Electoral Systems: Key Elements and Impact
The main elements of an electoral system are:
- The size of the assembly (the number of seats). Its incidence is relativized by the magnitude of the districts in which those seats are distributed among parties.
- Constituency Size (number of seats to be allocated within it). The precinct is the basic unit on which the operation proceeds to transform votes into seats. It is the element of the electoral system that has a greater impact on proportionality, conditioning it to a greater extent than other elements together. The greater the magnitude or size (defined as the number of seats to be allocated within it), the lower the disproportionality. Determining the type of district (or multi-member single-member) and the way of establishing the number of seats that each of them has attributed (in response to criteria linked to the population, territorial equity, or both types) will be another important decision to take when establishing the electoral system.
- The Electoral Formula is the mathematical machinery used to perform the operation to transform votes into seats. Formulas can be a majority (simple majority or absolute majority, in this case usually two rounds), which attach the seats to the candidates who obtained the most votes (or the candidate who obtains half plus one vote) and proportional (quotient or divisor), which distribute seats in proportion to the votes each candidate gets in the district. The effects of this element are dependent on the size of the district, since a proportional formula can lead to considerable biases disproportional if applied in districts of low magnitude.
- The Structure of Voting (type of vote and the nomination form) tells, on the one hand, the number of political demonstrations that the voter can make in the act of voting: voting or multiple voting only (limited or no). On the other hand, the shape of the application refers to the type of candidate (single candidate or list, complete, closed and locked or not open).
The Legal Clause or Exclusion Barrier is a percentage of votes required from the political party to be taken into account in the operations of distribution of seats, either on the total percentage of voting district or on the set of the territory. It is conditioned by the proportionality of the system depending on its applicability to the effective barrier, i.e., the percentage of votes it takes to get in each district to gain a seat, depending on the combination of the various elements of the electoral system, that is, the system disproportionality to transform votes into seats.
Political Culture and Behavior
Forty years ago, Almond and Verba, in their study The Civic Culture, noted the importance of attitudes, opinions, and political behavior of citizens, namely the importance of studying the cognitive, emotional, and evaluative components of such attitudes and opinions about the whole political system or its components and their role as citizens in the political process. The relevance of these authors lies in highlighting that you cannot do without the study of patterns of political culture when analyzing a given political system.
The question of whether the model of political culture that these authors identified as characteristic of stable democracies is the desirable model, and if that perspective determines other elements of the political-institutional system, is debated by several authors who understand political culture as an element of the political system. This set of attitudes and opinions are acquired by citizens in their personal experiences or in the various processes of socialization to which they are exposed. It is therefore possible that within the prevailing political culture, political subcultures exist in various systems that have distinct attitudes and opinions and own characteristics of certain social groups that are distinguished by factors relevant to these effects, such as their profession, geographic location, or age.