How many votes does it take?

 

While the Single Transferable Vote has some nice qualities, it is possible that it may not work that nicely for electing the members of the Constituency Assembly.  The number of candidates and the possibility that voters will rank (far) less than 25 candidates may mean that some of the members of the Constitutional Assembly will be elected with only a few votes.

The electoral system used to elect the members of the Constitutional Assembly is the Single Transferable Vote. While I remain unconvinced about the wisdom of electing the Constitutional Assembly, I think using the Single Transferable Vote (STV) may not have been such a bad idea - in principle at least. On the face of it, STV might seem an odd choice as the system is usually classified as a proportional representations system, which, as a class of electoral system, aims at achieve the proportional representation of parties. However, unlike most other proportional representation systems, the party identity of candidates doesn't actually figure at all in the allocation of seats. In other words, only provides for the proportional representation of parties when voters vote along party lines. So the proportional representation aspect can be seen as applying to voters' non-party preferences, i.e., we would expect the system to do a reasonably good job of reflecting voters' preferences over whether to change the electoral system in a particular way (if that is what the voters care about). In theory, at least, that sounds kinda nice. But perhaps the best case for STV is that it is no worse than the alternatives. Other proportional representation systems are list based systems, which rules them out. So what is left are the variety of majoritarian systems. These are probably not very good options. Take plurality rule for example (actually, the single non-transferable vote). Each voter casts a single vote and the 25 candidates with most votes win a seat - this makes it very likely that the candidate winning the 25th seat would have very few votes behind him/her. There are other majoritarian systems, e.g., the block vote, that might be slightly better suited to the task but might invite strong incentives for strategic behavior (which people tend to see as a bad thing - I tend to think the opposite). In contrast, STV is relatively complicated and the outcome is fairly unpredictable - and there are good reasons to belief that all but the top few seats are for all practical purposes chosen at random. Which I think is better than having the elected candidates think they have a mandate to pursue the particular amendments that they campaigned on - however, the members are likely to disagree with me on that point.

In practical terms, I am starting to think that STV may do a fairly poor job in terms of creating representative outcomes.  Consider the following example - it is unrealistic but it illustrates the problem in the simplest way possible. Suppose there are 104000 voters and 500 candidates. With 25 seats to fill, the quota to be elected is 4001 votes. Each voter is free to rank up to 25 candidates. Now suppose that each voter only chooses to rank a single candidate and that each candidate happens to between 200  and 210 votes (the average would have to be 208). No candidate meets the quota so the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated (there are no transfers since each voter only votes for a single candidate) until 25 candidates remain.  So, at least theoretically, we could end up in a situation where each elected member merely has the support of just over 200 voters- or .2%.  Yes, that is one-fifth of a percentage.  We are bound to worry about the representativeness of the assembly if none of its members is supported by more than one in every five hundred voters.

Now this example is clearly unrealistic - most voters are likely to vote for more than one candidate - but the basic problem remains. If every voter votes for only two candidates and the second preferences are equally distributed among all the candidates the problem remains the same, i.e., once the bottom of each voters' ranking is reached their vote is dead and doesn't contribute to any candidates' vote share. Now, is this a real problem? It depends on a couple of thing. First, how many candidates will voters chose to rank. The election to the Constitutional Assembly is a low information election in the sense that most of the candidates are relatively unknown and it is not clear how voters will choose to cast their votes. Overall, it seems likely that the votes will be distributed fairly equally among the candidates with the exception of a few candidates who are more familiar faces. More importantly, the fact that most of the candidates are fairly unknown makes it likely that most voters will not rank all the candidates - on the social network sites I have seen several people say that they plan to rank about 10 candidates. Will that be enough? It is difficult to say but my guess is that it is not enough. If none of the 10 candidates ranked by the voter are elected then these votes are dead. And with 500 candidates it is probably not that unlikely that a fair number of voters will find themselves in that situation. That would even be the case if some of the ranked candidates include one of the more 'popular' candidates.

Second, how the voters' preferences over the candidates are distributed is also important. I've already hinted at an equal distribution of the votes across candidates being a potential problem, that is, if voters tend not to rank very many candidates. But the probably may also occur if voters focus their attention on a small set of candidates. Imagine, e.g., that all the voters only rank 20 candidates and that these happen to be the same candidates. In that case, those twenty lucky candidates are elected, but the remaining seats would actually not be filled... but a single vote for a candidate would be enough for the next candidate to get in.

In sum, it is relatively easy to imagine scenarios where at least some proportion of the assembly members will be elected with the support of only a few voters.  It then becomes more difficult the assembly as a representative and it would make it easy for those opposed to the assembly's recommendations to claim that the assembly lacks a clear mandate.  If the process of adopting constitutional amendments involved a referendum this wouldn't be a major problem but since constitutional amendments need to be accepted by two consecutively elected parliaments it doesn't appear unreasonable to think that parliament may consider itself a better representative than the Constitutional Assembly and, therefore, simply ignore the Constitutional Assembly's suggestions.

As I am really in favor of random selection of members the fact that each member is potentially only supported by a few voters doesn't bother me too much - it would mean that who is elected has more to do with the candidates' luck than anything else, i.e., a handful of votes may be all that distinguishes candidates.  The good thing is that it removes the candidates' ability to claim that they have a mandate to implement the amendments that they campaigned on, which hopefully will lead to a more open-minded examination of the different alternatives.

A couple of external links:

• Stefán Ingi Valdimarsson has a nice post (in Icelandic) on the opportunities for strategic voting in the context of the Constitutional Assembly
• Nicholas Miller has short paper about the 'chaotic character' of STV in Electoral Studies that demonstrates that the outcome can change in surprising ways only a few voters change their ranking.  That STV doesn't satisfy monotonicity (a condition stating that a candidate should do better, or no worse, if some voter decides to rank him/her higher) is well know but this is still a nice example.  [Subscription may be needed]

 

Why two (four) months is not enough

In my previous post I listed aspects of the constitution that the Constitutional Assembly is charged with reviewing. In short, it touches on every major political institutions and, as a consequence, the Icelandic political system could end up looking significantly different from what it looks like today. That is very exciting. What is less exciting is that the Constitutional Assembly gets mere two months two come up with proposals for amendment - although it can be extended for another two months. For sake of argument let us suppose it is extended and consider the possibility of the assembly making an informed decision in four months.

The aspects of the constitution target for review are not minor things - these are institutions that have preoccupied political scientists since, well, the beginning of political science. Some of these political scientists have gained a fairly solid understanding of. We know, for example, a fair amount about how electoral systems work and how they affect the behavior of voters and politicians. Other aspect, such as the relationship between the executive and the legislature we know far less about. But even for those aspects, there is a fairly large literature.

Supposing that in order to make an informed decision, the members of the Constitutional Assembly needed to familiarize themselves with this literature. Is it reasonable to assume that four months are enough? Thankfully, we do know that there are people that actually study these very issues - it normally takes them 4-5 years to earn a Ph.D. Now admittedly, a good chunk of that time goes into doing actual research and writing a dissertation but typically Ph.D. students complete two years of coursework (in the U.S.). And, of course, a good chunk of those two years go into learning how to conduct research, i.e., research design, statistics, etc. So we might reasonably say that Ph.D. students spend perhaps a year learning about 'politics'. That may not seem like a long time but it is good deal longer than four months. Add to that the fact the graduate students tend to specialize - the average graduate students may be introduced to the literature about most of the political institutions being addressed by the Constitutional Assembly but most will only qualify as having a thorough understanding of the functioning of at best a few of them. And graduate students don't achieve this on their own - they benefit from studying in the company of people that are specialists in the field often with years of experience studying and researching these institutions. In other words, even in the most favorable of circumstances, a year of studying is not going to make anyone an expert in constitutional engineering.

This characterization is, however, misleading in that it ignores the value in learning how to conduct research. Learning how to do research provides graduate students with the necessary tools to read the literature and evaluate its findings. While such skills may not be necessary to read the literature and getting the main message, training in the use of research methods equips the reader to absorb the findings more quickly and in a more critical fashion. In sum, four months would seem to vastly underestimate the task at hand.

There are additional reasons why four months is an insufficient time. Consider our extent of knowledge about Iceland politics. I would argue that our understanding of politics in Iceland is sorely lacking. At best, there is at best a handful of scholars that have dedicated their efforts to the study of Icelandic politics. Despite their efforts, which have been significant, there is still a lot we do not know - there is only so much such a small group of scholars can achieve. Take, for example, the literature about the Icelandic parliament. To the best of my knowledge, the extent of systematic analysis of parliament consists of a two studies (I may be missing some... but not by much). Contrast that with the literature on the U.S. Congress which consists of hundreds, if not thousands, of studies. The U.S. is probably the most studied legislature in the world but comparison with any developed world would reveal that we know far less about the Icelandic parliament than almost any other legislature.

Yet one of the mandates of the Constitutional Assembly is to examine the relationship between the executive and the legislature - where, I believe, the underlying motivation is most likely to strengthen the powers of parliament. Yet the evidence for the Icelandic parliament being a weak institution with little influence on policy is more or less anecdotal and I would argue that we simply do not know whether that is true. The common wisdom about parliaments, in general, has been that they are dominated by the cabinet but recent research, e.g., by Martin and Vanberg (forthcoming), can be seen to challenge this assumption. It is possible that the Icelandic parliament may fit that profile - the classic institutional measure of the strength of the legislature suggest that the Icelandic parliament is a fairly strong one (Strom 1984). I do not single the literature about the Icelandic parliament out because it is an easy target - the same is true about most aspects of Icelandic politics. In other words, it is not obvious to me that we know enough about Icelandic politics in order to make very informed decisions about how to revise the constitution. So in that sense, maybe four months is more than enough.

Constitutions and Policy

 

The constitutional assembly is charged with the addressing eight aspects of the constitution (from the law on the constitutional assembly found here: http://stjornlagathing.is/other_files/2010/doc/Act-on-a-Constitutional-Assembly.pdf):

1. The foundations of the Icelandic constitution and its fundamental concepts;
2. The organisation of the legislative and executive branches and the limits of their powers
3. The role and position of the President of the Republic;
4. The independence of the judiciary and their supervision of other holders of
   governmental powers;
5. Provisions on elections and electoral districts;
6. Public participation in the democratic process, including the timing and organisation
   of a referendum, including a referendum on a legislative bill for a constitutional act;
7. Transfer of sovereign powers to international organisations and the conduct of foreign
   affairs;
8. Environmental matters, including the ownership and utilisation of natural resources

The Constitutional Assembly is also free to address other aspects of the constitution.

 

There are a number of things to note about this list.  First, I'll come clean - I don't understand what the first item in the list refers to (even in the Icelandic version of the bill). I'm guessing this refers to the basic values the constitution is intended to uphold.

 

Many of the eight items have roots in recent political events/debates (to a varying degree).  For the benefit of any non-Icelandic readers, I'll briefly list those - the rest of you can skip to the next paragraph (or read it and correct me in the comments).   The second and third issue are rooted in the controversy surrounding a law on the ownership of the media that the previous government forced through parliament and was subsequently vetoed by the president.  Parliament's lack of influence was not exactly front page news but the episode highlighted its weaknesses but the president's use of his veto power certainly was.  The sixth, direct democracy is also related to this episode - it doesn't sound very democratic to take away the president's veto (which is then subject to a referendum).  It is difficult to justify taking away the president's veto without giving citizens another way to vote in a referendum.  The fourth issue, the independence of the judiciary, is probably rooted in increased judicial activism over the last decade.  The sovereignty and foreign policy issue touches on Iceland's application for EU-membership and also, I suspect, Iceland's decision to join the coalition of the willing without allowing parliament's foreign affairs committee a chance to have its say on the matter.  The eight, the ownership and use of natural resources, is not exactly a new issue - it goes back to the adoption of a quota system for the fisheries but in recent years it involves to a greater degree aluminum smelters, hydroelectric power plants, and a sense that Iceland's nature is being sacrificed for largely foreign industrial interests. 

 

It is quite natural that the focus of the revision/rewriting of the constitution is on those of its aspects that have been perceived to have lead to controversy or are related to what some see as undesirable policy outcomes.  It is also unfortunate that this is the case - it invites the risk that perceived solutions will be guided at solving particular policy problems rather than being guided by general principles.  In other words, although it is possible that people may disagree with me on this point, constitutional amendments should not be about policy but, rather, provide the framework within which policy is to be made.  One argument in favor of this interpretation of what a constitution is, or should be, is that enshrining a policy in constitutional law gives it a special status - not just in normative terms but also because (most) constitutions are protected from changes to a greater degree than regular laws.  That is, they tend to be quite a bit harder to change.  I suspect few of us would, e.g., think it wise to the income tax rate in the constitution.  Changing situations, including changing preferences, call for some flexibility in determining the tax rate.  For this reason, I remain skeptical about the desirability of addressing issues such as the use of natural resources in the constitution.  Take the adoption of the quota system for the fisheries.  It seems quite plausible to me that the quota system introduced considerable efficiencies into the fishing industry and that it may have helped prevent a collapse of the fishing stock around Iceland (which is not to say that it was fair with regard to the effects it had on redistribution of wealth - that is a different issue).  Now, if the use of this natural resource had original been addressed in the constitution it might have prevent the adoption of the quota system with potentially disastrous consequences.  It might have to lead to a 'fairer' distribution but it might have left very little left to distribute.  To be clear, my point here is not about the quota system but, rather, by using the constitution to set policy we reduce our ability to react to changing circumstances.  It may seem like a good idea today but who knows what the future will look like.

 

Adopting constitutional remedies to policy problems is not necessarily a good idea.  That is not to say that there are never circumstances in which policy matters should be addressed in constitutions but they should probably be restricted to, e.g., fundamental values such as human or political rights.  That is, values that we can be fairly sure won't change over time.  Of course, it that is the case, it is not clear that they need constitutional protection to begin with.  Perhaps the key point is that constitutions aren't particularly democratic.  That may seem counterintuitive but because constitutions are more difficult to change than regular laws they protect the views of the adopters of the constitution but bind the hands of future generations.   Or rather, supporters of the status quo will be better able to protect their positions - even if majority favors change.

 

The second reason that it is unfortunate that recent controversies/policies motivate the revision of the constitution is that instead of taking a broader view of where a particular institution succeeds and where it fails, the danger is that the focus is solely on the latter.   Now, we may have disagreed with the president's decision to use his veto on the law on the owner ship of the media or the Icesave bill - the two instances the veto has been employed.  My worry is that people may not be able to separate the substance of those two bills from the veto as a political institution or power.  The merits of the presidential veto should be evaluated on the basis of how it is expected to influence politics and policy.  Strong veto powers, combined with the president's constituency corresponding to the whole nation, have, e.g., often been argued to be an effective tool against inefficient pork barrel politics - so perhaps the presidential veto powers should be strengthened rather than weakened.  Again, I'm not arguing for stronger veto powers but the case for or against a presidential veto should be built on careful analysis and examination of the experience of other nations rather than one the veto's surprise resuscitation in Icelandic politics or the substantive issues that were at stake on the two occasions.  

 

This is perhaps especially worrisome given that the proposals of the Constitutional Assembly must be adopted by parliament whose members are likely to have considerable stake in the outcome (and probably have stronger opinions about the political events mentioned above).  Of course, the process of amending the constitutions makes this unavoidable - constitutional changes must be passed by two parliaments with an election held in the interim.  The hope then is that the Constitutional Assembly will be seen a as legitimate actor in proposing amendments - to the extent that parliament's scope to amend the assembly's proposals will be limited.  I think two factors are crucial in achieving that status for the Constitutional Assembly.  First, it must engage in a real debate about proposed constitutional amendments that relies on actual evidence about the functioning of political institutions.  Second, it cannot be perceived as an agent of particular interests or parties - in which the election to the assembly is crucial.  It, therefore, strikes me as unfortunate that some of the candidates running for a seat on the Constitutional Assembly have (or have had) ties with parties.  These individuals, of course, have every right to run for the Constitutional Assembly but in effect it may undermine the whole process and reduce both the Constitutional Assembly's scope of influence and the possibility of real conversation about what a good constitutions would look like.

 

 

Why I won't endorse my friends' candidacies

First, why am I writing in English about the Icelandic Constitutional Assembly. It is simple, I don't have an Icelandic keyboard and it is too much of a hassle to use shortcut keys, etc. I anticipate being lazy enough about blogging for it to be counterproductive to add another hurdle. If you don't like it... well, no one is forcing you to read this.

At any rate, I figured the upcoming constitutional assembly was an occasion to start blogging - if only to give save my colleagues here from having to listen to my rants. And since I study political institutions for a living, I figured I might offer some comments on the process and perhaps some insights about the constitutional reforms that will be debated or point to some actually research done on the effects of particular institutions.

Before I start, let me say that as political scientist I think the constitutional assembly is a fabulous idea. However, as a citizen of Iceland, I have my reservations about the process - in part, perhaps, because it is not clear to me what the process is going to be. So let's just say I'm worried. Why is the political scientist in me so excited - well, it will be extremely interesting to see how things proceed, institutional changes are necessary to learn about the effects of political institutions and, hopefully, at the end of the day I will have some cool data to work with.

So the point of this first post is to explain why I am not endorsing or 'liking' any of my many friends who are running for a seat on the constitutional assembly. My reasons for doing so is not because I think they are not qualified or competent to sit on the constitutional assembly. One of the reasons is that I think the decision to elect people to the constitutional assembly is misguided. This belief has been reinforced by the large number of candidates (over 500) that are running, which renders it virtually impossible for the average voter to make an informed decision about who to vote for.  I know I won't. It is simply not reasonable to expect voters to learn about all the candidates and their qualifications. It appears likely that in the end voting decisions will be guided more by friendship on the one hand and how well known the candidate is known on the other, which may hurt the legitimacy of the assembly at the end of the day.

The approach taken by British Columbia in putting its Citizens' Assembly together, to select members by a random drawing, seems more reasonable to me. Admittedly, drawing people at random to serve on the assembly may appear to be risky. Who knows who you might end up with? Well, on average you end up with the average Canadian - or the average Icelander in the case of Iceland - which probably isn't a bad thing. Of course, the average Icelander will probably not be particularly qualified to write a constitutions but the important part is that they are probably aware of that fact. The important aspect of the Citizens' Assembly, however, was that its members were essentially being sent to nearly a year of schooling to learn about electoral systems. In other words, the Citizens' Assembly members were given the task of learning about how electoral systems work - both in terms of their mechanics (e.g., how votes are translated into seats) and their effects on a variety of things (the number of parties, policy platforms, female representation, and so on). To aid that process, the Assembly brought in a number of Canada's foremost political scientists with expertise in elections and electoral systems. Citizens' Assembly members were expected to put in a lot of work in order to make an informed decision.Now, it may be that the plan for the Constitutional Assembly has similar goals. Given the information provided so far I am unable to say. However, note that the Citizens' Assembly was given 11 months to propose changes to only the electoral system. Contrast that with the two months (possibly extended for another two months) that the Constitutional Assembly is given to revamp the entire constitution. That worries me a bit.

This brings me back to the decision to potentially undesirable effects of electing the Constitutional Assembly. Looking at the candidates' statements it quickly becomes apparent that many, if not most, of them already have quite detailed ideas about the changes that should be made to the constitutions. While I think that is quite natural in the context of campaigning for a seat (how else do you distinguish yourself?) it suggests that the Constitutional Assembly will not be a venue for rational exchange about the pros and cons of different political institutions. The fact that candidates already have a specific proposals also means that the voters will be voting on the basis of the candidates' platforms, which, again, undermines the idea that these issues should undergo a rational debate in the assembly. In other words, the decisions may in effect be taken by voters who are uninformed (note - it doesn't mean stupid) about how constitutions work and what the consequences of adopting different institutions are. Or do we expect the candidates to ignore their campaign promises once in office? It also raises questions about the candidates' motives. The institutions being debates, such as electoral systems, have profound implications for political competition. Is it possible that some of the candidates argue in favor of making the country a single electoral district for (party) political reasons? While it is, of course, impossible to prevent such considerations from coming into play it makes it especially important to make sure that the Constitutional Assembly understand what the other implications of that change are.

Making the country a single electoral district would not only influence the parties' strength in parliament, it is also likely to lead to several new parties, a more fragmented legislature, greater difficulties in forming coalition governments, which will tend to include more parties. That, in turn, may even influence policy outcomes in a predictable fashion - Bawn and Rosenbluth (2006), e.g., argue that larger coalitions lead to a larger public sector and find support for their theory using data from 17 countries over a 30 year period. In order to make a sensible recommendation, the Constitutional Assembly needs to take factors such as these into account. I am not making an argument for or against a single electoral district - I simply want to point out that institutional changes tend to have far more far-reaching effects than people tend to think.

Perhaps I am being unnecessarily pessimistic but the method of selecting the members of the assembly and its short duration do not seem particularly promising for the making of a good constitution.  This rant is certainly not meant to suggest this experiment in constitutional engineering is bound to fail.  Rather, it is that the key to its success is to elect members that don't have preconceived notions about what should be done and are willing to put in extraordinary amounts of work over 2 (or hopefully 4) months to learn about the consequences of choosing particular institutions.  Let me put it this way:  Having earned a Ph.D. in political science and worked for nearly a decade since then researching political institutions, I am not sure I would be entirely comfortable with whipping up a new constitution in a couple of months.  In addition, the committees preparing and organizing the work of the Constitutional Assembly are going to be crucial in the process by creating the right environment, i.e., providing an opportunity for the members to learn and think critically about political institutions.