Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate being here.
I am speaking from San Francisco rather than San Diego, but I don't think that makes any difference to you. It is far away from Ottawa, and I very much appreciate, Mr. Chairman, being able to speak by teleconference to your committee. It is a great honour for me to be invited to speak to your committee.
I am happy to share with you my findings and conclusions about the advantages of proportional representation, or PR, and the kind of democracy it creates. On a personal note, I have to confess that when I was a graduate student and young instructor in the 1960s, many decades ago, I was an admirer of the British system of government and its electoral system of first past the post, or FPTP. I think that's also what that electoral system is called in Canada, and I will keep referring to it as FPTP.
I've gradually come to the conclusion that proportional representation, or PR, is the better option. This has also been the trend among political scientists generally. The empirical evidence is now overwhelmingly strong in support of this conclusion. PR is a crucial ingredient in what I have called “consensus democracy”, especially in combination with a parliamentary system of government. It tends to lead to a multi-party system, which in turn tends to lead to coalition cabinets, and also leads to parliaments that are stronger and cabinets that are less dominant than in majoritarian systems. In addition, it tends to be associated with a more co-operative system of interest groups.
Typical examples of consensus democracies are Switzerland, Germany, Finland, and also New Zealand after the introduction of PR in 1996. These characteristics are in contrast to those of majoritarian democracies like Great Britain and also New Zealand before it shifted to PR in 1996. These characteristics of majoritarianism include FPTP, two-party systems, one-party majority cabinets, cabinets that are dominant vis-à-vis their parliaments, and a more competitive interest group system. Consensus democracies aim to rule by broad consensus instead of narrow majorities.
Democracies do not all fit the two perfect models of majoritarian and consensus democracy. They fit on a continuum between the pure types. For instance, Canada is on the majoritarian side, but not in an extreme position. One reason is that Canada has occasionally had minority cabinets that deviated from the one-party majority ideal of majoritarian democracy.
I need to add three footnotes at this point.
One is that there is a second dimension of the difference between different types of democracy. The main contrast here is between unitary and centralized versus federal and decentralized systems. Canada is obviously an example of the latter. I don't need to say more on this subject because it is not related to the electoral system and, hence, not relevant to your discussions. In any case, I assume that Canada is not about to change its federal system.
Second, as I have already indicated, the advantages of PR depend a great deal on its combination with a parliamentary system of government. Canada is fortunate in already having a parliamentary system. Political scientists are virtually unanimous in their dislike of presidential government, which has many serious weaknesses. I assume that few Canadians favour the adoption of a federal system, and it is great that we do not have to worry about this particular issue.
Third is a quick comment on the term “consensus democracy”. It should not be interpreted to imply that it is a kind of democracy in countries that are highly consensual and homogeneous. Rather, PR and consensus democracy are suitable for any country, but especially for countries with religious, linguistic, and ethnic divisions in which consensus needs to be created. It is significant that PR was first adopted in the 1890s in countries like Belgium, with its deep religious and linguistic differences. Some of my political science colleagues have also called consensus democracy “negotiation democracy”, “compromise democracy”, “pacification democracy”, and “proportional democracy”. This last term is especially appropriate because it emphasizes the crucial role of PR.
For a long time the prevailing view was that PR might have slight advantages in terms of having more accurate political representation and more accurate and faithful minority representation, and that FPTP and one-party cabinets had a much greater advantage in terms of effective governments. One-party cabinets were said to be more decisive and capable of making both quicker decisions and more coherent policies than coalition cabinets. This looks like a logical argument, but it overlooks some logical counter-arguments. For one thing, as we all know, fast decisions are not necessarily wise decisions. Also, a great deal of coherence in policy is lost in the alternation between governments of the right and governments of the left, and then back again to governments of the right. This was the main reason why the famous British political scientist Samuel Finer, who had been a strong supporter of FPTP, changed his mind and advocated PR in an influential book published as early as 1975. Finally, policies supported by a broad consensus are more likely to be successful and to remain on course than policies made by a so-called decisive government against the wishes of important sectors of society.
Fortunately, we now have very good methods to settle these competing arguments, especially since reams of excellent data on effective government and the quality of democracy have become available since about the year 2000. I have relied on official government sources, international organizations like the United Nations and the Inter-Parliamentary Union; The Economist Intelligence Unit; and the Worldwide Governance Indicators project, led by experts at the World Bank and the Brookings Institution. The evidence shows that consensus democracy is superior to majoritarian democracy in terms of effective government and policy-making, and that it is vastly superior in terms of equality of democracy.
In order to emphasize how strong this evidence is, I'd like to make several points about the findings in my book, Patterns of Democracy, which was first published in 1999, and a second and updated edition that I published in 2012. It is the evidence from that 2012 edition of my book that I present here.
First, the 36 democracies that I compared in my book are not just a sample of democracies, but all of the democracies that satisfy the definition of continuous democracy for a period of at least 20 years, from 1990 to 2010, according to the widely used criteria of Freedom House.
Second, I test both effective government and democratic quality in terms of not just a few indicators, but a wide variety of indicators. For effective government, I look at performance with regard to such basic and obvious measures as economic growth, inflation, unemployment, and budget balance, and also the Worldwide Governance Indicator measures of government effectiveness, regulatory quality, the rule of law, and control of corruption. For measuring the quality of democracy, I look at voter turnout, women's representation in parliaments and cabinets, gender inequality, economic inequality, and survey responses with regard to satisfaction with democracy. I also look at the overall Democracy Index by the Economist Intelligence Unit, in addition to the separate categories that make up this index, like the quality of the electoral process, political participation, and civil liberties.
Third, I find positive correlations between consensus democracy and effective government with regard to 16 of my 17 indicators. They are so strong as to be statistically significant for nine of the measures. For democratic quality, I have 19 indicators, and without exception all of these show that consensus democracy works better. Moreover, all 19 correlations are very strong and statistically significant.
Fourth, a legitimate question is, could this good performance of consensus democracy be caused by other factors instead of by consensus democracy? There are in fact two such factors that affect both effective government and democratic quality. These are the level of economic development and population size. Richer countries tend to do better than less well-to-do countries, and small countries, that is, less populous countries, tend to do better than large countries. But these factors can be controlled for in the statistical analysis, and the results that I have reported already control for them. This means that the positive correlations remain strong even after the effects of economic development and population size have been taken into consideration.
Let me turn to three specific issues with regard to the possible introduction of PR in Canada. First, it is important that supporters of PR agree on the kind of PR they want to introduce. One sure way of wrecking the chance of PR is for its advocates to split into hostile camps with regard to which form of PR they prefer.
Second, which form of PR would be best? I am basically an agnostic on this subject. My native country of the Netherlands uses list PR, and I think it has worked quite well there for now almost a whole century. Most continental European countries also use list PR. But for Canada, it is probably best to follow the example of other mainly or partly English-speaking countries. That means either the MMP system or mixed-member proportional system introduced in New Zealand in the 1990s and also adopted by the legislative assemblies of Scotland and Wales; or as a second alternative, STV, a single transferrable vote, used in Ireland for, I guess, almost a whole century now, in Malta, and in Australia for its senate elections since 1949.
Third, make sure that the system is actually reasonably proportional and that it avoids too high a barrier for small parties. For MMP in New Zealand, the minimum threshold is 4%, which I consider reasonable. For STV, no formal threshold is needed because it uses relatively small election districts. In Ireland, the districts elect between three and five representatives each. In Malta, each district elects five members. In Australia, the six states serve as the principle election districts, and each elects six senators. Occasionally, when there is a so-called double dissolution, as happened recently, this number is increased to 12, but six is a reasonable number. Five five or six is indeed a reasonable number to adopt if one has STV.
Finally, let me address the question of whether PR is suitable for a country like Canada that is geographically very large and has a linguistically, ethnically, and religiously diverse population. The answer is certainly yes. In fact, as I have already emphasized, PR is especially appropriate for heterogeneous countries. How about Canada's large geographical size? Canada is unusual in this respect, but not unique. Australia is comparable, and Australia has used PR and senate elections since 1949. I do not see any logical reason either to believe that PR could not work well in a large country like Canada. Perhaps the most important fact to consider is that PR is the rule and FPTP the exception among contemporary democracies.
Of the 36 democracies in my book, there are four that are neither pure PR nor pure FPTP. The breakdown for the others is 10 FPTP versus 22 PR. This still exaggerates the use of FPTP, because six of the countries with FPTP are very small ones like the Bahamas, Barbados, and Botswana. There are some very small countries with PR too, of course, like Iceland, Luxembourg, and Malta. Excluding all of these tiny countries, the breakdown becomes four countries with FPTP, namely Canada, United States, United Kingdom, and India, versus 19 with PR. The breakdown is four with FPTP and 19 with PR.
However one counts it, PR has the clear majority. In addition, and finally, I think it is significant that in these four FPTP countries, there are important organizations that strongly advocate a shift to PR. In sharp contrast, there are no similar organizations advocating FPTP in any of the PR countries.
I thank you for your kind attention.