Imane Drissi El-Bouzaidi
November 1, 2011
In
1990, the French President Francois Mitterrand, announced that French aid would
be “less enthusiastic to regimes which behave in an authoritarian fashion and
fail to accept the move towards democracy.”[i]
Incentives, such as these, often encourage states to democratize, but in many
cases the transformation is illusory because electoral systems can be
manipulated to serve specific interests. This essay will focus on the List
Proportional Representation (List PR) electoral system and how it can be manipulated
and used as a tool to undermine democracy. By using the case study of Morocco,
it will be argued that List PR can be used to fragment the opposition, thereby providing
certain groups with unfair advantage or non-contested dominance, while
maintaining the guise of democracy. The case study will focus solely on the
post-2002 electoral system in Morocco, when List PR was adopted. Firstly, the
dynamics of the electoral system will be explained, and then secondly how List
PR affects the political system by causing fragmentation, weakening political
parties, and dividing the opposition.
The Moroccan case study has a
bicameral parliament, with the Assembly of Councillors and the Assembly of
Representatives.[ii]
The Assembly of Councillors is indirectly elected by local councils, professional
chambers, and wage-earners; whereas, the Assembly of Representatives consists
of 325 members, directly elected by Moroccan citizens. Both chambers are
important because they each need to approve legislation in order for it to be
passed but this paper will focus solely on the Assembly of Representatives
because the members are directly elected using List PR.[iii]
The Largest Remainder method with a
Hare-Clark quota is also used for allocating votes into seats. The percentage
of votes that each party receives is proportional to the percentage of seats
that they obtain, yet a party is required to obtain more votes than the
electoral average (the Hare-Clark quota) in order to obtain a seat.[iv]
Once a party reaches the electoral average and receives a seat, it can receive
a second seat only if its remaining votes are higher than the original votes of
the other parties in the district. If no party reaches the electoral average,
then the seats are determined by which party receives the highest number of
votes. Parties must also pass a threshold, which was raised from three percent
in 2002 to six percent in 2007, in order to obtain a seat.
Morocco’s electoral system has two
tiers: a local list and a national list. Out of 325 seats, 295 are elected by
local lists through multi-member districts; whereas, 30 seats are reserved solely
for women and are elected from a national list.[v]
In 2007, a maximum magnitude of five seats in each district was established and
the number of districts was increased to 95.[vi]
The ballot is structured as a single-ballot, closed, party-list; therefore, voters
can only choose their preferred party as opposed to a specific candidate and
only the parties have control over the order of the candidates in their list.[vii]
Effect of a PR system on
Politics:
The ballot structure, formula, and
magnitude of a PR electoral system have major impacts on a state’s political
system. These impacts can be both positive and negative. Some advantages of a PR
system are that it encourages the inclusion of smaller parties and produces a
more representative legislature.[viii]
This is evident in Morocco because there are many small parties who were able
to obtain a seat. In the 2007 elections, 17 parties received less than 10 seats
(3% of the vote) and in total 33 different parties received seats. In addition,
the quota for women led to a significant increase in representation from two
women to thirty-five in 2002.[ix]
List PR also decreases the wasted vote because strategic voting is not as
essential. As a result, this electoral system should lead to greater voter turnout
because all votes go directly to the party of choice. However, the fact that in
2007, voter participation in Morocco was at 37% with a high percentage of
spoiled/protest ballots makes this point important to analyze.[x]
Voter apathy was not attributed to unfair
elections because international observers were present and they declared that
the elections were “open and competitive.”[xi]
The reason for the low turnout is instead a response to the PR electoral system
and how “it is engineered to prevent any single party from emerging with a
majority.”[xii] The
general trend of List PR is to generate a multi-party system with weaker
parties as opposed to the plurality system. This is problematic in Morocco
because the king holds major power in the political system; therefore, weak
parties are more easily controlled by the king and are unable to provide
adequate checks and balances. The king uses the PR system as a tool to maintain
power by dividing, creating, and co-opting parties. This prevents them from
unifying successfully and presenting a strong opposition against the king. List
PR also helps the king escape blame for bad policymaking because in a system
with many parties there are many actors, which leads to less clarity of responsibility.[xiii]
Ultimately “the elected chamber of parliament has limited ability to effect
change” and this will persist unless stronger parties or coalitions begin
forming to oppose the king.[xiv]
The fragmentation of the political
system due to List PR is evident in Morocco because between 1963 and 1997 it
was using a First-Past-the-Post system. Although the political system was still
somewhat fragmented with the plurality system, this was attributed to vote
rigging by the king. However, with the change to List PR, there was a major increase
in the number of parties 14 to 26 parties, and the fact that the elections were
declared to be fair, means that the outcome was a result of the electoral
system or voting preferences as opposed to electoral fraud.
There are many ways in which the
monarch uses List PR as a tool to fragment the opposition. Firstly, the Largest
Remainder method and the Hare quota are used because they are more advantageous
for smaller parties than the Alternative method.[xv]
This formula makes it extremely difficult for a party to receive more than one
seat in a district because there are a large number of parties that compete in
the elections and the electoral average is high.[xvi]
Evidence of this is during the 2007 elections because in 87 out of the 95
multi-member districts, no party was able to win a second seat.[xvii]
The legislature becomes fragmented with many parties holding a small number of
seats.
The delimitation of a district is
another aspect of the electoral system that is manipulated to cause
fragmentation. In Morocco, districts are unequal in the number of votes needed
to receive to obtain a seat, varying from as few as 4000 votes to as many as
80,000 per seat (NDI 19). The changes in the delimitation of districts were
also used strategically against an opposition party to “reduce the possible
triumph of the [Parti de la Justice et du Développement], since it affected the
constituencies where this party had had two seats.”[xviii]
Therefore, reshaping constituencies can be a strategic tool to fragment an
opposition party.
Morocco is not a unique case in its
use of List PR as a tool to fragment the opposition, but rather Cameroon is
another example among others. Since 1990, Cameroon uses List PR to fragment the
opposition in order to maintain uncontested dominance for a single party, the Cameroon
People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM). The electoral system differs though in
that it is parallel with single-list districts elected by plurality Party Block
Vote (PBV) and multi-member districts elected by a List PR system. The
plurality tier is used to allow the CPDM to consolidate power because it is
strategically used in districts that favour the party so the party that wins a
majority obtains all the seats in the district.[xix]
The PR tier is used is in districts popular to opposition parties so that the
votes are split between different parties, which fragments the opposition and
allows the CPDM to maintain dominance. Therefore, PR is again used as a tool to
weaken opposition parties and ensure that they have no significant chance of
gaining power.
In conclusion, this essay has argued
that the List PR electoral system can be used as a tool to fragment the
opposition in order to allow leaders or groups to maintain dominance over the
political system. This has been evident in Morocco with the domination of the
monarch over policy making and Cameroon with the domination of the CPDM.
Although multipartyism has many advantages, it can also undermine democracy
because an effective system has an opposition that can “challenge the ruling
parties on all issues of governance and provide alternatives to existing
policies.”[xx]
In order to recognize that democratic systems can be illusory, it is important
to understand that actors use electoral systems to advantage themselves and this
has certainly been the case in certain PR systems and must be addressed for a
fair and democratic system to prevail.
[i] John Mukum Mbaku and Joseph Takougang, eds., The Leadership
Challenge in Africa: Cameroon under Paul Biya (Trenton,
N.J.: Africa World Pr, 2004), 464.
[ii] “Final Report On the Moroccan Legislative
Elections,” National Democratic Institute(September 7 2007), http://www.ndi.org/files/2316_ma_report_electionsfinal_en_051508_1.pdf (accessed November 1, 2011) 9.
[iii] Ibid
[iv] Ibid,
40
[v] Said Kirhlani, “Electoral Report:
Morocco Parliamentary Elections,” TEIM Election Watch Analysis (February
11, 2009): 4.
[vi] NDI, 8
[vii] NDI,
40
[viii] Andrew Reynolds, Ben
Reilly and Andrew Ellis, Electoral System Design: The New
International IDEA Handbook (Stockholm, Sweden: International
Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance 2005, 2008), 59.
[ix] NDI, 17
[x] NDI, 18
[xi] Michael Meyer-Resende, “Is the
Moroccan Electoral System Unfair?” Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace (April 12, 2008) http://carnegieendowment.org/2008/08/12/is-moroccan-electoral-system-unfair/6d9d(accessed
November 1, 2011).
[xii] Ibid
[xiii] IDEA,
59.
[xiv] NDI,
13
[xv] IDEA,
178.
[xvi] Kirhlani, 4.
[xvii] NDI,
10
[xviii] Kirhlani, 7.
[xix] Mbaku,
461
No comments:
Post a Comment