Electoral system reform in the Czech Republic.

Bures, Jan

We can see throughout all of Eastern Europe, and especially in countries with majoritarian electoral systems, a tendency to build systems of personal power and limit the standard rules of democracy and constitutional government.

Discussions about the need (possibly radical) to change the electoral system in the Czech Republic have been ongoing since 1996, when the existing stable coalition government of Vaclav Klaus began to crumble. The much admired stability during this period was, however, more of an anomaly. It was a product of the Civic Democrat's (ODS) dominant status as the main successor of the Civic Forum (Obeanske forum), as the declared guarantor of the economic reform (voters were thereby oriented more to the right), and scattered parliamentary opposition. As the citizens' political interests were gradually defined in accordance with newly created splinter groups, socio-economic in particular, voter preferences became more clearly differentiated. Support for the Social Democratic Party (ESSD), the left-of-centre opposition, saw a significant increase in support. This shift explains, in part, the inability of the government to create stable coalitions. The result is that the Czech government has been forced to depend on minimum majorities in the parliament or even rule in the minority. These situations have created the main obstacles to realizing fundamental social reforms.

A RADICAL SOLUTION ACCORDING TO THE ODS

To remedy this situation, politicians and correspondents (mainly right-wing) would like to introduce a major change in the electoral system. More precisely, they support the most radical option of electoral reform: a winner-takes-all majoritarian system. Let us bear in mind that this is the most attractive system due to its simplicity, which is based (in the logic of Anglo-Saxon majoritarian philosophy) on the principle that the absolute winner in an electoral district is the candidate who receives the greatest number of votes. The advocates of this system specifically emphasize its potential to create governmental stability. This assertion draws examples from Great Britain and the United States where there exist a comfortable majority of one of two main political parties in parliament. In contrast, they point out the "disadvantages" of the proportional system, and emphasize its fragmentary effect on parliament, which holds too much power over the oft en "weak" coalition government. The critics of the proportional representation system also condemn the system for cultivating blackmail.

But rooted in electoral theory is the assumption that undisputable truths do not exist. Furthermore, political scientists have cautioned against the aspiration to reform electoral systems in stabilized partisan systems due to the unintended consequences of such reforms.

Even though the winner-takes-all electoral system is valued for its ability to create bipartisanism (a stabilized political system controlled by two strong parties in which one has a clear majority) it is necessary to emphasize that bipartisanism is derived from other significant factors as well: structural historical traditions, socio-economical conditions specific to individual societies, etc. Even contemporary Britain exemplifies the potential for variability within the system--a third party (Liberal Democrats) has risen which "threatens" the dominance of the two main parties and weakens the building of single party majority governments.

A WARNING FROM EASTERN EUROPE

The government's power to act still leads to certain uneasiness in the Czech Republic. In a country that has spent several decades under an authoritarian regime, its politicians are not yet accustomed to their role as public servants, rather than rulers. Throughout all of Eastern Europe, especially in countries where the majoritarian electoral system was established, the tendency to build systems of personal power and limit standard rules of democracy and constitutional government are evident. Consequently, for young (and largely imperfect) democracies such as the Czech Republic, the government must rely on a tight parliamentary majority and make political decisions on the basis of a wide consensus within a coalition, which is controlled by a strong parliamentary opposition, guaranteeing people's protection against despotism. And throughout the democratic world, the desire to strengthen the executive power also stems from the reluctance of citizens and politicians to accept the fact that in the era of globalization, political systems are forced to respect stronger, unelected players (economic complexes, the banking sector, non-governmental organizations, etc.) who already hold some shares of power.

The Czech Republic adopted the proportional electoral system after 1989. This system was seen as more just since it could portray a society's distribution of real opinion in the parliament at the time of the elections. The proportional electoral system also had its own advantages during the country's period of transformation because it guarantees the existence of an opened space for new political parties to crystallize.

MODERATE REFORM TO CONSENSUAL POLITICS

At this moment in time, the Czech political system is not only stabilized, but highly structured--the orientation of the main political parties represent the interests of the largest electoral groups. Reform of the electoral system should therefore be moderate, not radical. The reform should only aim to solve the ongoing issue with coalition instability. One of the most viable options would be to expand the system proportionality by decreasing the number of electoral districts and increasing the number of mandates allotted to each district. Concurrently, the winning party would receive extra mandates as a bonus.

Large electoral districts (which would ideally send more than twenty MPs into the parliament for one district) could potentially create a situation in which a proportional gain for a specific party in a specific district is portrayed fairly accurately through the number of mandates allocated to that party. From this perspective, the winner-takes-all system leads to significant disproportion, which can be viewed as unfair.

A modified proportional electoral system would retain the status of small political parties (necessary for creating government majorities) and at the same time, the aforementioned bonus would increase the chance of the winning party to form a real government majority. It is more desirable that electoral reform of this kind stabilize the position of large and small parties, and introduce some harmony into Czech politics or at least round out the edges of the conflict. On the other hand, a radical reform leading to winner-takes-all majoritarian system would aggravate the conflicts between the current political parties even more.

FOR FURTHER READING

Deegan-Krause, Kevin. Elected Affinities: Democracy and Party Competition in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. (Stanford University Press, 2006).

Farrell, David M. Electoral Systems: A Comparative Introduction. (Macmillan, 2001).

Hasselmann, Chris. Policy Reform and the Development of Democracy in Eastern Europe. (Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2006).

Powell, G. Bingham. Elections as Instruments of Democracy: Majoritarian and Proportional Visions. (Yale University Press, 2000).

Jan Bures is a political scientist at the Prague Metropolitan University, the Institute of Political Science, and the Faculty of Philosophy, Charles University.