[EM] The Global Fight For Electoral Justice: A Primer

[ElectionMethods]

Regarding introduction of PR in Europe, many years ago a German 
housemate told me that PR for post-war West Germany was partly designed 
by academics in the United States who wanted to overcome the 
unfairnesses of U.S. elections (i.e. two-party dominance, and unfairness 
of gerrymandering).


(I presume closed-list PR is dominant in Europe because many members of 
parliament would be unlikely to get re-elected under open-list PR.)


Richard Fobes

On 12/31/2016 3:51 AM, Erik Moeller via Election-Methods wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 30, 2016 at 3:50 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm
> <km_elmet at t-online.de> wrote:
>> (I just stumbled across a possible explanation for European introduction
>> of PR - that it was a reaction to the increasing popularity of socialist
>> parties, where the old parties came to the conclusion that it's better
>> to be a smaller fish in a proportional pond than to be wiped out
>> entirely if the socialists were to gain enough support to become the
>> majority party. See e.g.
>> http://web.stanford.edu/~jrodden/wp/rodden_jan10_workshop_final.docx . I
>> don't know if this is the true reason, but if so, the US would be
>> different since there was no such great threat of socialist majority.)
>