Our long national nightmare is over
I’m referring of course to Nauru, if that wasn’t obvious.
Nauru is a pretty interesting country. In fact, unlike America, it actually is exceptional in a number of ways. For one it’s the only country to use a Borda count system for electing its parliament. (Slovenia uses a Borda count for two reserved seats for minorities, but PR for everybody else). It’s also one of the few nations to recognize the “states” of Abkhazia, Transnistria and South Ossetia. Why Nauru has such sympathies for misplaced Russian speaking populations is a puzzle to me, (Stay strong Abkhazians, Nauru stands with you!) but what’s even more amusing is it’s past year in political life.
Nauru’s state of emergency, designed to keep government services operating during a political deadlock, was lifted on Monday with the re-election of Marcus Stephen as president. President’s are indirectly elected by the parliament in Nauru, but for the past eight months, no coalition has been able to form a majority in the eighteen-member parliament. Stephen attempted to break the 9 to 9 split by calling snap election twice, in April and June, but both failed to give either side a majority. There are no formal political parties in Nauru, but Parliament has been evenly divided between supporters and opponents of Stephen. The stalemate was finally broken this week in a deal that made opposition lawmaker, and former president, Ludwig Scotty, Speaker of the House.
If the whole “two snap elections fail to give any side in parliament enough votes to elect a president resulting in a year-long deadlock that devastates the country financially” thing sounds familiar, it’s because Moldova has had the same problem. I think two such examples of this in one year should be enough to tell us that having one branch of government elect a separate branch is a bad idea. Luckily for Nauru, they appear to be moving out of theirs, while Moldovans must go to the polls again this month for round four, five… eh, I’m not sure actually. So I guess we can no longer call Nauru, “the Moldova of Oceania,” which is a shame because it’s funny.
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Are you sure that “having one branch of government elect a separate branch is a bad idea” is really the take-away point here? Wouldn’t a similar problem exist if these countries had a pure parliamentary system? Presumably if parties in Moldova and Nauru have a problem with forming a coalition to elect the president a similar problem would exist if the parties had to form a coalition to govern. Am I missing something?
Fair enough, and Moldova’s problem was also related to the fact that they need a supermajority to elect a president.
But I do think that it would still be easier in a parliament to elect a leader. In a parliamentary system, a government can be brought down at any time. If you are a reluctant, unaffiliated MP, like those that exist in Nauru, you could be persuaded to support a PM nominee knowing that you can always bring down the government if some of your demands aren’t met. In a presidential system, you are putting somebody in power who does not have to answer to you, and has a fixed term that will outlasts yours. That makes it much harder to compromise.
That is an excellent point, especially if you need a super-majority to elect a president. Needing a super-majority to elect any office seems kind of stupid to me.
I won’t… I won’t… I won’t… OH DAMMIT!
David – Honestly? You’re going to trivialize your point by taking a swipe at America for no reason related to your argument?
No wonder so many Americans can’t stand this tiny intellectual elite.
Not just any Borda system, but one in multi-member districts that operates a lot like MNTV. I think Kiribati uses pure Borda, too.
I think Andrew’s criticism is unfair. I like cheeky titles.
Jack, I’m not sure I follow your point.
Andrew, it only trivializes my point with those in flyover country who are not my target audience. My posts are designed to be read on a laptop in an independent coffee shop while listing to the delightful David Sedaris.
Jack’s link unfortunately destroys my previous argument that Nauru was deadlocked in part because they are electing a president. Apparently, presidents in Nauru are subject to no-confidence votes as well, so this should be no different than electing a prime minister. Luckily the post was not meant as a serious analysis of indirect presidential elections.
Sorry, David. Unfortunately my characterization of Nauruan Borda voting (a.k.a. the Dowdall system) at Fruits and Votes was not clear or entirely accurate. (Minus points for me, too, then.) Versus Borda-regular, Dowdall uses MMD. The key difference, however, is that, where Borda allocates points to rankings that decrease by a constant value (1), Dowdall allocates a number of points to each ranking that is the inverse of that ranking. I said this system operated a lot like MNTV because of the novel weighting of preferences and the low district magnitude. In reality, normal Borda in a low-M MMD would be more like MNTV than this Dowdall system, which looks in retrospect more like SNTV. I’ve commented at F&V accordingly. Not that the discussion of Borda/Dowdall rules in this exceptionally low-population republic is extremely relevant to David’s point about presidents elected by legislatures in countries where no faction can garner the requisite votes.
Jack, your knowledge of electoral systems never ceases to amaze me. Can you give a concrete example of how this affects election outcomes?
No. The effects are contextual, and we don’t observe the counterfactual. =)
Thanks for the complement. Unfortunately I get it wrong as often as I get it right, and, in avoiding game theory, tend to play fast and loose with combinations of rules.
Yeah, well it’s easy to go too far in the other direction. The number of electoral systems we observe in practice is a small fraction of the number that exist in theory.
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