From Majoritarian to Pluralist Democracy?
| Date | 01 July 2001 |
| Author | Helen Margetts,Patrick Dunleavy |
| Published date | 01 July 2001 |
| DOI | 10.1177/095169280101300304 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
FROM MAJORITARIAN TO PLURALIST
DEMOCRACY?
ELECTORAL REFORM IN BRITAIN SINCE 1997
Patrick Dunleavy and Helen Margetts
ABSTRACT
The rapid changes in electoral systems and party systems in Britain since 1997
pose fundamental problems of explanation both for electoral system analysts
and for students of British politics. We first describe the main types of elec-
toral system change introduced and show how the new systems have already
brought about important differences in party systems and patterns of party
government across the UK. Possible explanations of the changes include:
general trends across liberal democracies to re-appraise their historic voting
systems; the UK’s historical and political distinctiveness in comparative
terms; long-run processes specific to Britain triggering a lagged or ‘catch-up’
political and constitutional modernization; and short run (‘why now?’) causal
factors. In our view change is already irreversible. For the foreseeable future
either plurality rule and new electoral systems will co-exist within a
primary/secondary elections structure; or the new systems will over time
erode the previously foundational position of plurality rule, in tandem with
a realignment of party politics UK-wide.
KEY WORDS • electoral system • majoritarian democracy • party system •
pluralist democracy
‘In no society do people ever enter a political contest equally’ remarked
Robert Dahl (1956: 137). ‘The effect of the constitutional rules is to pre-
serve, add to, or subtract from the advantages and handicaps with which
they start the race.’ Voting system rules are a particularly significant case in
point, and have been widely seen as hardest of all to reform, since they may
often exclude from political power those with most cause to change them.
Such a case has traditionally been made to explain the stasis of the UK’s
arrangements. Only a few years ago some observers proclaimed confidently
but unpresciently that: ‘There has been little enthusiasm at any time since
1789 in Britain for fundamental constitutional change’ (Harrison, 1996: 5).
Others were fatalistic: ‘[In 1991] we were stuck with a constitution and
Journal of Theoretical Politics 13(3): 295–319 Copyright © 2001 Sage Publications
0951–6928[2001/07]13:3; 295–319; 018075 London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi
We thank Josep M. Colomer and two JTP referees for helpful comments, and participants
at the session of the APSA Conference in 1999 when the paper was first presented. We are
grateful to Simon Bastow for assistance on research.
04dunleavy(ds) 25/6/01 11:18 am Page 295
system of rule that seemed quite beyond change’ (Dearlove and Saunders,
2000: xiii). Yet unexpectedly for both groups fundamental alterations in the
UK governmental system emerged apparently out of a blue sky in the late
1990s. ‘Britain is in a period of unprecedented constitutional change’
(Dearlove and Saunders, 2000: 472), with extensive voting system reforms
at the very heart of this process. The cracking of the UK’s previous adher-
ence to plurality rule voting systems reflects essentially the impact of devo-
lution in creating new elected bodies in Scotland, Wales and London. But
the shift to fully proportional systems for these bodies (and for the UK’s
European Parliament elections) is both caused by and has consequential
changes for longer-term alterations in British politics towards a multi-party
system. This case has important parallels with other recent changes in estab-
lished liberal democracies’ electoral systems.
In this article we first set the UK case against a background of earlier
political science studies tending to underplay electoral system effects and
the possibilities for electoral reform. Next we describe the main changes
which have occurred in Britain since 1997 in both electoral system design
and party system configurations. We then sketch three broad classes of
explanation – cross-national accounts of why a number of established liberal
democracies have now reappraised their historic electoral systems; long-run
historical analyses of why the ‘normalization’ or ‘Europeanization’ of
British politics has taken so long to come about; and short run (why now?)
explanations of the changes. The conclusions consider three possible futures
for the British political system.
1. Why the UK’s Electoral System Change Matters
Current innovations in British voting systems have wider significance for
two reasons. The first has to do with an earlier conventional wisdom in
political science that major alterations in electoral systems occur only in
periods of acute crisis or state failure, or conditions of large-scale political
uncertainty or change. ‘One of the best-known generalizations about elec-
toral systems is that they tend to be very stable and to resist change’
(Lijphart, 1994: 52). Even those authors who acknowledge a limited ‘endo-
geneity of electoral systems’ suggest that ‘the perceived changeability of the
electoral code’ is a phenomenon confined to a few pathological or weakly
grounded liberal political systems (Greece, Turkey or emerging democra-
cies), contrasting sharply with ‘older, more established electoral systems’
(Cox, 1997: 18). Cox goes on to suggest that the norm is stability ‘unless
there is substantial uncertainty against which even the winners wish to
insure themselves; or the winners think the electoral situation has changed,
so that the old electoral rules will no longer serve them well, and they can
296 JOURNAL OF THEORETICAL POLITICS 13(3)
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