Chapter Four: Electoral Systems and Stable Government: Experience of the United Kingdom and Overseas.
44. The case in favour of FPTP, set out at the beginning, has therefore to be tested against a very substantial list of deficiencies. Apart from its familiarity (which is a point needing to be handled with care, for it can be deployed against any reform of any institution) and its simplicity, the central argument in favour of FPTP appears to be that it alone can produce effective and stable yet democratically elected one-party government, and thus remain true to the best part of the British political tradition.
The British Tradition
45. The first assumption to be examined in this context is that single-party government is a time-hallowed British tradition. The past 150 years, which began just before Disraeli's celebrated remark that 'England does not love coalitions', an aphorism delivered in a very specifically partisan context but since elevated into a general proposition, gives a reasonable sweep. It embraces both the classical period of widening empire abroad and widening franchise at home, when Britain was said to be the mother of parliaments, and the more modern period when, perhaps since 1918, certainly since 1945, we have been endeavouring to find a new balance as a medium-sized power. For 43 of those 150 years Britain has been governed by overt coalitions, sometimes almost all-embracing as in 1915-16 and in the Churchill government of 1940-45, and sometimes more politically skewed, as with the Unionist coalition of 1895-1905, the Lloyd George coalition in its peacetime manifestation of 1919-22, and the National government of 1931-40, but all involving a wider or narrower degree of cross-party co-operation.
46. In addition there have been 34 years in which the government of the day was dependent on the votes of another party (in one case of two others), although their representatives were not at the Cabinet table. Examples of this type of situation were provided by the Salisbury government of 1886-92, by the Asquith government between the first 1910 general election and the formation of the 1915 coalition, by the two short inter-war Labour governments and by parts of the Wilson/Callaghan government of 1974-79 when Liberal votes were crucial.
47. And on top of these two periods of 43 and 34 years respectively there has to be added another nine years in which the government of the day, while technically in possession of an overall majority, had it by such an exiguous margin as to give no certain command over the arbitrament of the division lobby. This was the case in the last year and a half of the Attlee government, the first year and a half of the 1964 Wilson government and during much of John Major's experience with the Parliament of 1992-97. It is therefore the case that in only 64 of the past 150 years has there prevailed the alleged principal benefit of the FPTP system, the production of a single-party government with an undisputed command over the House of Commons.
48. On the factual record it clearly cannot be sustained that (pace Disraeli) there is anything shockingly unfamiliar to the British tradition about governments depending upon a broader basis than single party whipped votes in the House of Commons. Nor could it be plausibly argued, as is sometimes theoretically maintained, that such a wider basis carries with it such a burden of compromise as to produce inspissated immobility in decision making. Some of the most formative (for good or ill) of the changes of the period under review have occurred during coalition or minority governments, or as a result of a crucial cross-party vote, even when the government itself had a nominal one-party majority. These include: (i) the mid-nineteenth century reform of the fiscal system which turned Britain from a country of sinecures and protected privileges into the foremost market economy and free trade country of the world; (ii) the imposition from 1886 (with a gap from 1892-5), as an alternative to Home Rule, of 'twenty years of resolute government' upon Ireland, (iii) the Parliament Act of 1911 with the major shift towards the elective sovereignty of the House of Commons which that implied; (iv) the National Insurance Act of 1912 and hence the beginning of the welfare state; (v) victory, whatever the price, in the First World War; (vi) the move from free trade to imperial preference in the early 1930s; (vii) the survival of the country and hence of Western civilisation in the early 1940s, and (viii) the entry into Europe in the early 1970s.
49. History within a British context does not therefore suggest that single-party government, while it undoubtedly has strong virtues, as will be expounded below, is a necessary pre-requisite for effective action. Coalitions are by no means necessarily flaccid or indecisive. Nor is this view contradicted by geographical comparisons. Two of our near neighbours operate under one or other of the two main branches of proportional systems, and while recognising that what works well in one country does not necessarily do so in another, it is nonetheless worthwhile to consider briefly their respective experiences
The Republic of Ireland
50. The Republic of Ireland has operated under a Single Transferable Vote electoral system since the first days of the Irish Free State in 1922. This was fostered by the British in the last days of London rule mainly as a form of protection for the Protestant minority, but was in no way resisted by the new Irish government. (It was also introduced in Northern Ireland when Stormont was set up, but was then abolished by the Ulster Unionists in 1928 with the clear objective of strengthening one-party control in a two-community province.) In the Republic it has persisted, despite being twice put to a referendum by governments of Fianna Fáil, the party which thought it had most to gain from a majoritarian system. The proposal for a change was defeated on both occasions. The first was in 1959 when it went down by 52% to 48%; this vote however coincided with a presidential election when Eamon de Valera, the candidate of the party proposing the change was overwhelmingly elected. On the second occasion, in 1968, the proposition to move away from the Single Transferable Vote was more clearly rejected by 61% to 39%.
51. The Irish multi-member constituencies have been rather small - three to five members - for achieving the full proportional potential of the Single Transferable Vote. For this seven to eight member constituencies are better. As a result the Irish results have sometimes been little more than halfway between what FPTP would have produced and full proportionality. But they have never failed to be well nearer to a fair representation of the competing parties than would have been the results under FPTP. Nor have they led to any divorce between TDs (Irish MPs) and localities. This has perhaps been made easier by the fact that Ireland is a small country. But, if anything, the complaint has been the reverse, that TDs are too locally and not enough nationally orientated. Members of the same party are often fighting as much or more against each other (in the constituencies) as they are against their opponents.
52. What have been the consequences for the political tone and the general performance of Ireland? The system has frequently but far from invariably produced coalition governments. Fianna Fáil was in independent power for two continuous periods each of sixteen years, from 1932 to 1948 and from 1957 to 1973. There have been occasional periods of instability, but scarcely more so than there have been in Britain (1922-24, 1950-1, 1974) under the FPTP system. Coalitions have become more frequent over the past twenty years or so, and there has also been some proliferation of parties (beyond the previous 2 1/2 party pattern - Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour) over the same period. But this is little more than in line with the erosion of the two-party duopoly which has occurred in Britain over the same span. On the whole there has been no excessive frequency either of elections or of changes of government. Indeed, particularly in the long de Valera years, the greater charge against the Irish system was that it produced a dead hand of immobilism.
53. More recently there have been continuous coalitions (with the Irish Labour party co-operating at different times with both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael), and perhaps a certain anonymity of leadership. Since de Valera there have been only a few Taoiseachs whose personality has lastingly impressed itself on the outside public. But this anonymity has by no means necessarily reflected itself in bad government. If the object of government is not to make a show for an international audience but to improve the lot of the governed, Ireland has done spectacularly well. From Cosgrave to Lynch to Fitzgerald to Haughey to Bruton to Reynolds to Ahern there has been stability on the most important aspect of policy, which has been that of co-operating fully with the European Community or Union so as to get the maximum benefit, both psychological (releasing Dublin from enmity as well as from subservience to London) and material, but using the substantial material aid not as a dole but as a springboard. The result has been a spectacular economic performance, with Irish national income per head now the rough equivalent of that of Britain, an equality which would have been simply inconceivable thirty years ago.
54. Furthermore, in the somewhat longer perspective of around eighty years, a polity born to an almost unexampled degree in destructive violence, first against the external 'oppressor' and then between different wings of the 'liberators', has settled down into a cosy and prosperous bourgeois society, the spirit of which is well expressed by the present day self-confident urbanity of Dublin. It would not be remotely sensible to argue that this has all been due to the benefit of the Single Transferable Vote. Equally, however, it is a piece of significant evidence that a more proportional system accompanied by coalition governments is in no way incompatible with a great advance in a country's performance.
Germany
55. Some would dismiss Ireland as a small country: what works for 3 1/2 million is very different from what might do so in a Britain of 58 1/2 million. This consideration cannot apply to Germany, a country of 81 1/2 million (or, perhaps more relevantly, of 65 1/2 million, for the record essentially depends upon the performance of West Germany between 1949 and 1991), where with occasional small modifications a different form of proportional representation, the Additional Member System, has prevailed since the setting up of the Federal Republic. The additional members amount to the high proportion of 50% of the Bundestag. This gives a very strong degree of proportionality, substantially more so than with the Irish fairly small multiple member constituencies system of the Single Transferable Vote. It also gives a very high degree of party control over who is elected on the supplementary lists, a problem which there arouses less controversy than it would do here.
56. What, however, is more relevant to the present stage of the argument is the extent to which it makes coalitions inevitable, and the effect which this has had upon the stability and quality of German governments. The answer to the first point is that it has undoubtedly made coalition the norm, but not inevitable. Adenauer, who was four times elected Chancellor by the Bundestag following a general election, was necessarily a coalition Chancellor on two of these occasions, 1949 and 1961. After the 1953 election he (together with the Bavarian CSU branch of his CDU party) had a bare absolute majority, and could have governed alone, but chose to continue the coalition with the Free Democrats over which he had presided since 1949. After the 1957 election he had a much bigger majority and dropped the FDP to form what was in effect a one-party government. (He still had the small Deutsche (or refugee) Partei in his government, but it had become as much his creature as the National or Simonite Liberals eventually did of the Conservatives in Britain). After 1961, which was a setback election for him, Adenauer was again dependent upon the FDP, and his remaining two years were not a success, but that was because he was over 85 and nearly everyone thought that it was time that he went.
57. Before this overstay of welcome set in, however, the achievements of Adenauer were awe-inspiring. He began with a Germany that was shattered, impoverished and reviled, and he ended with one which was rich, respected and even admired. Its real national income had grown threefold under his Chancellorship, it had regained such sovereignty as was possible in an inter-dependent world, had become America's dependable and valued ally as well as the economic powerhouse of the Common Market, had buried a hundred years of Franco-German enmity and begun a Bonn-Paris partnership which was to run the European Community for at least a third of a century. And this massive constructive work was achieved just as much when he was in coalition as when he was nominally untrammelled.
58. Since the end of Adenauer, coalition has been the unbroken pattern in Germany, though it has not always taken the same form. Mostly the FDP has been the hinge, and has done very well out of the rôle. But this was not so in 1966-69 when the two bigger parties formed a so-called 'Grand Coalition' and the FDP was excluded. From 1969 to 1982 that party was in alliance with the Social Democrats, and the centre-left, first under Brandt and then under Schmidt, was in continuous power.
59. Then the FDP made a 'historic shift' and thirteen years of Brandt/Schmidt were succeeded by sixteen years of Kohl. It can certainly be argued, as we do at paragraph 122, that the German system has given too much power to the FDP. But it was not just a whim of this third party which was at work in 1982. In the election which followed in 1983 the CDU/CSU polled 48.8% as against their 44.9% of 1972 and the SDP fell from 45.8 to 38.2%. The FDP switch was working with the grain rather than against it. It was also a time of movement to the right in America and Britain. The FDP could more easily be accused of jumping on a band-wagon more than of perversely frustrating the desires of the electorate. Furthermore, the 1982 reversal of alliances apart, they never acted in a way that had not been made clear to the voters before an election.
60. As this potted history makes clear, the last fault which could be attributed to proportional representation in Germany is that of instability of government. Over the 49 years which passed between the inauguration of the Federal Republic in 1949 and the 1998 election there were only six Chancellors. All of them, with the possible exception of Kurt-Georg Kiesinger, who presided over the Grand Coalition, were powerful world statesmen in their different ways. And no government or parliament has lasted less than three years. In Britain, on the other hand there have been no fewer than eleven Prime Ministers during the same period and three parliaments which have not survived for even two years. And even in the United States, with its fixed-term rigidities, there have been ten Presidents.
61. If there has been a criticism of the recent working of the German system it is that it has produced too much rather than too little stability, that it has been sclerotic rather than febrile. In September 1998, however, a full-scale change of government occurred as a direct result of an election. Confidence was withdrawn from the previous government just as decisively as it was from the previous British government in 1997, although of course without the swollen majority which is a feature of FPTP. But a more significant point is that the system has produced not only stable but also, on the whole and judged by results, very good government. At least until the last seven years, when the awkward and ill-prepared dish of East Germany has proved difficult to digest even by the great boa-constrictor of the West German economy, the past half-century record of the Federal Republic has been remarkable. Judged by almost any available standard: economic success, a liberal and tolerant régime at home, an unassertive but responsible foreign policy, it is difficult to find any major country which, over the past half century, has been better or indeed as well governed. In any event this would be a great achievement. In view of Germany's previous recent history, it is almost a miracle. Once again it would be ludicrous to attribute all this to the Additional Member System of proportional representation. But it is at least strong evidence that such a system, and the coalition habit in which, with a 50:50 constituency/top-up member balance, it mostly results, is not necessarily an inhibition on such a favourable outcome.
Other Countries
62. There are of course other foreign comparisons which are commonly regarded as much less favourable to the case for proportional systems. Those most frequently cited are Israel, Italy, the France of the Fourth Republic (1946-58) and (latterly and perhaps most prominently) New Zealand. They each raise somewhat separate issues. Israel operates on a national list system with a very low threshold, so that small splinter parties easily get representation in the Knesset and can sometimes be decisive to the formation or support of a government. It can be stated straightaway that, from the beginning of its deliberations the Commission has rejected such a national list system for Britain. It would, in our view, be too remote, rigid and party machine-dominated a system for our four-nation and regionally diverse polity of 58 1/2 million people. It would also run directly counter to our fourth requirement, that of a link between MPs and a geographical constituency. It should nonetheless be noted in passing that a national list system works on the whole well in the Netherlands, a country of 15 1/2 million (as opposed to Israel's 5 1/2 million). Its disadvantage there, as some would see it, is that it makes all governments coalitions and that after elections these mostly take some time to negotiate. But, once negotiated, and the negotiations are open rather than 'smoke-filled', they have considerable stability and nearly always last a full parliament. Furthermore it would be difficult to contest the view that the Netherlands is one of the most successfully governed countries in the world, combining a growth economy, a non-inflationary currency and a society more at ease with itself than most in the Western world.
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