[Election-Methods] [english 94%] PR favoring racial minorities

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

Jobst Heitzig wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> although I did not follow all of the discussion so far, the following 
> question strikes me:
> 
> Why the hell do you care about proportional representation of minorities 
> when the representative body itself does not decide with a method that 
> ensures a proportional distribution of power?
> 
> It is of no help for a minority to be represented proportionally when 
> still a mere 51% majority can make all decisions!

If the assembly is elected using a majoritarian method, then that 51% 
majority is a majority of a majority. Thus, even with the constraint of 
power inequity, a majority of a representative body is better than a 
majority of a majority.

> So, if you really care about the rights of minorities, the consequence 
> would be to also promote some non-majoritarian, truly democratic 
> decision method for the representative body itself. Examples of such 
> methods have been discussed here.

That's right, but it would also have to be somehow moderated so that the 
result isn't just that the position puts some laws into effect (or elect 
a government), and then, because they lose temporary power, what was 
opposition and now is position uses all of *their* power to cancel it 
(or elect another government), making the collective decision pattern 
oscillate wildly.

One possible way to handle this would be to increase the majority 
required to pass anything from 50%+1 to, say 55%, or 60%, towards 
consensus. That'll have a bias towards the status quo, but not towards 
any given political majority in the assembly, and it won't have problems 
with hunting.

Another "non-compensation" option is to weight the coalitions so that 
they get near-equal power by Banzhaf calculations. But in party-neutral 
systems, who the "coalitions" are is not obvious, and there may be that 
there's no solution even in declared-party systems; for instance, 
there's no way that I know of to adjust relative assembly seat 
proportions so that coalitions have Banzhaf (or Shapely-Shubik) power of 
  40%, 31%, 29%. The power indices won't be relevant if some coalition 
members vote "against the grain", either.