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Pippa Norris on Power Sharing and Democratic Stability

Pippa Norris has explored the ways in which power-sharing institutions, such as proportional electoral systems and federalism, are thought to facilitate accommodation and cooperation among a coalition of political leaders. If so, power-sharing institutions should be ideal models for states struggling to achieve stable democracy and good governance in divided societies. Norris's research compares a broad cross-section of countries worldwide, including many multiethnic states, to investigate the impact of formal power-sharing institutions on several indicators of democratic stability and good governance.

Q: You have found that worldwide, power-sharing constitutions combining proportional electoral systems and federalism remain relatively rare. Why is that?

Norris: Many theorists have thought that power-sharing was really the critical solution for constitutions, particularly in divided societies - think about Iraq, think about Afghanistan - but in fact not that many countries have really gone to a power-sharing model for a number of reasons. One is the size of the country. It's the big countries - Russia , Canada, the United States, Australia - which have gone for a federal system. Another factor is the colonial history, and again, countries are really strongly influenced, so many of the countries that are ex-British countries went for a centralized system just like Westminster.

Another factor is divisions in a country. Some are fairly homogeneous and don't need to have separate powers at regions or local levels in which different minorities get some control of their area. So a centralized system allows stronger government and slightly greater government effectiveness within that context.

Q: Explain federalism and what your research has indicated in terms of federalism and good governance.

Norris: Federalism is a solution that many people think is really important. In a society where you've got minorities in distinct geographic areas - think about Indonesia and the differences across that vast land mass - federalism is a potential solution that allows each area some autonomy. They can decide for themselves about things like the schools, or religious leaders, or other aspects which are really important. But in practice, federalism is not so common and there are real questions about whether federalism actually achieves greater satisfaction, greater democracy, and greater levels of government efficiency. What I did was I took some basic indicators of how well a government works - work from the World Bank, which has developed these indicators of good governance and work by Freedom House, which classifies countries by levels of democracy. What I found was that, quite surprisingly, although federalism is seen as a solution that might produce good governance, in practice it was a wash. Some countries with federalism were very well rated, like Canada , other countries with federalism in fact didn't actually have very good government effectiveness, or rule of law, or many of the other indicators. So, although theoretically it seem plausible, in practice, one size doesn't fit all and a simple set of constitutional changes like federalism might not necessarily help.

Q: Does you research indicate that proportional electoral systems encourage democratic stability and good governance?

Norris: Yes. And, again, people who live in majoritarian systems, like in the United States, tend to think they're normal. But many countries around the world, about 65, use some form of proportional representation [PR], where you might have say a party list and within that people get seats according to the proportion of votes. What we find is that PR is in fact related to many indicators of good governance, and there are other benefits as well. For example, in terms of women, you can get slightly higher proportions of women elected under PR than under majoritarian. You usually get higher participation, higher levels of turnout, and, in turn, when you take the basic indicators of how democratic a country is, how much they have political rights and civil liberties, again we find that PR countries slightly out perform majoritarian countries around the world.

Q: What are the implications of this research for policymakers?

Norris: Many countries are going through real transitions. And where countries are starting off and creating their constitutions, these sorts of pieces of evidence are very influential. People want to know, what's going to work. If you're designing a new constitution, as Iraq is going through that process now, with the new assembly, or if you're decide on one as the Loya Jirga did in Afghanistan, or in Indonesia, or Cambodia, many divided societies, the first thing they have to do is agree on the rules of the game. If we know that certain rules really work better than others, getting those in place in the very first stages is critical as it could really improve governance in general. If the rules are wrong, then things get very rigid and you get stuck with those rules of the game because it's difficult to change.

The other thing is that many other countries - it's not just new democracies - are also going through fundamental constitutional changes. Many countries, for example, like New Zealand, like Israel, like Japan, and like Britain, have changed their electoral system radically in the last decade. So again, the more political scientists and social scientists can work out what works, what impacts you might have if you've got this set of rules or that set of rules, then all of that is going to guide practitioners, and practitioners are extremely interested in this kind of work. They're always coming to us and saying, well, as a constitutional expert, is there one type of, for example, judiciary, that's the best, or, when they're setting up the legislature, one type of electoral system. The simple answer is that there's no single best solution for every country - each of them has different issues, different concerns. But certainly we're moving towards what we might term 'constitutional engineering.' It's more of an art than a science. It's more saying, well, we've looked at lots of countries and we've looked at when they change over time, and we've looked at what sort of institutions they've developed. And we can certainly say you get certain consequences. In the real issues in Iraq, which are being faced in the next year, it gives them ways to think about the problems and develop solutions that they think are best for their country.

Reporters:

Please contact 617-495-1115 to arrange an interview with Pippa Norris.

Answers to questions submitted via e-mail:

Q: I would like to ask about cases in which the gap between two or more different future-states in a future federal govenrment is too wide. Any federal system, though it mitigates differences between the states, should have minimal support from each of them - a mutual federal idea shared by all geographical factions. Are there cases in which you say that this gap is too wide to form a federal system and a
model of totally separate countries is better suited for them? If Iraq can be one federal system, then Israel and Palestine can be one too. And if they are all federal countries, why can't the whole Middle East
unite to a single federal system (given that all participating states are democracies)? Where do you draw the line?

- Roy M.
Jerusalem, Israel

Norris: One of the classic questions of federalism is whether it will gradually resolve political differences, so that two or more geographically based groups can coexist within the same state (e.g. Anglophone and Francophone Canadians) or whether it can reinforce differences between communities, which can, in turn, lead towards national secession (such as East Timor breaking away from Indonesia).

Imbalanced federal states, divided between a large and small community, may be more vulnerable to secession than large multinational states with many distinct communities and federal powers evenly divided among them, such as India.

The evidence about the consequences of federalism remains somewhat mixed. In the Middle East, in the past potentially Israel and Palestine could have been a federal state with distinct communities, BUT the
whole political momentum has been towards establishing Palestine as an independent nation-state, so it is probably too difficult now to consider establishing a federal state.

Best wishes
Pippa