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In their essay in the October 2011 issue of this journal, John Carey and Andrew Reynolds capably outline existing electoral systems in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and propose reforms in countries that have either begun a democratic transition or shown signs that such a transition may lie ahead.1 Through their essay runs a vein of implicit or explicit support for the idea that electoral systems based on proportional representation (PR) of political parties will be best for whatever democracies may emerge in the MENA region, while majoritarian systems are more conducive to authoritarianism.
I would like to challenge these assumptions by suggesting that, in the special case of developing or emerging democracies, PR may not be the most appropriate system, and that in many cases majoritarian or plurality systems may do a better job of ensuring effective representation and promoting democratization.
Experience shows that effective democracies do not emerge overnight. Democratization is a process, not an event, and can take several generations. At different stages, it may require different electoral systems. PR may be a good choice for the mature democracies of northern Europe, which already have such key PR prerequisites as parties with clear ideological profiles, well-defined platforms, and democratic internal-governance rules. An emerging democracy, by contrast, might be better off with a system that is more flexible than PR and hence more likely to aid the development of democratic attitudes and the emergence of fully democratic parties and states.
Under PR, each voter is primarily choosing a party, with seats in the legislature awarded to parties based on their respective vote shares. There are two main types of PR, closed list and open list. In a closed- list system, a party puts forward a slate of, for example, ten candidates for a parliament of ten seats. In this case the "quota" for winning a seat is 10 percent of the vote. If the party receives 30 percent, the top three candidates on its list are elected. An open list works the same way, except that voters can also record a preference for a particular candidate on the list, so that the three elected may not necessarily be the top three on the list. Proponents of the open list say that...