05 September 2008
Across the Atlantic, Some Surprising Similarities
The U.S. and British election systems are quite different, but they sometimes produce oddly similar outcomes.
Philip John Davies is professor of American studies at De Montfort University, Leicester, and director of the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library, London, England.
By Philip John Davies
Transatlantic classrooms provide special opportunities to learn. British students are sometimes a little startled to hear that legislators in the United States often run in election campaigns where the personal agendas of the candidates overshadow centralized party political messages.
Their eyebrows raise when presented with evidence that presidents, even of the same political party, may have a good deal of negotiating to do and compromises to make with the legislature in order to have any success in turning the platform presented to the electorate into working policies.
And they sometimes purse their lips at the arcane structure of the Electoral College and its recently evidenced ability to leave the candidate with the most popular votes nationwide as the runner-up.
“The voters can’t guarantee getting the policies they supported even if their party wins! They can’t be sure they get the leader that most of them vote for! Is that really democratic?”
In their turn, students in the United States find their suspicions raised by a British election system so dominated by the party political manifestos that individual candidate characteristics generally make only marginal differences to the results. The level of control over policy demonstrated by an executive that operates inside the legislature concerns them.
And when it comes to appointing the prime minister, they can be very surprised by the tenuous connection between the electorate and the selection process.
“Almost no voters are involved in selecting the PM! The parties have immense control over the political agenda! Is that really democratic?”
Varying Views of Democracy
In the political lexicon, democracy is definitely a “hooray” word. Generally nations want to be identified as democratic, even if this might be seen more as public relations than actuality. In the half century that Germany was divided, it was the Communist eastern sector that managed to name itself Democratic Republic.
But even nations that accept each others’ democratic credentials may design their systems very differently. Viewed through a transcultural lens, democratic institutions and their different cultural and historical foundations can look confusing, and parallels across cultural boundaries can be missed.
The United Kingdom system remains geared to the centrality of party political competition. Modifications to party leadership selection in recent years have included the introduction of structures called electoral colleges. These colleges are intended to ensure a balance of representation between groups within the parties, and they undoubtedly owe something to lessons learned from across the Atlantic, but they are in no way built on the federalist principles at the center of the U.S. Electoral College.
These differences notwithstanding, the party-based processes for choosing a British prime minister are every bit as arcane as those for choosing a president of the United States.
Some similarities do emerge in election results. The U.S. Electoral College offers potential victory to a candidate who does not have a majority of popular votes nationwide. This should be no mystery to British observers, since in none of the 17 UK general elections since the end of the Second World War has the winning party had a majority of the popular vote. The Conservatives came closest in 1955, with 49.7 percent of the popular vote. But in seven postwar elections, the winning party gained less than 45 percent, and in three of those less than 40 percent of the popular vote, falling to 35.2 percent in the 2005 election.
The Significance of Small Numbers
The U.S. Electoral College winner may nevertheless have received fewer votes than the runner-up. It does not happen very often, but the election of 2000 brought this feature into high relief.
A similar thing can happen in UK general elections. In 1951 the Labour Party received almost 1 percent more of the aggregate popular vote than the Conservatives and their allies, but ended up with 4 percent fewer seats. In February 1974 it was the Conservatives who had a small lead in the popular vote, while the Labour Party took more seats. While other parties held enough seats notionally to hold a balance of power, Labour formed a minority administration.
The 2000 election in the United States brought home the potential significance of small numbers of votes in key states, when the outcome teetered for weeks on the uneasy fulcrum of the result in Florida.
Again, similarities can be found in the United Kingdom. In 1964 Labour won 317 out of the 630 available seats, gaining an absolute majority of four seats over all other parties. One constituency was won by Labour by only seven votes, and three other close races in the same election were decided by 10, 11, and 14 votes, respectively.
There is no doubt that observers in many countries will continue to find their perspectives on democracy broadened when they look across borders. Differences are real, can surprise, and provide a backdrop against which new perceptions can emerge. And it should never cease to be entertaining to observe the oddities of other political cultures and, through them, to notice the oddities at home.
The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. government.
