NEWSLETTER No. 10

UZICE

Theme: Electoral rights

With respect to current events in Serbia and Montenegro and the upcoming elections, the Civic Reading Room Libergraf has chosen the topic of electoral rights both for the TV broadcast and the latest newsletter edition with a view to acquainting the citizens with the essence and importance of electoral rights as a basic human right. The aim of selecting this topic is to clarify to the citizens the concept of elections, types of electoral systems, ways of organizing elections in western democracies, the influence of the form of elections on political institutions and political parties without trying to influence the voters on who to vote for in the forthcoming elections.

Experience from western democracies has shown that indirect democracy, i.e., the election of members of parliament as representatives of the people, is a sole proven way of organizing political institutions as well as the state in general. The form of the very election and types of electoral systems differ from one state to another and depend on the size of the territory, number of inhabitants, democratic tradition and the culture of the very nation.

Thus, in the countries with developed democracy we have systems of proportional representation and majority electoral systems with their variants as well as mixed systems. The proportional representation systems are organized in the form of splitting the territory into bigger constituencies where political parties and groups of citizens as political organizations stand for election through the system of submitting lists of candidates. In such systems, a voter does not vote for an individual but a political party or coalition which is the campaign protagonist. Such systems suffer a lot of criticism, but they also have their advantages. One could say that such systems alienate voters from the elected officials, because citizens vote for a political party and not an individual, and due to such a form of elections, the representative feels more responsible to the party that elected him first, and the voters simply verify that election in the elections. Apart from the stated disadvantages, the proportional representation systems also have their advantages, and the most important one is the fact that there are less individual interests in the parliament and that parties can articulate a lot of different interests more easily and create a general state and national interest and that the executive power has stronger support in the parliament, which will not block its work and hinder everyday politics. As opposed to the proportional representation election, in the majority electoral system the entire electoral district is divided into as many constituencies as there are seats in the parliament. The one who wins the absolute or relative majority of votes in certain constituencies is the one who is elected. This is why the majority system tends to force parties to act moderately and avoid extremes in their political work and practice. The majority system fosters a two-party composition but demands a big consensus among the people, who are socially scattered and disagree on main issues regarding political life. Such a situation would lead to creating negative effects, because the change of government would be impossible without big repercussions, minorities would remain without representatives and everything would lead towards radicalisation and polarization. In principle, in this case, the proportional system should be modified.

It is difficult to decide which form of elections is more democratic. The decision on which system is better depends on historic circumstances, the existing party composition and social relations within the society. Therefore, there is no widely-recognized recipe for this cornerstone of democracy either, but there are different forms in which democracy is realized and according to which we should assess whether maximal participation of voters in elections provides the ability of the elected to rule.