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The chapter begins with a brief sketch of the EU’s representative politics in comparison with national politics. It then examines the EU’s effects on national politics generally as well as differentially between majoritarian and proportional representation systems in terms of questions related to party politics and electoral participation, referenda and citizen activism, trust in government, identity and class between majoritarian and proportional representation systems. This is followed by a more detailed consideration of the EU’s effects in France, Britain, Germany, and Italy. While Europeanization has been equally problematic for the polarized, majoritarian politics of France and Britain, Britain has been more politically polarized for much longer around the issue of Europe than France, despite the fact that it has shielded itself more from EU encroachments on national policies. Europeanization has been least disruptive to Germany’s consensus-oriented, proportional representation system and most salutary to Italy’s more conflictual, mixed system of representation.

Voting rules producing a single absolute winner include unanimity, majority, and plurality rules. Multiple winners are created, in contrast, by electoral systems of proportional representation and further multi‐party coalition formation. Different electoral rules are evaluated for the frequency with which they produce winners, corresponding to the median voter's preference.

This chapter explores the history of American and European political institutions to gain insight on the reasons behind the differences in their welfare policies. It focuses on the history of proportional representation, the rise of socialist parties, and the US Supreme Court. It identifies a general relationship between the age of institutions and social welfare spending.

In 1994, Bolivia undertook a major constitutional and electoral reform, in which a closed‐list proportional representation (PR) system for the Lower House of the Congress was replaced by a mixed‐member proportional (MMP) system. Article 60 of the reformed constitution establishes that 68 deputies out of a constitutionally fixed number of 130 will be chosen by plurality rule in single‐seat districts, while the remaining 62 will be chosen by party‐list voting according to proportional representation in nine regional multi‐seat districts. This new electoral system establishes seats linkage between the two tiers such that the overall allocation of seats is determined proportionally according to list votes at the level of each multi‐seat district. In analyzing the underlying causes of the electoral reform in 1994, Mayorga first deals with the widely perceived fundamental problems and flaws of the traditional PR system and, second, addresses the main causes leading to the adoption of an MMP system, focusing on the context in which the politics of electoral reform was carried out.

Summarizes the key assumptions in consociational theories of democracy, enumerates the key propositions to be explored, and describes the data and research methods to be employed. It then compares political attitudes and behaviour among a diverse range of ethnic minorities from countries with various levels of democratic and socio‐economic development—three countries with majoritarian electoral systems (the USA, Great Britain, Australia), three countries with ‘mixed’ or parallel electoral systems (Taiwan, Ukraine, Lithuania), and six countries with PR (proportional representation) systems (Poland, Romania, Czech Republic, Spain, New Zealand, Israel). The results of the analysis suggest that there is no simple relationship between the type of electoral system and majority–minority differences in political support. In particular, it finds no evidence for the proposition that PR party‐list systems are directly associated with higher levels of support for the political system among ethnic minorities.

Mexico has experimented with mixed‐member electoral systems for many years, is probably the second oldest mixed‐member system after Germany, and has modified its mixed system more than any other country. The purpose behind the electoral reforms has always been the same: to open up the system enough to satisfy political demands, but not so much that the hegemonic party loses control. Although the latter could to a large extent be controlled by electoral fraud, the former objective still had to be addressed, and over the last 35 years Mexico has seen a gradual but consistent expansion of proportional representation, so that by 1997, the electoral laws, together with electoral preferences and the general democratization of the country, had led to the end of majority control by the official party in the Chamber of Deputies, and Mexico now has a strong two‐ or three‐party system. However, there have been seven fundamentally different electoral systems in Mexico this century, with a different electoral system for each of the last five elections, which makes it impossible to distinguish the effects of electoral rules from those of voter preference; furthermore, most of the reforms are highly endogenous with the party system. Discusses reforms from 1964 onwards, and is arranged as follows: it first describes the party (minority) deputy system that operated under single‐seat district plurality rules in the period 1964–1976, and then the minority representation system of 1979–1985 (mixed‐member majoritarian (MMM) rules were introduced for the 1979 election); next it gives accounts of the 1988, 1991, 1994 and 1997 mixed‐member electoral laws, and details of the senate formulas for the period 1994–2000; it then discusses the consequences of the four mixed‐member electoral laws (effects on party competition and Duvergerian effects), the effects of the change to an MMM system on legislative behavior, and the prospects for future electoral reform.

Mixed‐member electoral systems are described as a mixture of two principles of electoral system design: majoritarian systems, which usually have single‐seat districts with plurality rule and tend to give greater representation to the two parties that receive the most votes; and proportional systems, which have multi‐seat districts, usually with party lists, and typically produce parliamentary representation that largely mirrors the vote shares of multiple parties. In the prototype mixed‐member system, half the seats in a legislative chamber (the nominal tier) are elected in single‐seat districts and the other half (the list tier) are elected from party lists allocated by proportional representation; such systems come in a wide variety of options, with the most important choices involved being those of how seats and/or votes are linked between the two tiers. Defines mixed‐member electoral systems as a subset of the broader category of multiple‐tier electoral systems. The typology of systems outlined is arranged in three main sections: Mixed‐Member Systems as Variants of Multiple‐Tier Electoral Systems; Majoritarian or Proportional: Linkage Between Nominal and Tier Lists—mixed‐member majoritarian (MMM) and mixed‐member proportional (MMP) systems; and How MMM and MMP Systems Work: Simple Systems and Additional Variables—this section includes a table of mixed‐member systems in use around the world in 1999.

Despite Britain's first past the post‐electoral system, which generally produces single‐party majorities, Britain has become more politically fragmented in recent years. This makes a hung parliament—a parliament in which no single party has a majority—much more likely. Hung parliaments pose a dilemma for the sovereign. For, it will often not be obvious in such a situation who is the most appropriate Prime Minister; nor whether a dissolution requested by a Prime Minister should be granted—there may well be an alternative combination capable of governing within the existing legislature. These problems can be illuminated by analysis of past hung parliaments—1923–24, 1929–31, and 1974. The problems would be exacerbated with the introduction of proportional representation, for this would mean that nearly every parliament would then be a hung parliament.

Three types of political regimes are evaluated for their success in establishing stable and durable democracies. These are parliamentarism with majority electoral rules, parliamentarism with proportional representation, and presidentialism. An empirical analysis of the 123 attempts to establish democratic regimes in countries with more than one million inhabitants since the nineteenth century shows that parliamentarism with proportional representations is the formula with highest rates of success. This empirical finding supports the hypothesis that pluralistic political institutions have higher capability to produce socially efficient outcomes and obtain endogenous support.

Mexico has a long experience with highly majoritarian variants of mixed‐member systems, but has recently been made more proportional in a process of democratization. Electoral reform has developed along two major axes: the degree of proportionality, and the composition of the electoral authority, with the parties often trading openness on one axis for closure on the other. Sometimes trade‐offs in reform negotiations followed a third dimension—the registration requirements for new parties. This chapter first describes the evolution of the Mexican electoral formulae from 1963 to today, explaining the rationale of each phase of reform either as a majority party decision or as a trade‐off between government and opposition; the phases described are the plurality party deputy system (1963–1976), the mixed‐member majoritarian (MMM) minority representation system (1979–1985), the governability clause of the 1988 law, the governability clause with ‘moving escalator’ of the 1991 law, and the abandonment of the governability clause in the 1994 law. The last part of the chapter focuses on the last round of electoral reforms (the 1997 law), in which the mixed‐member majoritarian (MMM) system reintroduced in 1994 (after the earlier brief interludes of systems that combined MMM with mixed‐member proportional (MMP) arrangements under the 1988 and 1991 laws), was further reformed to result in a more proportional allocation of seats, with the dominant principle depending on the vote distribution.

Chapter 2 argues that reformers’ definition of democracy shifted in the late nineteenth century to incorporate the broader electorate as crucial participants in what they labeled a “good-government” movement. This change occurred as a diverse coalition of political activists joined good-government groups in calling for the ouster of Tammany Hall and affiliated organizations that had long monopolized power in New York City. By the time Judge Samuel Seabury, appointed by then-governor Franklin Roosevelt, concluded his investigations of municipal corruption at the height of the Great Depression, a reform alliance had coalesced that included elite civic associations, Communists, Socialists, labor unions, anti-Tammany Democrats, Republicans, and women’s rights activists. Activists from across the city’s political spectrum saw proportional representation as the key to their quest for municipal power. This coalition campaigned to fundamentally alter the city’s balance of political power, culminating in the victories for charter reform and PR in 1936.

To allocate seats to candidates or parties, even a simple electoral system must specify at least the following: the total number of seats in the assembly (assembly size); the number of seats allocated in each electoral district (district magnitude); how these seats are allocated (seat allocation formula); and how a voter can express her/his preferences (ballot structure). The simplest seat allocation formulas are d'Hondt and Sainte-Laguë divisors, and Hare quota plus largest remainders. For single-seat districts, these proportional representation formulas are reduced to First-Past-The-Post, where the candidate with the most votes wins. Complex electoral systems may offer advantages, but the ability to predict the number of parties and the average proportionality of seats to votes is lost.