Studying electoral systems – methodological aspects

Abstract

The concept of electoral deformation is conventional and its content is dependent on the given definition of representative democracy. Representative democracy’s aim to achieve social volition is not fully achievable. The category of ‘majority’ is strictly an instrument of forming public authority and it cannot be equated with an expression of a given volition of the society’s majority. All election systems deform, and the differences between them lie in the scale of that deformation. Electoral deformations are not only a consequence of the majority system, whether proportional or mixed. The author points in this regard to the deformations that stem from the legal ground-rules of election law in the form of a general, equal, secret, direct and free ballot. Further, he points to the relations between the size of an electorate and the size of the organs being elected, the stability of the election law, voter turnout rates, the role of public media and the power of public opinion polls. Election result research methods, such as voter behaviour gauges as well as gauges of the impact of an election system on a party system (indices of proportionality and disproportionality, effective numbers of parties, fragmentation and fractionalization of the party system, party aggregation and government relevance) should be applied in relation to a particular electoral system. Although these methods constitute very powerful research instruments, they do not set any methodological trends. This is because trends are derived from axiological and doctrinal priorities present in a singular electoral system.