Party Linkage,Public Justification and Mixed Electoral Systems

Abstract

In recent years, a number of political theorists have aimed to restore the central role of parties in democratic life. These theorists have especially highlighted two key normative functions of parties: linkage and public justification. In this article, I argue that these two functions are often in tension. First, I illustrate how this tension manifests itself in liberal democracies. Second, I explain that parties’ ability to fulfil each of the two functions is strongly affected by the electoral system under which they operate: while first-past-the-post encourages party linkage but hinders public justification, the opposite is true of proportional representation. Third, I argue that a mixed electoral system can best guarantee the balance between parties’ linkage and justificatory functions. Fourth, I suggest a number of proposals for party reforms that could help mixed electoral systems to balance party linkage and public justification while preventing the re-emergence of the tension between them within parties.

Keywords

partisanship electoral design party linkage public justification mixed electoral systems

Introduction

In recent years, a number of political theorists have aimed to restore the central role of parties in democratic life and to stress their positive contribution to the realization of key democratic ideals (e.g. Bonotti, 2017; Bonotti and Bader, 2014; Invernizzi-Accetti and Wolkenstein, 2017; Muirhead, 2014; Rosenblum, 2008; Weinstock, 2015; White and Ypi, 2016; Wolkenstein, 2016, 2019a, 2019b). This literature has partly developed as a response to what is now widely known, in academic circles and beyond, as the ‘crisis’ of political parties and party democracy (e.g. Daalder, 2002; Dalton and Wattenberg, 2002; Delwit, 2011; Ignazi, 1996; Mair, 2013, 2014; Papadopoulos, 2013; Whiteley, 2010). Central to this crisis are declining voter turnout; increasingly volatile elections; decline in party identification; the mainstreamization of anti-system parties, such as (former) communist parties and green parties; the increasing lack of programmatic differences between parties, manifested, for example, in the rise of ‘catch-all’ parties (Kirchheimer, 1966); and the ‘cartelization’ of parties (Katz and Mair, 1995) which, together with their increasing state regulation, has led some commentators to equate parties to ‘public utilities’ (Van Biezen, 2004). Furthermore, parties’ cartelization has also been accompanied by their growing focus on ‘office-seeking’ (Mair, 2013: 88) and inability to provide a ‘linkage’ (Lawson, 1988) between citizens and the state. As Peter Mair pointed out a few years ago:

the functions that parties do perform, are seen to perform, and are expected to perform, have changed from combining representative and governing roles to relying almost exclusively on a governing role [e.g. candidate selection, recruitment, etc.]. This is the final passing of the traditional mass party (Mair, 2013: 97).

In response to this alleged crisis of political parties and party democracy, political theorists have especially highlighted the importance of two key normative functions of parties. One is parties’ aforementioned linkage function which, according to some of these scholars, could be restored by reforming existing parties, for example, by rendering them more internally democratic (e.g. Invernizzi-Accetti and Wolkenstein, 2017; Wolkenstein, 2016). The other is parties’ contribution to public justification, that is, the process through which laws and policies are not merely implemented based on majoritarian decisions but also justified to all those who will be subject to them (e.g. Bonotti, 2017; White and Ypi, 2011).

In this article, I argue that these two key normative functions of parties are often in tension. First, I illustrate how this tension manifests itself in liberal democracies. Second, I explain that parties’ ability to fulfil each of the two functions is strongly affected by the electoral system under which they operate. More specifically, while first-past-the-post (FPTP) encourages party linkage but hinders public justification, the opposite is true of proportional representation (PR). Third, I argue that a mixed electoral system (including both an FPTP and a PR component) can best guarantee the balance between parties’ linkage and justificatory functions. Fourth, and finally, I put forward a number of proposals for party reforms that could help mixed electoral systems to balance party linkage and public justification while preventing the tension between them from re-emerging within political parties.

The Tension between Party Linkage and Partisan Justification

As stressed in the Introduction, two specific aspects of partisanship and party politics have been particularly highlighted in recent years by those scholars who have attempted to rehabilitate parties in light of their long-standing crisis. The first concerns the aforementioned ‘linkage’ function which, we have seen, the increasing cartelization of parties has especially contributed to undermining. Scholars who have focused on this dimension of partisanship have especially highlighted the need for reforms to render parties more internally democratic, and therefore more open to citizens’ changing (but still very much present) demands for political mobilization. The proposed reforms include both aggregative (e.g. Hazan and Rahat, 2010; Poguntke, 1992) and deliberative (e.g. Invernizzi-Accetti and Wolkenstein, 2017; Wolkenstein, 2016) mechanisms of intra-party democracy. Despite the differences between them, all these accounts are grounded in the belief that unless parties are rendered more inclusive towards citizens’ demands and input, their linkage function and, more generally, their role in democratic politics will continue to decline.

The second normative function attributed to parties and partisanship in the recent political theory literature concerns the contribution that they can make to the process of public justification, that is, the process through which laws and policies are not merely implemented based on majoritarian decisions but also justified to all those who will be subject to them. Jonathan White and Lea Ypi (2011: 385), for example, capture this aspect by arguing that ‘partisan justification . . . involves an attempt to move beyond a particularist viewpoint with the aim of demonstrating how a certain claim has public appeal’. Similarly, other authors have shown how the contribution of political parties to public justification can be understood through the more fine-grained conception of public justification provided by John Rawls’s (2005) idea of public reason (Bonotti, 2017; Muirhead and Rosenblum, 2006). According to this view, political rules ought to be justified by appealing to reasons that all citizens could accept at some level of idealization.

Regardless of the differences between them, and contrary to what many critics of parties may think, all these accounts of partisan justification have one aspect in common: the view that partisanship, intended as a normative ideal rather than an empirical reality, involves a commitment to the common good rather than to the partial interests of specific sections of society. To quote White and Ypi again:

[p]artisanship, unlike factionalism, involves efforts to harness political power not for the benefit of one social group among several but for that of the association as a whole, as this benefit is identified through a particular interpretation of the common good (White and Ypi, 2011 : 382).

This view, as White and Ypi (as well as other scholars) have shown, can be traced back to a normative conception of partisanship mainly associated with the work of Edmund Burke (1998 [1770]) and then embraced by other modern and contemporary authors (e.g. Bluntschli, 2002 [1869]; Sartori, 1976; Von Mohl, 2002 [1872]).

Both the analysis of the justificatory function of parties and that of their linkage function have been driven by a desire to rehabilitate the role of parties within liberal democracies in the light of their aforementioned crisis. Furthermore, while the two functions have often been examined separately, some authors have made an effort to highlight their connectedness. For example, White and Ypi (2011: 382) argue that partisanship ‘is a practice that involves citizens acting to promote certain shared normative commitments according to a distinctive interpretation of the public good’. The emphasis on ‘distinctive interpretation’ signals the linkage function of parties and partisanship, that is, the fact that these always emanate from (and should remain anchored in) particular constituencies, interests and values that a party represents, for example, those linked to a specific social class, interest group, or region. However, the emphasis on ‘the public good’ also signals that parties and partisanship should not only remain anchored in that particularity but also display ‘an attempt to move beyond a particularist viewpoint with the aim of demonstrating how a certain [particular] claim has public appeal’ (White and Ypi, 2011: 385), which is what parties’ justificatory function demands. Similarly, Bonotti (2017) argues that partisans’ responsiveness to their particular constituencies can help them not only to provide a linkage between them and the state but also to make a key contribution to the process of public justification. The latter, following Rawls (2005: 386–387), is only complete when policies are justified by appealing both to public reasons and to reasons grounded in the specific values of particular constituencies. Both accounts of partisanship, in other words, signal a continuity between the linkage and justificatory functions of parties. Yet, these functions may sometimes be in tension.

Parties’ justificatory function, which involves appealing to the common good of the entire political community in order to publicly justify legislation, is not entirely incompatible with some of the tendencies associated with the crisis of party democracy. One of these tendencies, we have seen, includes the increasing lack of programmatic differentiation between parties. One of the clearest manifestations of this phenomenon is the rise and success of ‘catch-all’ parties (Kirchheimer, 1966), for some observers one of the causes of the gradual distancing of parties from civil society, the erosion of their linkage function and the resulting voter apathy in Western liberal democracies (Krouwel, 2003). Yet catch-all parties are not necessarily inimical to the process of public justification. In fact, White and Ypi (2011: 384, original emphasis) argue that such parties ‘are understood precisely as political groupings that seek to draw support from as many citizens as possible and that do not restrict themselves to a narrow constituency centered on predefined social units’. In other words, catch-all parties provide a useful counterexample to the view that real-world parties are inherently sectarian and only committed to advancing the interests of specific social groups.

One might of course object that the kind of public spiritedness and commitment to the common good displayed by catch-all parties is purely cosmetic and mainly insincere. While this might be true, their existence shows both that parties have an interest in being publicly minded (though this interest might not always be driven, at least to start with, by a commitment to the common good) and that they can act in ways that reflect that interest, that is, by advancing policy proposals that truly aim to obtain and maintain the support of as many citizens as possible, lest they be rejected at the next elections. After all, even Rawls (1999: 195) points out that ‘to gain enough support to win office . . . [parties] must advance some conception of the public good’. Furthermore, with time, cosmetic insincere commitment to the common good and to public reason might become sincere (cf. Schwartzmann, 2011: 397; see also Elster, 1998: 111).

Conversely, while reforms aimed at rendering parties more internally democratic can enhance party linkage (e.g. Wolkenstein, 2016), they might also sometimes hinder, rather than encourage, their ability to contribute to public justification. For example, in 2014, the British Labour Party reformed the rules and procedures for its leadership contests, in order to render them more inclusive towards non-members. One of the measures adopted to implement this change was the introduction of the category of ‘registered supporters’. To acquire this status, citizens would have to commit to the ‘payment of a nominal fee, accompanied by a formal declaration that they fully supported the Party’s values’ (Dorey and Denham, 2016: 267). Registered supporters played a crucial role in the election of Jeremy Corbyn as the new Labour Party leader, and this definitely strengthened the party’s ‘attempt at . . . “connecting” with people who had not previously involved themselves with the Party’ (Dorey and Denham, 2016: 278), thus enhancing the party’s linkage function within British society. However, one might argue that the reformed rules and procedures also enabled new supporters to shift the party’s political platform towards more left-wing positions, thus rendering the party less capable of appealing to the general public rather than solely (or mainly) to left-wing voters and, consequently, reducing what we could call its ‘public justification potential’. Those reforms, in other words, might have resulted in the party’s ‘limited capacity to be responsive to the broader electorate’ (Katz and Cross, 2013: 171).

This, however, does not mean that parties that are to (or move towards) the left (or the right) of the political spectrum are inevitably less capable than centrist parties of offering public justifications for policies. Much depends on the distribution of ideological positions within a society; if a political culture is generally left-leaning, it will be easier for left-wing parties than for right-wing ones to provide public justifications for policies, and vice versa. And, of course, even within the same society the distribution of public opinion and ideological positions is not fixed. Certain events, for example, may cause an overall shift in political orientation, as when the US witnessed a conservative shift among both conservatives and liberals after the 9/11 terrorist attacks (Nail and McGregor, 2009).

However, when public opinion is mainly concentrated within the centre of the political spectrum, it may indeed be the case that parties leaning towards the left or the right might find it more difficult to provide public justifications for policies that appeal to the broader electorate. This is because a key aspect of the process of public justification partisans must engage in is the balancing of different widely shared political values, such as freedom and equality (cf. Bonotti, 2017: 115). And, indeed, the relationship and prioritization between freedom and equality have been central to the British Labour Party’s ideology since the 1930s, with New Labour arguably trying to strike a difficult balance between the two in the 1990s and 2000s (Nuttall, 2008; see also Glover, 2010) and Corbyn subsequently moving in a more egalitarian direction. When a party manages to strike a successful balance between broadly shared political values (e.g. freedom and equality), it may be able to appeal and publicly justify its policies to a broader range of voters than a party that prioritizes either value. Arguably, New Labour’s repeated electoral victories throughout the 1990s and 2000s can partly be explained in these terms, especially when compared with Corbyn’s defeats in 2017 and 2019.

As these brief examples show, while in the rather idealized accounts of parties and partisanship provided by White and Ypi or by Bonotti parties’ linkage and justificatory functions may coexist in harmony, real-world parties and partisanship may often reveal a tension between them. This tension can also be traced back to the different normative underpinnings of the two functions. More specifically, parties’ linkage function is inherently democratic. As Fabio Wolkenstein points out:

[t]he traditional idea underlying linkage is . . . that grassroots activists and ordinary members have privileged access to the demands and concerns of the party’s constituents, and should be empowered so as to channel these demands and concerns into decisions over policy or the party’s more general direction (Wolkenstein, 2016: 303).

In other words, party linkage has the purpose of creating an upward democratic channel to ensure that citizens’ demands are reflected in a party’s political platform and, if and when that party is in power, in its policies.

Conversely, the ideal of public justification is not as easily in tune with democratic ideals. As some critics have pointed out, conceptions of public justification such as Rawls’s idea of public reason may hinder, rather than encourage, democratic deliberation and democratic politics by imposing liberal constraints upon them and thus limit their scope a priori (e.g. Benhabib, 2002; Habermas, 1995). It is true that public reason should not be considered fixed and immutable (e.g. Flanders, 2012). However, it is undeniable that dominant conceptions of public justification, which tend to consider certain reasons (e.g. religious reasons that are not epistemically accessible to all citizens) unsuitable for justifying political rules, do limit the extent to which democratic majorities can shape policy-making. This seems to be in tension with parties’ democratic linkage function which, on the contrary, should enable constituents’ demands, including those that are grounded in (and justified by) non-public (e.g. religious) reasons, to be channelled into the public political realm and potentially provide the justification for political rules.

In the next section, I argue that parties’ ability to fulfil their linkage and public justification functions is strongly affected by the electoral system under which they operate. More specifically, while FPTP encourages party linkage but hinders public justification, the opposite is true of PR.

Party Linkage, Public Justification and Electoral Systems

Political parties do not operate in a vacuum. While they can be considered agents of both linkage and public justification, the institutional framework within which they operate can significantly affect their ability to carry out these normative functions. One of the key elements of that institutional framework is the electoral system. The latter can have a significant influence on the number and kind of parties operating within a party system and on the way in which they formulate and pursue their political strategies. Those political theorists who, in recent years, have examined the normative dimensions of partisanship, including parties’ linkage and justificatory functions, have only recently started to pay attention to the issue of electoral design, and to how electoral systems can foster or hinder parties’ ability to fulfil their normative potential (Bonotti, 2017; Herman and Muirhead, 2020; Leydet, 2019; Weinstock, 2015; White, 2019; Wolkenstein, 2019b).¹

Electoral design is a complex matter, and it is not my intention here to examine in detail the numerous types of electoral systems that can be found in different liberal democracies.² I intend instead to focus on two idealized (and, therefore, inevitably simplified) versions of the most common electoral systems adopted in liberal democratic polities, that is, FPTP and PR, and to show that each of them is especially conducive to the realization of one of the two key normative functions of parties examined in this article.

FPTP systems, as the name itself suggests, assign seats to the candidates who obtain the highest number of votes in single-member electoral districts. While coalition governments are not entirely impossible under FPTP, this electoral system tends to produce stable one-party governments. And stability is indeed one of the key advantages normally attributed to FPTP compared to PR. However, what interests me here is the extent to which FPTP favours, or hinders, parties’ linkage and justificatory functions.

Let us start by considering the former. Alongside stability, one of the strengths often attributed to FPTP systems is their ability to guarantee a constant linkage between representatives and their constituents. Since electoral districts under FPTP are normally quite small in size, constituents have the opportunity to get to know their representative, present their demands and concerns to them, and hold them accountable, mainly through the threat of non-re-election (Blais, 2008: 2). Furthermore, parties operating in FPTP systems have a key advantage over those operating in PR systems: they are unlikely to have to join coalition governments. Therefore, they normally have the opportunity to implement all or most of the proposed policies based on which they have obtained their electoral success. As Weinstock points out:

[FPTP] removes one of the reasons that parties have not to act on their electoral platforms when they come to power, namely that they need to compromise and to drop some of their platform planks in order to obtain the cooperation of coalition partners (Weinstock, 2017: 19).

At this point, one might raise two objections. First, it might be argued that proper linkage requires actual influence on policy-making. In other words, unless a party actually obtains power and can legislate, the linkage it provides between its voters and the state is only partial. This means that losing parties under FPTP will not be able to provide full linkage for their voters. However, one of the key features of FPTP systems is their ability to provide alternation in power. It is this alternation that guarantees that each of the main parties can provide full linkage at more or less regular intervals.

Second, one might point out that there is a tension between two types of linkage: between ordinary citizens/constituents and the state, and between party members and the state. If the interests of the two groups (i.e. citizens/constituents and party members) do not overlap, then linkage will be compromised or will only be partial. In response to this objection, one should be reminded about the aforementioned reforms aimed at increasing intra-party democracy. Such reforms might sometimes overly empower ordinary citizens at the expense of long-standing party members, as in the aforementioned case of the British Labour Party under Corbyn’s leadership, when a rapid intake of new registered members contributed to shifting the party’s platform towards more radical positions which were not so popular among most of the existing party members. However, more carefully designed reforms could ensure that party members are sufficiently responsive to the demands of their constituents, and held accountable to them, in a way that brings the former’s interests into line (rather than replacing them) with the latter’s. In summary, then, FPTP tends to promote parties’ linkage function and their responsiveness to constituents.

But how does FPTP fare when it comes to public justification? On the one hand, by requiring parties to appeal to the median voter, FPTP might encourage practices of democratic deliberation that can be a good training ground for public justification. Indeed, according to Weinstock (2015), parties under FPTP are encouraged to create deliberative platforms to integrate policy proposals arising from different social groups into coherent wholes. More specifically, Weinstock argues:

[t]he need to formulate platforms means that political parties are particularly important sites of political deliberation. In particular, the party platform conventions at which platforms are hammered out have the potential to be central deliberative forums. They are the places in which citizens with a diverse range of concerns come together in order to present a set of propositions to the broader electorate. The ability to present such a set of propositions requires that they overcome whatever their initial differences may have been in order to arrive at a common set of positions (Weinstock, 2015: 300).

However, we have already seen that FPTP also tends to produce legislatures in which only very few parties are represented. This means that once a party in a FPTP system is in power, it may find itself under a lesser ‘justificatory pressure’ (Bonotti, 2017: 151) than parties operating in PR systems. In other words, while the governing party may of course be subject to the criticisms of the opposition, those criticisms will arise from a limited number of perspectives, since many sectors within society (especially among minorities) are likely to remain unrepresented in the legislature. Furthermore, even if minor parties do manage to obtain some representation within the legislature, it is unlikely that they will be able to exercise any meaningful justificatory pressure on the government, since they will lack the ability to back that pressure with threats, for example, in the form of withdrawal of support for a coalition government.

Let us now assess PR. To what extent does it encourage parties’ exercise of their linkage and justificatory functions? With regard to the latter, one might argue that by encouraging the formation of parties with narrower political platforms than in FPTP systems, PR also encourages ‘targeting’ (Weinstock, 2015: 301) specific voters rather than appealing to the common good. However, this argument overlooks the fact that parties in PR systems often have to join coalition governments, and therefore need to make an effort to appeal to their coalition partners’ members (and, indirectly, to their constituents) in order to be accepted into such governments (Bonotti, 2017: 146). Moreover, the very presence of a greater variety of parties within the legislature, some of them representing the interests of minority groups, will place the governing coalition under a significant pressure to justify their policies by appealing to the common good (Beitz, 1989: 136–138). In summary, then, it seems that in PR systems all parties, including smaller ones, can make a meaningful contribution to the process of public justification.

But what about PR’s effectiveness in guaranteeing party linkage? Here, PR might, admittedly, fare worse than FPTP. It is true, of course, that parties in PR systems have a greater incentive to propose political platforms that reflect more closely the values and interests of specific groups within society. This might therefore render them particularly responsive to their constituents and able in principle to provide a linkage between the latter and the government. This aspect is captured, for example, by Thomas Christiano (1996), who considers PR the best electoral system for realizing the principle of political equality among citizens. According to Christiano, elected representatives in PR systems should act as both delegates and trustees of their constituents. More specifically, he claims that ‘[a] legislator is a delegate for the citizen with regard to the aims and a trustee with regard to the means [of legislation]’ (Christiano, 1996: 224). This seems to suggest that representatives in PR systems need to ensure that whichever means they employ to translate their constituents’ influence into government policy, those means should always reflect the constituents’ views regarding the overall direction that the government should follow. Nevertheless, the need for parties in PR systems to join coalitions may inevitably reduce their ability to effectively carry out that linkage function. To join a governing coalition, which is in most cases the only way for parties in PR systems to influence policy-making, such parties might have to renounce, or significantly dilute, some of their key policy proposals, and this might inevitably hinder their linkage function.

Furthermore, under PR some parties, especially those placed at the two extremes of the political spectrum, are unlikely to ever become part of a coalition government. This makes them different from losing parties in FPTP systems, which alternation in power provides with the prospect of (re)gaining control of government in the not too distant future. Non-government parties in PR systems may therefore often be unable to provide a full linkage between citizens and the state.

In Defence of a Mixed Electoral System

The foregoing analysis has shown that the electoral system in which parties operate affects their ability to carry out their linkage and public justification functions. More specifically, FPTP systems tend to encourage parties’ linkage function and hinder their public justification function, whereas PR systems tend to have the opposite effect. In this section, I argue that adopting a mixed electoral system could help combine the strengths of both FPTP and PR while eschewing their drawbacks.³ By mixed electoral system, I intend a system that combines a majoritarian (normally FPTP) element with a PR (normally party list PR) element. This is in line with Massicotte and Blais’ (1999: 345, original emphasis) view that ‘an electoral system [is] mixed if its mechanics involves the combination of different electoral formulas (plurality or PR; majority or PR) for an election to a single body’. There are different varieties of mixed electoral system (e.g. see Massicotte and Blais, 1999; Shugart and Wattenberg, 2003), but I set aside, for the sake of space, the differences between them. What I would like to focus on, instead, is an idealized version of mixed electoral system in which some representatives are elected via FPTP and some via PR. How could such a system help counter the shortcomings of both FPTP and PR, and their effects on parties’ ability to fulfil their normative functions?

Let us consider FPTP first. A mixed electoral system could help improve parties’ contribution to public justification under this system. More specifically, we have seen that after elections governing parties in FPTP systems are under a lesser justificatory pressure than in PR systems (Bonotti, 2017). Indeed, Weinstock himself, while defending FPTP, acknowledges that FPTP reduces the scope for deliberation (which is crucial for public justification) after elections, especially if the governing party’s implementation of its policy programme is accompanied by party discipline (Weinstock, 2015). However, the presence of representatives elected via PR would ensure that the governing party, which supposedly has obtained the majority of seats under FPTP, remains under the scrutiny of the diverse (and diversely critical) PR-elected representatives, among which members of opposition parties are likely to have a significant presence. This will therefore still place the government under a strong justificatory pressure, which would have not been the case had the party operated under a pure FPTP system.

Interestingly, a mixed electoral system might also help address a shortcoming of FPTP related to party linkage. To understand why, we should note that some partisans operating under a pure FPTP system might fear that intra-party democracy will not help their party become more inclusive and thus reach the median voter. Instead, it might risk allowing more extremist or, at least, less widely shared tendencies to prevail within it, and this might lead to electoral marginalization (Katz, 2014; Katz and Cross, 2013). This fear might therefore prevent parties in pure FPTP systems from implementing those intra-party reforms that can improve their linkage function (Wolkenstein, 2019b). However, the presence of representatives elected via PR might help avoid this risk. More specifically:

[i]n PR systems . . . parties undergoing considerable programmatic shifts may still make it into parliament and so exercise influence on policy making and deliberation. By lowering the likelihood that internal reforms are costly, PR systems accordingly provide a more supportive environment for democratic organisational experiments than FPTP systems (Wolkenstein, 2019b: 2).

It is plausible to argue that PR might have a similar effect also as a component of a mixed electoral system. More specifically, partisans would know that even if the implementation of intra-party democracy reforms might reduce (perhaps only temporarily) their electoral success under the FPTP component of the electoral system, they would still be able to obtain some form of representation and avoid electoral marginalization under the PR component.

But what about PR? How could a mixed electoral system help eliminate or reduce its shortcomings? PR, we have seen, is effective in guaranteeing that a plurality of parties is represented in the legislature. This places the governing party (or, more often, parties) under a stronger justificatory pressure (exercised both by coalition partner(s) and by parties outside the coalition) than in FPTP systems, that is, under a stronger requirement to justify proposed policies based on reasons that appeal to the common good. However, we also saw that PR partly hinders parties’ ability to carry out their linkage function, since parties’ need to join a coalition means that they will often have to renounce or dilute the policies based on which they were elected and which were grounded in their constituents’ demands and interests. Adopting a mixed electoral system could help avoid this problem, by allowing partisans elected via FPTP to fully focus on the party’s linkage function. These partisans would have a greater incentive than their PR-elected counterparts to remain responsive to their constituents, by ensuring that the latter’s demands find a channel into the party’s platform and into the legislature.

Mixed Electoral Systems and Party Reform

At this point, one might raise the following objection: what reason do we have to think that rather than allowing both public justification and linkage functions to play their proper role, a mixed electoral system will not simply relocate the tension between those two functions to parties themselves? In other words, is there not a risk that parties will break into factions, opposing representatives elected according to FPTP and PR logics? I will respond to these objections by proposing three institutional reforms that parties could implement in order to prevent this tension from re-emerging within them: (a) promoting contamination between FPTP and PR components of mixed electoral systems; (b) using political financing arrangements to compensate for the shortcomings of each of the two components; and (c) encouraging intra-party deliberation.

Promoting Contamination

The first measure that parties operating within mixed electoral systems can implement in order to avoid becoming internally divided along FPTP and PR components can best be understood if we consider some of the more fine-grained features of those systems. My analysis so far has drawn on a rather idealized account of mixed electoral systems, giving the impression that the PR and FPTP components of such systems are independent from each other. However, this is not necessarily the case. Indeed, one of the most interesting findings in the empirical literature on mixed electoral systems is that there are in fact ‘contamination effects’ (Herron and Nishikawa, 2001) between their PR and FPTP components (the literature normally refers to the more general category ‘single-member district’ (SMD), to which I will mostly refer in the remainder of this section). That literature recognizes that PR and SMD systems create different incentives for legislators, in line with the analysis conducted in the previous sections of this article. More specifically:

textbook discussions of the two systems generally list poor linkage between MPs and voters as a drawback of pure PR – because legislators are not accountable as individuals to voters, they respond only to other elites. However, some writers have argued that in SMDs, legislators allocate too much effort to responding to ordinary citizens and district interests, at the expense of time devoted to making good public policy (Bawn and Thies, 2003: 7).

One might then argue that under a mixed electoral system with PR and SMD elements, legislators will simply behave based on whether they have been elected under the former or the latter component. However, the reality is more complex than this.

Much depends, first, on whether a mixed electoral system allows the same candidates to run both via PR lists and in SMDs; most of them allow this kind of ‘double listing’ (Hennl, 2014: 94) or ‘double nominations’ (Bawn and Thies, 2003: 17). However, the behaviour of individual legislators also depends on how individual parties respond to these institutional conditions, and especially the extent to which they encourage candidates’ specialization along either component of the system. For example, in Germany, double listing is allowed but most MPs follow rather specialized career paths. The German mixed member (MM) electoral system requires citizens to cast two votes for the Bundestag (lower house): one for a direct candidate in their constituency (SDM component) and the other for party regional lists (PR component). Data show that the vast majority of candidates within the German system are (and over time continue to be) elected either via the SMD component or via the PR component. In other words, there are few instances of candidates shifting between SMD and PR election pathways (Bawn and Thies, 2003: 21). This suggests that most German MPs are likely to operate based on either a linkage or a public justification mindset, depending on which component of their mixed electoral system they have been elected under. In this case, the contamination between the two components is minimal, and it is possible that the tension between linkage and public justification will re-emerge within parties operating under this kind of system.

However, some parties might incentivize greater contamination. For example, in Japan some parties adopt a ‘best-loser’ approach to party lists. Under this system, parties rank candidates in PR lists based on their performance in SMD lists. More specifically:

[s]uppose Candidates A, B, C and D, are all placed at the top spot on the party list for some PR bloc and simultaneously run in their own SMDs. Now suppose that C wins her SMD, while A, B, and D fall short, with A garnering 75 percent as many votes as the winner in her SMD, B garnering 97 percent as many votes as the winner in his SMD and D finishing with 88 percent of ‘his’ winner’s total. In this case, the list would re-ranked [sic] as B–D–A, with C simply dropped. If the party earns two PR seats in this region, they are given to B and D, and A is out of luck. So B and D earn the opportunity to be ‘saved by the list’ whereas A’s poor SMD showing dooms her (Bawn and Thies, 2003: 22, note 20).

This kind of electoral incentive can help mitigate the negative effects of PR on party linkage. This is because legislators must be responsive to ordinary citizens and district interests in order to be more likely to be elected via party lists (if they do not win their SMD). Furthermore, this may also have an effect on voters’ behaviour. More specifically, voters may be less likely to vote strategically if they know that their vote for their preferred SMD candidate will not necessary be wasted but rather contribute to their performance under the PR component.

The contamination between the SMD and PR elements of mixed electoral systems may also result from parties’ interest in exploiting the mobilization potential offered by such systems. More specifically:

[b]y placing a candidate in SMD, the party can increase voter awareness and potentially gain more votes for the PR portion of the election. In addition, by running many SMD candidates, parties can ‘test’ new, aspiring politicians in areas where they expect to do poorly. These tactics allow the party to provide electoral experience to promising, young members and to evaluate their prospects for future elections. Thus, parties should place their candidates in SMD races regardless of the strength of candidates. This, in turn, should lead to non-Duvergerian equilibria in the SMD component (Herron and Nishikawa, 2001: 69–70).

This might help enhance both party linkage and public justification within mixed electoral systems. More specifically, standard SMD systems tend to generate two-party systems (Duverger, 1954), where the linkage between civil society and the state is mostly provided by legislators from the two main parties represented in the legislature. However, due to the reasons just mentioned, the SMD component of a mixed electoral system is likely to produce legislators from a greater variety of parties, thus de facto diversifying party linkage within the legislature. In other words, that linkage, which involves being responsive to ordinary citizens and district interests, will be provided by legislators from a greater variety of parties than in standard SMD systems. This is, per se, already a democratic good. As Dominique Leydet (2019: 3) points out, ideological diversity, that is, ‘the number of alternatives on offer and . . . their distinctive character’, is a key democratic good that electoral systems can contribute to producing. More specifically, she argues:

contemporary societies are highly complex and composed of many diverse interests, values and identities. In this context . . . ideological diversity points to the capacity of the party system to represent some of the diversity characterising the people themselves, effectively achieving the ‘linkage’ function that is an essential aspect of what parties are called to do in a democratic polity (Leydet, 2019: 3).

However, and crucially for the present analysis, the ideological diversity resulting from contamination effects within mixed electoral systems can also contribute to public justification, since a greater diversity of voices in the legislature can result in greater justificatory pressure on the governing party/parties (this justificatory pressure adds to that already provided by legislators elected via the PR component of mixed electoral systems).

In sum, the PR and SMD components of mixed electoral systems should not be considered independent from each other. Parties may decide to respond to the institutional conditions provided by such systems in ways that favour the contamination and reduce the tension between the two components. A further question is, of course, whether the state should play a coercive role, and require parties to implement reforms conducive to contamination, or whether parties should undertake such reforms voluntarily. While the former option seems to carry illiberal undertones, the latter might appear to be too weak. Between these two extremes, however, one might imagine intermediate solutions, such as state incentives (e.g. tax exemptions, (additional) public funding, etc.) for those parties that choose to adopt measures such as the ‘best-loser’ approach to party lists and/or who decide to run candidates in all or most SMDs. Such incentives might contribute to increasing contamination and reducing tensions between SMD and PR components (and, therefore, between linkage and public justification) within each party.

Political Financing

Measures promoting contamination between the PR and SMD dimensions of mixed electoral systems are likely to be the most effective in preventing the re-emergence of a tension between linkage and public justification within political parties. However, a second kind of potential measures concerns political financing. While political financing regimes are many and diverse, they can be traced back to a threefold taxonomy, as argued by Von Beyme (1985): internal funding (e.g. party membership dues), external funding (e.g. donations from non-members and firms) and state support (e.g. cash and tax benefits).

More importantly, different political financing regimes can have distinctive and contrasting effects on parties’ linkage and public justification functions. This is especially true of the state support and external funding models. Specifically, the state support model can contribute to public justification in various ways. First, it can help reduce the influence of sectarian and factional interests on the political system and render legislators ‘more responsive to the broader (nonwealthy) electorate’ (Scarrow, 2007: 205). It can also enhance the political centre and reduce the influence of more extreme parties (La Raja and Schaffner, 2015). Moreover, state funding normally promotes the formation of new political parties (Ikstens et al., 2002). This can contribute to diversifying the party system, thus increasing ‘justificatory pressure’ (Bonotti, 2017: 151) within the legislature, since more parties (and from a greater variety of political perspectives) will demand and oversee public justifications for policies. However, the state support model has the potential negative effect of transforming parties into ‘public utilities’ (Van Biezen, 2004) that are mainly concerned with ‘office-seeking’ (Mair, 2013: 88) and no longer provide a clear and effective linkage between citizens and the state.

Conversely, the external funding model encourages parties’ linkage function since by contributing to party funding private citizens can acquire an influence on party political matters and hold their partisan representatives accountable. For example, Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential run was funded via mass fundraising. This, together with Obama’s refusal to use any state funding, helped him to promote an inclusive campaign empowering each and every individual who financially supported him (Weintraub and Levine, 2009), thus providing effective political linkage between citizens and the state. However, the main drawback of this system is that it may render parties ‘subservient to the special interests of donors’ (Scarrow, 2007: 201), thus hindering their ability to contribute to public justification.

In view of this analysis, it can be argued that different political financing arrangements could be used in order to counter the potential shortcomings of PR and SMD components of mixed electoral systems. More specifically, candidates running via the PR component (which normally promotes public justification but hinders party linkage) could be required to rely on external funding (which normally encourages party linkage) in order to finance their campaigns. Vice versa, candidates running in SMDs (which are normally conducive to good party linkage but hinder public justification) could be required to rely on state support (which normally encourages public justification). There is no space here to elaborate on the specific details that these interventions might take. And, certainly, these measures would require mechanisms of oversight in order to ensure that the two funding channels are kept separate within parties. However, the main point is that given their known effects, political financing arrangements could be used to mitigate the shortcomings of PR and SMD components of mixed electoral systems, in order to further reduce the tension between them in terms of linkage and public justification.

Intra-Party Deliberation

Even when the tension between PR and SMD components of mixed electoral systems is mitigated via contamination incentives and political financing arrangements, it may not entirely disappear. For example, even where double listing is allowed, it is possible that not all candidates will run under both PR and SMD components. Furthermore, even those who do may experience an internal tension, with some leaning more towards performing a linkage function and others towards the fulfilment of their public justification duties.

One way of tackling any residual tensions between party linkage and public justification within parties operating under mixed electoral systems may be by promoting intra-party deliberation. The latter can enhance parties’ linkage function and reduce the power of party elites, by providing partisans ‘with inclusive channels to participate . . . as a way of recognising their democratic political equality’ (Wolkenstein, 2016: 317). But intra-party deliberation can also, more specifically, help reduce the tension between party linkage and public justification within parties. As Wolkenstein points out:

once we accept that a party forms a self-standing deliberative system, we also need to acknowledge that the failures of one of its parts to produce good deliberation can be compensated for by another part . . . If, for example, a group of members at the party base polarises over an issue, this is likely to be the result of bad quality deliberation, where views are reinforced without weighing alternative arguments. But polarisation may help put the demands of this group on the agenda of other party groups and party elites, and these can critically re-examine those demands in their own deliberations. So, the interaction between different deliberative agents within the party can raise the overall systemic deliberative quality (Wolkenstein, 2016: 305).

On the basis of Wolkenstein’s analysis, it can be argued that when some partisans are overly focused on party linkage and others on public justification, intra-party deliberation can foster synergy and reduce tensions between them. More specifically, via intra-party deliberation, linkage-focused partisans can channel the interests of specific districts/constituencies into the process of public justification within parties. In the same way in which partisans from one party can exercise justificatory pressure on partisans from other parties within a party system, linkage-focused partisans within a party can exercise a justificatory pressure on public-justification-focused partisans within the same party. This can help shape the party’s internal formulation of public justifications that will then be presented to other parties in the broader political arena. In this way, party linkage and public justification can work in synergy rather than pulling the party apart in different directions.

Conclusion

In this article, I have argued that parties’ linkage and justificatory normative functions, highlighted by many political theorists in recent years in response to the crisis of party democracy, are often in tension. However, since parties’ ability to fulfil these functions is affected by the electoral system in which they operate, I have claimed that a mixed electoral system, combining elements of both FPTP and PR, could help parties to overcome that tension. I have also provided recommendations for potential party reforms that could help mixed electoral systems to balance party linkage and public justification while preventing the tension between them from re-emerging within political parties.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. He is also grateful to audiences at the workshop ‘Contemporary Democracy and Its Critics’, Deakin University, July 2018, and at the IPSA World Congress of Political Science, Brisbane, July 2018, for their helpful feedback on earlier drafts of this article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Matteo Bonotti

Notes

Author Biography

Matteo Bonotti is a Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations in the School of Social Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne. His research interests include linguistic justice, free speech, political liberalism, food justice and the normative dimensions of partisanship. His work has appeared in journals such as the American Political Science Review, The Journal of Politics, the Journal of Common Market Studies, the Journal of Applied Philosophy, and Law and Philosophy. His monograph Partisanship and Political Liberalism in Diverse Societies was published by Oxford University Press in 2017.

References

Bawn

Thies

(2003) A Comparative Theory of Electoral Incentives: Representing the Unorganized Under PR, Plurality and Mixed-Member Electoral Systems. Journal of Theoretical Politics 15 (1): 5–32.

Beitz

(1989) Political Equality: An Essay on Democratic Theory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Benhabib

(2002) The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Blais

(ed) (2008) To Keep or to Change First past the Post? The Politics of Electoral Reform. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bluntschli

(2002 [1869]) What Is a Political Party? In: Susan

(ed.) Perspectives on Political Parties: Classic Readings. New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp.75–82.

Bonotti

(2017) Partisanship and Political Liberalism in Diverse Societies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bonotti

Bader

(eds) (2014) Parties, Partisanship and Political Theory. Abingdon and New York: Routledge.

Burke

(1998 [1770]) Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents. In: Burke

(ed.) A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful and Other Pre-Revolutionary Writings. London: Penguin, pp.201–276.

Christiano

(1996) The Rule of the Many: Fundamental Issues in Democratic Theory. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

10.

Daalder

(2002) Parties: Denied, Dismissed or Redundant? A Critique. In: Gunther

Montero

Linz

(eds) Political Parties: Old Concepts and New Challenges. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.39–57.

11.

Dalton

Wattenberg

(eds) (2002) Parties without Partisans. New York: Oxford University Press.

12.

Delwit

(2011) Still in Decline? Party Membership in Europe. In: Van Haute

(ed.) Party Membership in Europe. Brussels: Editions de l’Université de Bruxelles, pp.25–42.

13.

Dorey

Denham

(2016) ‘The Longest Suicide Vote in History’: The Labour Party Leadership Election of 2015. British Politics 11 (3): 259–282.

14.

Dummett

(1997) Principles of Electoral Reform. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

15.

Duverger

(1954) Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State. New York: Wiley.

16.

Elster

(1998) Deliberation and Constitution Making. In: Elster

(ed.) Deliberative Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.97–122.

17.

Flanders

(2012) The Mutability of Public Reason. Ratio Juris 25 (2): 180–205.

18.

Glover

(2010) Liberty Is Equality’s Intractable Opposite. The Guardian, 24 February. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/libertycentral/2010/feb/24/liberty-equality-opposites-labour (accessed 3 October 2020).

19.

Habermas

(1995) Reconciliation through the Public Use of Reason: Remarks on John Rawls’s Political Liberalism. The Journal of Philosophy 92 (3): 109–131.

20.

Hazan

Rahat

(2010) Democracy within Parties. Candidate Selection Methods and Their Political Consequences. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

21.

Hennl

(2014) Intra-Party Dynamics in Mixed-Member Electoral Systems: How Strategies of Candidate Selection Impact Parliamentary Behavior. Journal of Theoretical Politics 26 (1): 93–116.

22.

Herman

Muirhead

(2020) Resisting Abusive Legalism: Electoral Fairness and the Partisan Commitment to Political Pluralism. Representation. Epub ahead of print 8 April. DOI: 10.1080/00344893.2020.1744701.

23.

Herron

Nishikawa

(2001) Contamination Effects and the Number of Parties in Mixed-Superposition Electoral Systems. Electoral Studies 20 (1): 63–86.

24.

Ignazi

(1996) The Crisis of Parties and the Rise of New Political Parties. Party Politics 2 (4): 549–566.

25.

Ikstens

Smilov

Walecki

(2002) Political Finance in Central Eastern Europe: An Interim Report. Osterreichische Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft 31: 21–39.

26.

Invernizzi-Accetti

Wolkenstein

(2017) The Crisis of Party Democracy, Cognitive Mobilization and the Case for Making Parties More Deliberative. American Political Science Review 111 (1): 97–109.

27.

Katz

(2014) No Man Can Serve Two Masters: Party Politicians, Party Members, Citizens and Principal-Agent Models of Democracy. Party Politics 20 (2): 183–193.

28.

Katz

Cross

(2013) Problematizing Intra-Party Democracy. In: Cross

Katz

(eds) The Challenges of Intra-Party Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.170–176.

29.

Katz

Mair

(1995) Changing Models of Party Organization and Party Democracy: The Emergence of the Cartel Party. Party Politics 1 (1): 5–28.

30.

Kirchheimer

(1966) The Transformation of the Western European Party Systems In: La Palombara

Weiner

(eds) Political Parties and Political Development. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp.177–200.

31.

Krouwel

(2003) Otto Kirchheimer and the Catch-All Party. West European Politics 26 (2): 23–40.

32.

La Raja

Schaffner

(2015) Campaign Finance and Political Polarization: When Purists Prevail. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

33.

Lawson

(1988) When Linkage Fails In: Lawson

Merkl

(eds) When Parties Fail: Emerging Alternative Organizations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp.13–38.

34.

Leydet

(2019) Ideological Diversity, Intelligibility and Electoral Design: A Deliberative Perspective. Representation. Epub ahead of print 21 December. DOI: 10.1080/00344893.2019.1704850.

35.

Mair

(2013) Ruling the Void. The Hollowing of Western Democracy. London: Verso.

36.

Mair

(2014) On Parties, Party Systems and Democracy. Selected Writings of Peter Mair. Wivenhoe Park: ECPR Press.

37.

Massicotte

Blais

(1999) Mixed Electoral Systems: A Conceptual and Empirical Survey. Electoral Studies 18 (3): 341–366.

38.

Muirhead

(2014) The Promise of Party in a Polarized Age. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press.

39.

Muirhead

Rosenblum

(2006) Political Liberalism vs. ‘the Great Game of Politics’: The Politics of Political Liberalism. Perspectives on Politics 4 (1): 99–108.

40.

Nail

McGregor

(2009) Conservative Shift among Liberals and Conservatives Following 9/11/01. Social Justice Research 22 (2–3): 231–240.

41.

Nuttall

(2008) Equality and Freedom: The Single, the Multiple and the Synthesis in Labour Party Thought since the 1930s. Journal of Political Ideologies 13 (1): 11–36.

42.

Papadopoulos

(2013) Democracy in Crisis? Politics, Governance and Policy. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

43.

Pettit

(2000) Democracy, Electoral and Contestatory. Nomos 42: 105–144.

44.

Poguntke

(1992) Unconventional Participation in Party Politics: The Experience of the German Greens. Political Studies 40: 239–254.

45.

Rawls

(1999) A Theory of Justice, Revised edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

46.

Rawls

(2005) Political Liberalism, Expanded edn. New York: Columbia University Press.

47.

Rosenblum

(2008) On the Side of the Angels: An Appreciation of Parties and Partisanship. Princeton, NJ; Oxford: Princeton University Press.

48.

Sartori

(1976) Parties and Party Systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

49.

Scarrow

(2007) Political Finance in Comparative Perspective. Annual Review of Political Science 10: 193–210.

50.

Schwartzmann

(2011) The Sincerity of Public Reason. The Journal of Political Philosophy 19 (4): 375–398.

51.

Shugart

Wattenberg

(eds) (2003) Mixed-member Electoral Systems: The Best of Both Worlds? Oxford: Oxford University Press.

52.

Van Biezen

(2004) Political Parties as Public Utilities. Party Politics 10 (6): 701–722.

53.

Von Beyme

(1985) Political Parties in Western Democracies. Aldershot: Gower.

54.

Von Mohl

(2002 [1872]) Parties in the State. In: Susan

(ed.) Perspectives on Political Parties: Classic Readings. New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp.83–90.

55.

Weinstock

(2015) Sites of Deliberation in Contemporary Electoral Systems: On the Deliberative Defense of Some Unfashionable Institutions. Journal of Parliamentary and Political Law / Revue de Droit Parlementaire Et Politique 9 (2): 291–306.

56.

Weinstock

(2017) The Complex Normative Landscape of Electoral Systems. In: Potter

Weinstock

Loewen

(eds) Should We Change How We Vote? Evaluating Canada’s Electoral System. Montreal, QC, Canada; Kingston, ON, Canada; London; Chicago, IL: McGill–Queen’s University Press, pp.14–22.

57.

Weintraub

Levine

(2009) Campaign Finance and the 2008 Elections: How Small Change(s) Can Really Add Up. Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development 24 (2): 461–477.

58.

White

(2019) What Kind of Electoral System Sustains a Politics of Firm Commitments? Representation. Epub ahead of print 5 June. DOI: 10.1080/00344893.2019.1624601.

59.

White

Ypi

(2011) On Partisan Political Justification. American Political Science Review 105 (2): 381–396.

60.

White

Ypi

(2016) The Meaning of Partisanship. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

61.

Whiteley

(2010) Is the Party Over? The Decline of Party Activism and Membership across the Democratic World. Party Politics 17 (1): 21–44.

62.

Wolkenstein

(2016) A Deliberative Model of Intra-Party Democracy. Journal of Political Philosophy 24 (3): 297–320.

63.

Wolkenstein

(2019a) Rethinking Party Reform. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

64.

Wolkenstein

(2019b) Party Reforms and Electoral Systems: Proportional Representation Is More Hospitable to Internal Democratization. Representation. Epub ahead of print 8 August. DOI: 10.1080/00344893.2019.1652204.