ABSTRACT: The author replies to the objections expressed by Paolo Flores D'Arcais and by Gianfranco Pasquino on the radical proposal of a reform of the electoral system in an Anglo-Saxon sense.

(Radical News n. 8 of 10 January 1987)

As the public opinion grows increasingly aware of the radical proposal of a reform of the electoral system in the sense of a majority vote, now endorsed by the League for an electoral reform, shaped on the British model, criticism on the part of opponents has predictably become more intense and frequent. To consider such criticism carefully can be useful to explain certain aspects of the majority proposal which have been insufficiently understood, and to better highlight its political implications.

I will discuss the most articulate objections advanced to this moment against the majority proposal, expressed by Paolo Flores D'Arcais (La Repubblica 4/12/86) and by Gianfranco Pasquino (on several occasions, but most recently on "Il Mondo Economico" of 1/12/86 and "L'Europeo" of 27/12/86).

National single-number constituency and multiple vote; the fragmentation of the representation.

If I have correctly understood it, Flores' position can be thus summarized: the uninominal system does not solve the problem of "particularism", that is, parliamentarians' dependence on particularist-lobbyist interests whose major field of action are electoral constituencies. Thus, Flores says, it is necessary to devise a different electoral system. His proposal is that of a national single-number constituency (thus freeing the candidate from too strong links with local interests) combined to a drastic reduction of the number of member of parliaments and to a variation of the electoral system in force in Ireland (the system of the single, transferable vote).

This is a variation of the Irish electoral system because, according to Flores, it gives the elector the possibility of distributing a limited number of preferential votes (three, Flores says, to make an example) to the candidates of more lists simultaneously. With the Irish system, on the other hand, the elector disposes of as many votes as the electable candidates in the constituency. I think Flores' position calls for two objections. The first objection is that the combination of a national single-number constituency with a (subdued) version of the single, transferable vote, would literally destroy parliamentary representation. Clearly, it would enhance the "incoming" democracy (to use an expression by Giovanni Sartori), in the sense that just about anyone with a bit of public visibility could run for Parliament (possibly even creating a party for the occasion) with good chances of being successful. On the other hand, such system would totally rule out the possibility of forming stable majorities (or, to

use Sartori's expression, it would penalize the "outgoing" democracy, that is, ruling governments and politically homogeneous majorities). In Parliament, if the system proposed by Flores were adopted, twenty or more political formations (or alleged formations) could easily find place. Because the degree of proportionality of an electoral system depends largely on the size of the constituencies, a national single-number constituency would mean a pure proportional system. In other words, a candidate would need only a handful of votes to be elected. Moreover, any group of influential people would, in such conditions, easily be capable of collecting such votes. Both hypotheses depicted by Flores - the single, transferable vote (in Ireland) and the national single-number constituency (The Netherlands, Israel) - are effective, though not combined, in small countries in size and populations and in small democracies. And even there there are serious problems.

In The Netherlands, when the period of the "consociative democracy" finished at the end of the sixties, the national single-number constituency favoured the multiplication of the political forces represented in Parliament and the entry of the country into the number of democracies with a high governmental instability. The situation is similar (and even worse) in Israel, where Parliament hosts a great number of political groups. The political system of the multiple vote is effective in Ireland, precisely because it is not combined to a national single-number constituency; because the constituencies are not excessively large, the elector can easily gather the necessary information in order to judge the candidates of the different lists. But combining the single constituency and the single transferable vote would, in my opinion, result in a disaster. It would literally destroy parliamentary representation and would make the relation between elected candidates and electors even less transparent. Moreover, Flores

' main target, particularism, would be all but defeated; if I am playing my cards in a national single-member constituency, it is in my best interests to create a strong local pool of electors, because the latter can provide me with the few votes I need in order to be elected. The case of Israel is emblematic from this point of view. With Flores' solution, moreover, the problem would be further aggravated by the existence of the multiple vote.

Contrary to what Flores maintains, with this system, the local mafias would not cease to elect their own candidates. Perhaps they would do so spending less money than they have to spend now with the current proportional system.

Different solutions for different problems. Uninominal system against party power, federalism against particularism.

The second objection I have to make to Flores' article is the following. Fundamentally, he has mistaken two things (localism and party power), which should be kept separated and for which there should be different solutions. Personally speaking, I am convinced that the best solution to the problem of "localism" is the solution devised by Cattaneo, that is, federalism. Clearly, the majority system cannot defeat particularism, that is, the pressure of specific local interests on the elected candidates. But no electoral system can achieve this alone, nor can the system devised by Flores. His target is another one, it is party power. The fact that there is no necessary link between party power and particularism (this is why Flores confused the two things) is proved by the fact that in the absence of party power (for example, in the Anglo-Saxon world, where there is a democracy of parties, not its degenerate form which we call party power) this does not necessarily imply that there is no pressure of local interes

ts on elected candidates. Particularism, in other words, is part of any democracy, regardless of the type of electoral system in force. It cannot be avoided: no matter what electoral system is adopted, many candidates will continue to represent particularist" interests (even in the case of a national single-member constituency, as in the case of The Netherlands and Israel).

Flores, who is specialized in political philosophy, knows that this is a problem related to an irremovable contradiction of modern political representation, a problem which has always been an object of concern for theorists of democracy; it is not enough to establish the limits of the imperative mandate by law, and constitutionally attribute the "representation of the nation" to the parliamentarian to eliminate the pressure of "fractional", particularist interests on the elected candidate.

The majority proposal therefore cannot undertake to solve a similar problem (which, I repeat, has remained unsolved in all contemporary democracies). What it can tackle is another problem, more limited perhaps, and more peculiarly "Italian", that of striking party power, which has thrived thanks to the proportional system, and the occupation on the part of political parties of the public sphere, which is guarantied by "corporative" conspiracy and by gains which are perpetuated by the proportional system. And, in this process, impose a simplification of choices, clear-cut confrontations between potential alternative majorities.

Above all, the majority proposal, by striking the party system, can at the same time fulfil two needs: to give importance, through the single-member constituency, to the single candidate to the detriment of the party (an objective which Flores wants to achieve, but through the multiple vote) and to ensure the conditions (totally underestimated in Flores' proposal) apt to simplify the electoral alliances, guaranteeing stable and politically homogeneous parliamentary majorities to the governments.

Lobbies, transformism, majority system

The objections expressed by Pasquino are of a different nature.

According to Pasquino:

1) With the majority system, Parliament would be prey to lobbies which could sponsor candidates directly.

2) party discipline would fail, as a consequence no stable majorities could be formed, tranformism would dominate parliamentary relations and the relations between Parliament and Government.

I will start with the first objection. Frankly, I believe this objection is groundless, because it presumes that there can be Parliaments "without lobbyist infiltrations" (to use the expression used by Pasquino on several occasions but especially on "Il Mondo Economico"). Lobbies, on the contrary, sponsor their candidates in the presence of any electoral system. I believe there hasn't been a single democratic Parliament without "lobbyist infiltrations". Not only: I wish to question not only the judgment of the fact, but also the "implicit" judgement of value. Why on earth should lobbies, as Pasquino implicitly maintains, not exist legitimately in a democracy? Why, in other words, shouldn't the representation of interests, which lobbies are the expression of, have a space in a democracy of the capitalist West? As far as lobbies are concerned, the problem is not of eliminating them; the (only true) problem is that of making their action transparent and visible to all electors. The true threat to democracy lies

not in the existence of lobbies as such, but in the often occult nature of their activity. Only thus can the problem of lobbies be correctly posed in a (Western) democracy. The real difference, contrary to what Pasquino believes, is not between Parliaments "with" and Parliaments "without" lobbies. The real difference is between those Western countries in which the sponsoring activity of the lobbies is relatively visible and transparent, and those countries (present-time Italy is a typical example) in which lobbies' activity develops in the opposite manner, that is, non-transparently. The following step is to ask ourselves why the action of the lobbies in Italy has always been so covert. My answer is the following: the Italian political culture, in its hegemonic components, has delegitimated the representation of "particularist" interests, the ones that are precisely the object of lobbyist activities, thus creating an identification (as typical in the communist and catholic culture) between the normal activi

ty of representation of interests and "corruption". In such a climate, it was natural for lobbies to be accepted, but only at the condition that they operate secretly, as ensured by the current, lethal combination of preference vote and secret ballot in Parliament and the non-regulation-publicization of financing to candidates.

Only in those countries in which the political culture fully legitimates the representation of interests, can lobbies act in the light of the day. The problem therefore cannot be faced with the typical moralism of the national culture and with anathemas, because this only contributed to the perpetuation of the occult nature of lobbyist activities.

The problem can instead be faced first of all by giving a fully legitimate status to the representation of interests, and, on the basis of this, imposing visibility and transparency in lobbies' sponsorship (with special laws, which lack in Italy today).

From this point of view, far from aggravating the problem, the majority proposal can enable several steps in the correct direction: if the candidate is exposed as he is with the single-member constituency, instead of hidden behind his party, it is far more difficult for him to hide any links with the interests protected by the different lobbies.

The second objection expressed by Pasquino is that the majority system would cause party disciplines to cease and would leave Parliament prey to fluctuant majorities. It is no doubt true that in the nineteenth century, before modern parties emerged and when the majority system was the most widespread electoral system in Europe (albeit combined with limited suffrage: only parts of the population benefited of the right to vote), the physiognomy of the Parliaments was more or less the one that Pasquino hypothesizes in the case of a return to the majority system. The experience of the twentieth century, however, contradicts this hypothesis.

If we exclude the case of the United States of America (a presidential republic with continental dimensions, with which no comparison can be made), party discipline has ceased in none of the parliamentary democracies in which a majority system is in force (Great Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand), nor is transformisms dominant. In all those cases there are parties, and with them party disciplines. Simply, with the majority system, the existence of the parties must be combined with the importance that individualist political cultures, through the single-member constituency, attribute to the candidate and to his direct relation with the electorate. Contrary to what Pasquino believes, in the era of universal suffrage, parties do not disappear (and with them, party discipline) not even in the presence of the majority system. Nor do the cases mentioned, as a consequence, show relevant signs of transformist tendencies. On the contrary, the candidate's visibility, guarantied by the uninominal system, the fact

that he has personally taken a clear and explicit commitment during the electoral campaign, act as a deterrent against transformist hocus pocus: at the following elections, the electors would remember they have been cheated.

Parties do not disappear with the majority system; they are nonetheless transformed. The proportional system favours apparatus parties, that is, parties dominated by party secretariats and bureaucracies which control decisions on the formation of lists. The majority system on the other hand favours parliamentary parties, that is, parties in which the effective leadership lies in the parliamentary groups. In the countries of the Anglo-Saxon world, the effective power lies in the hands of the parliamentary leaders, not of the secretariat (which among other things does not have a political relevance) nor of the bureaucratic apparatus. It is evident that if, as Pasquino implicitly (but also explicitly in other texts) hints, the modern party is identified with the single apparatus party, the possible disappearance of the apparatus party, or its tendential transformation into a parliamentary party, which the majority system has good chances of favouring, is erroneously mistaken with the disappearance of the partie

s. Hence Pasquino's error of mistaking an anti-party proposal which aims at transforming the parties, their mutual relations and their relations with the electorate with an anti-party proposal tout-court. That Pasquino's objective, by attacking the majority proposal, is not that of defending parties in general (which, as I said, the majority system does not eliminate), but that of defending a specific type of party, the apparatus party, the "mass bureaucratic party" (where power is concentrated in the secretariats and in the party bureaucracies) is proved by the characteristics of his proposals for an electoral reform, which, by combining the proportional system, the elimination of the preferential vote, the double ballot and the majority bonus, ultimately enhances the role and the power of the secretariats and the party bureaucracies.

The uninominal system, by giving importance to the candidate to the detriment of the party organization, reduces the weight of central bureaucratic apparatuses and shifts the centre of political power to parliamentary groups (this is precisely the Anglo-Saxon experience); the proportional system - which Pasquino maintains in his proposal - places the candidates in the hands of the party secretariats and apparatuses. The result, if Pasquino's project were applied in Italy, would be of confirming and enhancing the control exerted by the communist bureaucratic apparatus on its parliamentary group, but also of leading the other parties in the same direction.

If we leave out any technical discussion, it is evident that the majority system also (and above all) proposes a choice of value; the choice in favour of a model of political democracy, the Anglo-Saxon one, which the radical party has always (since the time of Cattaneo) proposed as the example to be imitated, from the point of view of the rules of politics.

Without pretending to say that a reform of the electoral system alone can solve all the evils affecting contemporary democracies, we can say that to replace the current party power with a true democracy of parties, to stimulate clear-cut oppositions between potential majority alternatives, to give the single candidates that importance, through the uninominal system, which the individualistic cultures of the Anglo-Saxon world give them (forcing them to assume responsibilities in first person) is, of all systems, the best possible starting point.