moved from a list-proportional to a mixed-member proportional electoral system. The intervening years saw growing regional polarization of politics and a collapse of the existing party system. Using statistical analysis of disaggregated electoral data (at department, municipality, and district level), this paper tests whether electoral system reforms may have contributed to the current political crisis. Research findings show that regional cleavages existed prior to electoral system reform, but suggest that reforms aggravated their effects. Such evidence gives reason to question the recent popularity of mixed-member proportionality.


2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-267 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentin Schröder ◽  
Philip Manow

AbstractWe present an intra-party account of electoral reform, contrasting the incentives of legislators (MPs) with those of party leaders. We develop our argument along the switch to proportional representation (PR) in early 20th century Europe. District-level electoral alliances allowed bourgeois MPs to counter the “socialist threat” under the electoral systems in place. PR was thus unnecessary from the seat-maximizing perspective that dominates previous accounts—intra-party considerations were crucial: candidate nomination and legislative cohesion. We show our argument to hold empirically both for the prototypical case of Germany, 1890–1920, using encompassing district-level data on candidatures, elections, electoral alliances, roll call votes and a series of simulations on reform effects; and for the implementation of electoral reforms in 29 countries, 1900–31.


Author(s):  
Ivan Jarabinský

This article deals with the argumentation between opponents and advocates of the electoral reform which was approved by the Romanian parliament in May 2012. The text discusses the validity of the arguments raised by both sides of the dispute. For this purpose, the text considers only parliamentary debates and the argumentation of the Constitutional Court. The author employs arguments from the fields of political science and law to discuss the three main areas of the dispute. These are the representativeness of the intended electoral system, the number of elected representatives, and the timing of the electoral reform. The analysis concludes that the arguments to support each of the two main forms of electoral system – majoritarian and proportional – were used correctly. However, the arguments in favour of each system sometimes omitted important disadvantages connected with that system. Although the Constitution of Romania allows wide-ranging changes to the electoral system, the omitted consequences have to be taken into consideration. The text supplements discussions on electoral engineering with a focus on the constitutionality and validity of the arguments raised during the debate. From this perspective, it is necessary to take into consideration not just the mechanical effects of the electoral system but also its possible broader impact.


2012 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy R. Poteete

ABSTRACTThe Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) has maintained a super-majority in the National Assembly for over forty years despite increasingly competitive elections. Several factors contribute to the BDP's continued legislative dominance, including features of the electoral system, fragmentation of the party system, and obstacles to strategic voting behaviour. Factional competition has played a particularly important role. Botswana's political institutions encourage factional competition, and factionalism interacts with the electoral system to hinder consolidation of the party system. Botswana's experience underlines the importance of internal party dynamics and their interaction with features of the electoral and party system in enabling the persistence of legislative dominance in competitive electoral systems.


2012 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 201-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew M. Singer

In districts where only one seat is contested, the electoral formula (plurality or majority) should be a major determinant of the number of parties that receive votes. Specifically, plurality rule should generate two-party competition while other institutional arrangements should generate electoral fragmentation. Yet tests of these propositions using district-level data have focused on a limited number of cases; they rarely contrast different electoral systems and have reached mixed conclusions. This study analyses district-level data from 6,745 single-member district election contests from 53 democratic countries to test the evidence for Duverger's Law and Hypothesis. Double-ballot majoritarian systems have large numbers of candidates, as predicted, but while the average outcome under plurality rule is generally consistent with two-party competition, it is not perfectly so. The two largest parties typically dominate the districts (generally receiving more than 90 per cent of the vote), and there is very little support for parties finishing fourth or worse. Yet third-place parties do not completely disappear, and ethnic divisions shape party fragmentation levels, even under plurality rule. Finally, institutional rules that generate multiparty systems elsewhere in the country increase electoral fragmentation in single-member plurality districts.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peggy Matauschek

Is plurality or majority electoral reform a sensible option in Germany’s muddled electoral system debate? Yes, it is. Since Germany’s mixed-member proportional system fails to concentrate the party system in a sufficient way, Peggy Matauschek searches for a suitable alternative to the principle of proportional representation. She discusses the following options according to their contextual conditions: single-member plurality and majority electoral systems—like the alternative vote system—, parallel systems, proportional representation systems with a low district magnitude and majority bonus systems. In light of its balanced performance, the study advocates the introduction of a system with a majority bonus for a coalition.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 74-85
Author(s):  
Alasman Mpesau

In the General Election and Regional Head Election Law, the Election Supervisory Board (Bawaslu) has the authority supervisory to each Election stages, it is the center for law enforcement activities of the Election (Sentra Gakkumdu) to criminal acts and carrying out the judicial functions for investigating, examining, and decided on administrative disputes of General Election and Regional Head Election.  With the Bawaslu’s authority then placed as a super-body institution in the ranks of the Election Management Body, due to its essential role in building a clean and credible electoral system, it also has potential for abuse of power within it. In Law no. 48 of 2009 concerning Judicial Power has defined state institutions that have the authority to administrate judicial functions. These are the Supreme Court and Judicial Bodies that under its lines of general court, Religious Courts, Military Courts, Administrative Court (PTUN) and the Constitutional Court. The research method is normative juridical, that focuses on the analysis of the laws and regulations on General Election, Regional Head Elections and the Law on Judicial Power. The analytical tool is descriptive analysis, by describing the main issues, an analysis is carried out that was supported by case-approach related to the research. The study concludes that Bawaslu in carrying out judicial functions in its position as a semi-judicial institution has not a hierarchical relationship to the Supreme Court (MA) and the Constitutional Court (MK); however, what does exist is functional relationship.


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