Democracy and Proportional Representation

Notes from Popper’s 1988 piece

I came across this 1988 piece in the Economist by Karl Popper – via David Deutsch on Twitter.

I wrote about Proportional Representation very recently, so I’ll avoid repeating what I’ve already said.

The old question.

The old question is “who should rule”? Should it be capital or labour? Should it be the rich or the poor? Should it be the wise or the many?

Even if it should be the competent, the wise and the virtuous that rule, who ultimately decides what is virtuous? And, what is to stop virtuous rulers from becoming self serving and evil?

The new question.

If we don’t know or can’t agree who is virtuous, perhaps we can focus on a more practical question instead – “What is a system that allows an incompetent or evil government to be replaced?”

This, is the new question. This is the reason why Popper supports democracy – because it allows a government to be overthrown without violence – to be replaced by a simple majority, a vote of over 50%.

– My theory of democracy is very simple and easy for everybody to understand. But its fundamental problem is so different from the age-old theory of democracy which everybody takes for granted that it seems that this difference has not been grasped, just because of the simplicity of the theory. – Popper

– All these theoretical difficulties are avoided if one abandons the question “Who should rule?” and replaces it by the new and practical problem: how can we best avoid situations in which a bad ruler causes too much harm? – Popper

Why Proportional Representation does not distribute power proportional to votes, and worse, makes it harder for governments to be replaced.

Proportional representation stems from the belief that the power of each party (or candidate, in single transferrable vote systems) should be proportional to the number of votes each receives.

Yet, this is not what proportional representation achieves. Instead, it encourages coalition governments that form or break apart based on small parties with disproportionate power. Worse, it prevents bad governments from being replaced.

If the virtue of a system of governance is that power should be proportional, a two party system is more proportional in how the power of government relates to the votes of the people. But, this misses Popper’s point. Popper’s emphasis it is that democracy – and a two party system in particular – is virtuous because it is most effective in allowing bad governments to be replaced without violence.

– While proportional representation is based on the idea that the influence of a party should be proportional to its voting power, a coalition government means, more often than not, that small parties can exercise a disproportionately great—and often decisive—influence, both on the formation of a government and on its resignation, and so on all its decisions. – Popper

– with proportional representation, even in the case of a single party governing with an absolute majority and thrown out by a majority of disenchanted citizens, the government may not be turned out of office. It would rather look for the smallest party strong enough to go on ruling with its help. Hence the censured leader of the larger party would still continue to lead the government—in direct opposition to the majority vote and on the basis of help received from one of the small parties whose policies, in theory, may be far removed from “representing the will of the people”. Of course, the small party may not be strongly represented in the new government. But its power will be very great since it may topple the government at any time. All this grossly violates the idea that lies at the root of proportional representation: the idea that the influence exercised by any party must correspond to the number of votes it can muster. – Popper

Side note:

In the first portion of Popper’s critique of proportional representaiton, my interpretation is that he is specifically critiquing list-type systems – such as those in Israel and South Africa – whereby one votes for a party rather than a candidate. He dislikes parties being built into law, while recognising – without an easy answer – that parties tend to get ingrained in any type of system – PR or not. This interpretation of him – specifically on list systems – could be wrong because he is not explicit.