Elections to Althingi

The Constitutional Council’s proposal for the election of members of Althingi includes a fairly radical, although not unexpected change, proposing a system of preferential voting.  The proposal is a little short on details, which will be provided in a legislation about parliamentary elections.  However, the proposal stipulates that 63 members will be elected from eight or fewer districts and that voters can either vote for a party list or individual candidates.  If the voters opt for voting for individual candidates they are allowed to distribute their votes across candidates of different parties and are free to vote candidate running in any district (if there is more than one district).   The electoral law can require up to 2/5 of the seats in parliament to be elected from district lists (rather than a national list).

It is a bit difficult to evaluate the proposal as it is rather vague.  I assume the intention is that the system is one of proportional representation but it is not explicitly mentioned.  Thus, the legislature may have considerable leeway in shaping the electoral law although the constitution fixes some of its parameters. Unfortunately, the Council no longer appears to include its rational for particular proposals (although they may be buried in meeting notes, etc. on the website).

There has been a push to adopt a form of preferential voting in Iceland for some years now so it is not surprising that it appears in the Council’s proposal.  The main reason preferential voting has been championed in Iceland is that the parties have frequently been seen to hold too tight a grip on its MPs.  The adoption of preferential voting is expected to loosen that grip and allow MPs greater freedom.  There are, at least, a couple of reasons to question this argument.  First, preferential voting essentially exists in Icelandic politics as most of the parties hold primaries most of the time.  Thus, the candidates don’t owe their position on the party list to the party but to the voters in the primaries.  Still, voting cohesion in parliament is very high.  It is not at all clear that using preferential voting in parliamentary elections will have any effect on the independence of MPs.  Second, in a previous post I argued that a high degree of voting cohesion was a function of the parliamentary system of government and that MPs are, more often than not, I suspect, motivated by the prospects of holding higher office.  That is, voting against the government is normally not good for ones ministerial career.  It is not an accident that the government MPs that we see vote against the government are precisely those that would never have become ministers – and they certainly won’t now.

So, perhaps introducing preferential voting is a harmless innovation – it only moves the preferential vote from the primaries into the general election and a potential benefit is that voters can now vote for candidates from different parties (which they can also do now by voting in multiple primaries).  But it is a missed opportunity.  Despite what Transparency International might lead one to believe, Icelandic politics are corrupt (the reason Iceland appears clean in TI’s ranking is that corruption in Iceland is not the type captured by TI’s methodology, e.g., bribes).  And there is a fair amount of research that suggests that preferential voting affects corruption and the importance of pork barrel politics.  Of course, if the electoral law reduces the number of districts to one it might seem that the incentive to engage in pork barrel politics might be removed but the absence of (small) districts doesn’t mean that politicians are unable to figure out carve out constituencies on their own.  At any rate, it seems extremely peculiar, given the political surroundings that led to the constitutional reform process, that there is no consideration (as far as I can tell) of how the electoral system may affect corruption in Icelandic politics.

Another part of the proposal requires changes to the electoral law to be approved by 2/3 of the members of Althingi.  While this doesn’t bother me, I do worry about whether this doesn’t invite a constitutional crisis as presumably it implies that the new electoral law will have to be adopted by 2/3 majority… and there is no guarantee that the political parties will find it easy to come to an agreement.  Unless of course the law is passed before the new constitution is ratified in anticipation of the new provisions in which case it could be adopted by a simple majority?

 

For references: See Required Readings

Some additional notes on related readings.  See, e.g., Chang and Golden (2007) for the relationship between electoral systems and corruption.  Cain, Ferejohn, and Fiorina (1987) on the personal vote and pork barrel politics.  Ames (1995) on pork barrel spending and how politicians carve subconstituencies in multimember districts.   Hallerberg and Marier (2004) on electoral systems and budget deficits.  The literature on the relationship between electoral systems and various political and policy outcomes is huge and some additional readings are listed in the required readings.

Parliament/Alþingi – The Speaker

The constitutional council has begun publishing its proposals for sections of a new constitutions. So far these sections include human rights, the work of parliament, and the judiciary. With this post, I start reviewing some of the proposals concerning the organization and work of parliament. I will focus on the proposals that may be considered consequential or controversial. In translating the proposals I focus on what are the key issues rather than provide a full translation.

2. Greater role of the speaker of parliament. Alþingi elects the Speaker with 2/3 of the vote at the beginning of each electoral term. The Speaker organizes the work of parliament. The Speaker vacates his seat in Alþingi (replaced by another member from his/her party).

The goal is to increase trust in parliament by requiring broad support for the Speaker in parliament and, as a consequence, to strengthen Alþingi as an institution. This strikes me as an odd proposal for several reasons. First, I’m not aware of the Speaker having caused much controversy so I’m not sure this will help much even if it works out the way that the Council thinks it will.

Second, the electoral rule is problematic because it is not resolute – meaning that it doesn’t always produce an outcome. What happens if no candidate wins two-thirds of the vote? Try again? From the Council’s explanations that accompany the proposals, I gather that these are not final proposals as the do address this possibility – the longest serving MP serves as Speaker during the election of the Speaker and the council suggest that s/he becomes the Speaker in the event Alþingi fails to elect a Speaker by two-thirds majority but what constitutes ‘failure’ here is not defined. Is it failing to elect Speaker on a single vote? Or just when everyone has had enough? The Speaker of the U.S. House used to be elected by majority rule (also not resolute if there are more than two candidates). In 1849 and 1855 it took, respectively, 62 and 132 rounds of voting to elect the Speaker – and only after adopting plurality rule (Stewart 1999). Perhaps the Council should read up on papal elections, which also use two-thirds majority. Between 1878 and 1978, from three to fourteen rounds were needed to elect the pope (Toman 2004). That doesn’t seem to excessive but it is probably aided by the fact that the cardinals are essentially placed under house arrest for the duration of the election. Before the ‘lock up’ procedure was instituted, the election of Pope Gregory X took over two years and nine months. John Paul II changed the rules for papal elections so that if a certain number of rounds of voting is reached, the only plurality instead of two-thirds majority is required. Perhaps the Council should consider adopting a similar rule? Or, at the very least, burn the ballots after each vote to make things a little more exciting. The fact that there is a default Speaker in the event of a failure of electing a Speaker by two-thirds majority also affects the government’s (and opposition’s) incentives. If the longest sitting member of parliament is a member of a government party, the government has no incentive to find a ‘unifying’ candidate that a supermajority can agree on. The same argument holds with respect to the opposition. Thus, the ‘default’ option always favors one side or the other, it appears likely that Alþingi will rarely elect a Speaker by two-thirds majority, it will be a source of conflict after each election, and will, therefore, be counterproductive in terms of increasing trust in parliament – which brings me to my third point.

Third, the proposal fails to recognize that its goals are, sort of, conflicting. The idea is to make the Speaker more powerful (although it is not clear what about the proposal achieves that) and for the Speaker to have broader support within Alþingi. Well, the more powers the Speaker has, the more sought after his position will be by both the parties and the individual candidates. Thus, the more powerful the Speaker, the less likely it will be that government and opposition parties will be able, or willing, to support the same candidate. Especially when at least one of these actors doesn’t have to (see above). The opposite is true – if the position of the Speaker is utterly irrelevant, then government and opposition parties will find it relatively easy to settle on a candidate and the potential for conflict at the beginning of each term is removed.

Fourth, if the Speaker holds important agenda setting powers it may have more wide ranging effects than just surrounding his/her election. The types of coalitions that form may be affected. There may, e.g., be an impetus to form surplus coalitions that don’t need to rely on the opposition to elect a Speaker. Is that a bad thing? It depends on what you want. The evidence suggest, e.g., that larger governments are more likely to spend more (Bawn and Rosenbluth 2006). The Speakership election also provides the opposition with an additional bargaining chip – it may only agree to vote for the government’s candidate (or to elect a Speaker at all) if the government agrees to some policy concessions. It is possible to think of these outcomes as signs of more consensual politics but it is equally easy to see them as providing a minority with a potentially important veto power.

Fifth, the introduction of a seniority rule (assuming that the parties will generally ‘fail’ to elect a Speaker) could even affect the parties’ decisions about how to set up their party lists for elections. If the role of the Speaker is an important one, the parties have an incentive to give senior members a secure spot on the party list – although I suspect other considerations are likely to trump these. Thus, it may serve to increase the incumbency advantage and reduce renewal in the legislature.

 

 

For references: See Required Readings

Some additional notes on related readings.  Caplin and Nalebuff (1994) demonstrate that a supermajority requirement of 64% is sufficient to guarantee that the  preferred alternative of the mean voter can not be beaten.  Indridason (2008) demonstrates that in the context of run-off elections with no threshold or participation requirements (similar to what is being proposed here – I think), the outcome is close to the median voter when only a majority is required.  The presence of ‘default’ Speaker selected on the basis of seniority would alter these results.

Parliament/Alþingi – Committees & Ministers

The constitutional council’s proposal includes proposals intended to strengthen parliament vis-a-vis the executive office.  These proposals include handing legislative committees (monopoly?) proposal power and requiring ministers to give up their seats in parliament upon taking office.  The council’s explanations envision a process in which ministers approach the committees about proposing legislation, which is then developed by the committees.  By requiring ministers to resign their seat in parliament, the council hopes that ministers will to a greater degree not come from the ranks of MPs.  In short, it is not likely that these proposal will do much to strengthen parliament.

First, preventing ministers from casting votes in parliament or to introduce legislation is not likely to change much.  Ministers are replaced in the legislature by members of their party who will toe the party line much as they have done in the past.  While formally barred from introducing legislation, ministers will have easy enough time finding an MP to introduce legislation on their behalf.  If committees are given monopoly proposal power things may be a little bit more uncertain but in all probability, the government will, as before, have a majority on each committee and party cohesion/discipline will ensure that the government gets its way.

Second, as it stands, the legislative committees do not have the resources or the expertise to write legislation.  Today this task is to a large degree handled by bureaucrats in the ministries.  Of course, it is possible to increase the staff of Alþingi considerably in order expand its ability to write legislation but it is not clear that this is the efficient way to go about things.  For one thing, a lot of the information about the problems a particular legislation is supposed to address resides in the ministries, i.e., the bureaucracy learns a lot about policy problems in the process of implementing policies.  This information is a significant source of the minister’s power.  Ministers have discretion about how they use this information.  They can release information that serves their policy agenda and withhold information that works against it.  In short, the legislative committees would still rely on the executive for information.  The most likely outcome is that ministers will, as before, oversee the drafting of legislation within their ministries and then deliver them to the committees who will be in charge of introducing the legislation without having much more influence over its contents than they do today.

Why do I take such a pessimistic view of these proposals?  In short, I think they are based on a misunderstanding about the relationship between MPs and their parties.  Icelandic MPs have long lamented their lack of independence or power.  Yet there is nothing (formally) in the current system that prevents them from taking the initiative to introduce or amend bills.  They simply choose not to use their power – they simply vote, with the rare exception, with their party.  That is not an accident.  It has much to do with the parliamentary form of government in which the government relies on the confidence of the legislature to stay in office.  For government MPs, voting against the government risks bringing the government down.  Government MPs may dislike a particular piece of the government’s legislative program but generally they will find it is easier to swallow than the possibility of handing the reins of government to the opposition.  Or another election, in which the party leaders have an opportunity to exact revenge on the very MPs whose votes brought the government down.  And it is not all sticks.  There are also carrots.  An MP that behave is, e.g.,  more likely to be rewarded with a seat on a  important committee and have a better chance at becoming a minister one day.  Non of the proposals that have emerged  so far do anything to change this relationship.

Overall, I find these proposals rather strange.  It seems to me that they aim at undermine the parliamentary form of government by increasing the separation of the executive and legislative branches (although I think they are not very effective at doing so) while at the same time reducing the role of the president (more on that later).  Would it not be more straightforward to hand more executive powers to the president if the goal is to give MPs greater autonomy?  The tenor of the proposal and the council’s explanations seems to be that the council is aiming for some sweet spot in between a parliamentary and a presidential system.  But it is not clear to me what that sweet spot is – or whether it exists.

Finally, wouldn’t it be nice if the council made some references to research on these things?  Is there any evidence that countries where ministers give up their seat in parliament or where ministers are not drawn from the ranks of MPs leads to better political outcomes? And is there any evidence that more autonomous legislators and/or stronger legislative committees make for better policy?  To keep with what apparently is the council’s preferred type of reasoning, the anecdote, the U.S.A. is an example of country where legislators have substantial autonomy and legislative committees play an important role in policy making.  Is this the example the council wants to emulate?

 

For references: See Required Readings

Some additional notes on related readings.  On legislative committees, Strom (1984) argues that the organization of committees matters and that they, e.g., make the formation of minority governments more likely.  Krehbiel (1988) provides a nice overview of theories of legislative committees and under what conditions they affect policy outcomes – for a simpler exposition, see Shepsle (2010).  Laver and Shepsle (1994) edited a volume on the ministerial powers that is a useful overview.