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June 10, 2004
The Contribution of the UN
Posted by Dale Franks
You know what would be really cool? If, just once, you could invite the UN to help with something without having to worry that they'll screw it all up. Unfortunately, competence, shall we say, is not butter for the UN's bread, if you know what I mean.
Here's the problem. Iraq is a country made up of two major ethnic groups, the Kurds and Arabs. The Arabs are additionally divided up into two more major religious groups, the Sunni and Shia. They all dislike each other, intensely.
Now, the grand idea that UN elections expert Carina Perelli came up with is proportional representation. So, instead of an electoral system on the American or British model, she's chosen the Italian model. Thus she has bequeathed on the Iraqis a system so stable that it's given Italy 54 different governments since the end of WWII.  The good news is that the Iraqi public seems to have accepted its new leaders as legitimate, as long as they are seen as moving toward elections by next January. Which brings us to the dubious and risky plan that U.N. elections "expert" Carina Perelli is promoting.
The U.S. and Britain have what's known as constituency-based democracy. That is, voters in neighborhoods or districts select a single person to represent them in Congress or Parliament based on whoever wins a plurality of the vote. This system has many virtues, producing stable and effective governments that can be held accountable by voters at the next election. When Prime Minister Tony Blair came to power, for example, the Tory defense and foreign ministers lost not just their cabinet posts but their seats in Parliament--an outcome almost unthinkable under a system of "proportional" representation.
Yet the latter is precisely what Ms. Perelli proposed last week for Iraq. In this system, voters choose not among individual candidates but among parties that are awarded a share of legislative seats based on their percentage of the vote. Proponents say the system better allows all significant voices to be heard. But even in the best of cases--Italy over much of the past 50 years--proportional systems tend to produce unstable governments easily paralyzed by the little parties they have to cobble into a majority coalition. Would-be candidates are beholden to party bosses who determine their place on the electoral list and thus their chances of success.
In Iraq especially, with its many ethnic divisions, the risks of such a system are huge. As much as possible we should be encouraging Iraqis to think of themselves as Iraqis rather than as Kurds or Arabs, Shiites or Sunnis. First-past-the-post elections in Iraqi neighborhoods, many of which are multi-ethnic, would help accomplish this. Where local elections have been held thus far in Iraq, voters have chosen pragmatic and secular figures rather than religious or ethnic extremists.
By contrast, Ms. Perelli's nationwide proportional system will encourage voters and parties to separate themselves along sectarian lines. What's more, where constituency systems tend toward centrist politics as candidates seek a majority, proportional systems empower extremists who could never win outright in any single area but who can garner a significant minority of the vote. Look for the mad Shiite Muqtada al-Sadr, for one, to get elected under these rules.
So what's driving this strange push for a party-based proportional system in a country with no well-established parties besides the Baath? A big part of the motivation appears to be the dogmatic desire of the U.N. and State Department to ensure that at least 25% of Iraqi legislators are women, which is a goal but not a requirement of Iraq's interim constitution. You can rig a party-list election to ensure such an outcome, and Ms. Perelli wants to mandate that every third candidate be a woman. She couldn't do that with constituencies.
So, when given a fragmented population of mutually hostile groups, Ms. Perelli has given them a fragmented political system that divides the population on party lines. Naturally, the political parties that result will be Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni, which, at least has the efficiency of dividing the Iraqis politically in precisely the same manner as they are divided ethnically.
Well, it'll be representative, you certainly have to give it that.
Of course, rather than having them vote as Iraqis, such a system encourages them to vote as Shia or Kurds, thus reinforcing, rather than subordinating, their ethnic and religious rivalries.
And why, pray, does Ms. Perelli wish to impose this system on the Iraqis, rather one based in constituencies, rather than parties?
Well, it seems that with party-list elections, its easier to get women on the list of representatives, and both the UN and the US State Department want to ensure that at least 25% of Iraqi legislators are women.
But, as tactically efficient as this might be, strategically, it's unsound. As the Wall Street Journal puts it,
Just about every country that has proportional representation regrets it--think of Israel--but can't change because of the vested interests it creates.
I expect the Iraqis will regret it as well.
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