Choosing an Electoral System to the Ethiopian Multi-ethnic Federation: Issues and Alternatives
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2010
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
AAU
Abstract
In modern democracy parliamentary representatives need to be selected through free, fair and
genuine elections. However, this by itself cannot guarantee all inclusive, fair and legitimate
election results which sustain the whole democratic process unless the electoral system, which
translates the votes in to seats, is rightfully crafted by taking into account the countries' real
contexts. In this watch, designing electoral systems to encourage cooperation, fairness,
bargaining, conciliation, legitimacy, and interdependence among rival politicians and the groups
they represent is becoming attractive for promoting all inclusive and trust worthy democracy.
This is especially true in divided societies, like ours. In view of this, this research reviews the
debate over the various dimensions of the electoral systems. It then presents the major options
and the main empirical and normative arguments in support and against each of the systems.
Accordingly, this research calls the current Ethiopian electoral system in to question, arguing
that it has hampered representation, fairness, legitimacy, multi-partism, and the behavior of the
political parties. As a result, it contends that mixed electoral systems, combining plurality
elections with list proportional representation, the so called Mixed Member Proportional (MMP)
system, which combines the "best of both the worlds" with regards to several aspects of political
representation and accountability among others, surpasses any realistic measurement to be the
best choice to the Ethiopian multi -ethnic federation.
Key words: electoral systems, proportional representation, jirst-past-the-post, mixed member
proportional and majoritarian systems.