British Nationalist Party (BNP) Leader Nick Griffin (c, striped tie) and Andrew Brons (r), BNP's new MEP for Yorkshire & Humber, are rushed away by bodyguards after their London press conference was disrupted by anti-BNP demonstrators, June 9, 2009.
AP Photo

"Why PR Won't Represent the Country"

Op-Ed, politics.co.uk

October 12, 2009

Author: Azeem Ibrahim, Research Fellow, International Security Program

Belfer Center Programs or Projects: International Security

I would wager that whoever you voted for in the last general election in 2005, you knew what you wanted that party to do if it won. But I bet you can't say the same about this year's vote for the European Parliament.

Part of the problem is that no party wins European Parliament elections. So no party does what it wants with the power. This is partly because the Euro elections are elected by proportional representation. We the people only have the power to shift the balance of power to the left or the right. It is after the elections that the real decisions are made on how the power will be used.

I mention this because in the UK, electoral reform is back on the agenda, and proportional representation (PR) is again being touted.

Us opponents of PR would be foolish to deny that it would be more representative than first past the post, in the sense that it would send to Westminster MPs who better represented the choice of the country. The problem is that because there would normally be coalitions, the laws and decisions they make would normally end up being less representative of the choice of the country. Whereas first past the post is like a car in which the driver sets the destination, coalitions are like a car full of passengers fighting about the destination, but which cannot get anywhere until and unless they manage to agree.

Coalitions are held together by leaders 'buying off' the smaller parties to prevent them splitting and triggering new elections. That inevitably result in leaders kowtowing to factional whims and offering concessions to the preoccupations of small parties, however arcane. That would be a very real risk here, where small party support has grown from 3 per cent to 14 per cent in the last thirteen years. In many countries this results in money for the pet projects of small parties or individuals. This is an awful idea at a time when there is such an urgent need to restrict spending.

The second problem with PR is that coalitions would seriously impinge on the government's ability simply to make a decision. This often results in governmental immobility. PR advocates must accept that sometimes, strong leadership is necessary. Now is one of those times. There are tough decisions to be made on Afghanistan and painful cuts to be made. Coalitions inevitably focus on what governments can do at the expense of what needs doing.

A third problem with PR are the kind of skills it incentivises in our politicians. It rewards those skilled in the politics of the bazaar, the hidden backroom give and take. In Britain, we have a tradition of listening to the parties' opposing plans, picking one, and then letting the party which proposed it carry it through.

A fourth problem is that it would arbitrarily make the Liberal Democrats the kingmakers of British politics. This is ironic. It means that a system designed to disperse power downwards and make sure that everyone's vote counts equally would in fact give it to one man: Nick Clegg. Proportional representation would give any Lib Dem leader in the foreseeable future a permanent veto over government policy. That would be neither proportional nor representative.

In short, if a party asks you to vote for it, it should be able to tell you what it will do with the power. But if we had proportional representation, it wouldn't be able to, because it wouldn't know. Why should we change to an electoral system where you never know what you're going to get?

Azeem Ibrahim is a research scholar at the International Security Program, Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a world fellow at Yale University.

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