Introduction to electoral systems in Nepal

Which electoral system is used and how?

The House of Representatives (HoR) has 275 elected seats while the State Assemblies have 550 seats (SAs). The SAs and the House of Representatives will be chosen using a mixed electoral system, with 60 percent of representatives elected by first-past-the-post (FPTP) and 40 percent using proportional representation utilizing closed lists of candidates submitted by parties. On Election Day, voters therefore cast four votes: one for an FPTP candidate for the HoR, one for an FPTP candidate for their SA, one for the HoR party list, and one for the SA party list.

Source: "Elections in Nepal" International Foundation for Electoral Systems, November 21, 2017, ifes.org/sites/default/files/2017_ifes_nepal_house_of_representatives_and_state_assembly_elections_faqs_final_1.pdf

Advantages of Electoral Constituencies

• Provide voters with strong constituency representation by assigning each voter a single, easily recognizable district representative.
• Stimulate constituency service by assigning each voter an easily recognized 'ombudsman'.
• Maximize accountability because a single representative can be held accountable and re-elected or rejected in the next election.

Source: "Single-Member Districts: Advantages and Disadvantages", Ace The Electoral knowledge Network, aceproject.org/main/english/bd/bda02a01.htm

Disadvantages of Electoral Constituencies

• Must be redrawn on a regular basis in order to maintain population balance.
• They are typically artificial geographic entities whose boundaries do not clearly designate clearly recognized communities, and so have no special value to citizens.
• They are unable to achieve proportional representation for political parties due to their inclination to over-represent the majority party while under-representing other parties.

How were the electoral constituencies delineated?

On July 19, 2017, the Government of Nepal formed an independent Electoral Constituency Delineation Commission (ECDC) to delineate the 165 federal and 330 state constituencies required by the constitution. Each federal constituency is divided into two state-level constituencies. The ECDC consulted a variety of stakeholders, and demarcated the boundaries based on: Constitutional requirement to have at least one electoral constituency in each of the 77 districts, and Population5 as the primary and geographic considerations as the secondary criteria amid other considerations such as transportation and access to government services. The ECDC submitted its report to the government on August 31, 2017. The constituency boundaries will prevail for the next 20 years, and cannot be contested in any court.

Mixed Electoral System

A mixed system is an electoral system that combines a major voting system with an element of proportional representation.

Advantages of FPTP

• It provides a clear-cut choice for voters between two main parties. The inbuilt disadvantages faced by third and fragmented minority parties under FPTP in many cases cause the party system to gravitate towards a party of the ‘left’ and a party of the ‘right’, alternating in power. Third parties often wither away and almost never reach a level of popular support above which their national vote yields a comparable percentage of seats in the legislature.
• It gives rise to single-party governments.
• It gives rise to a coherent opposition in the legislature. In theory, the flip side of a strong single-party government is that the opposition is also given enough seats to perform a critical checking role and present itself as a realistic alternative to the government of the day. It advantages broadly-based political parties. In severely ethnically or regionally divided societies, FPTP is commended for encouraging political parties to be ‘broad churches’, encompassing many elements of society, particularly when there are only two major parties and many different societal groups. These parties can then field a diverse array of candidates for election. In Malaysia, for example, the Barisan Nasional government is made up of a broadly-based umbrella movement which fields Malay, Chinese, and Indian candidates in areas of various ethnic complexions.
• It excludes extremist parties from representation in the legislature. Unless an extremist minority party’s electoral support is geographically concentrated, it is unlikely to win any seats under FPTP. (By contrast, under a List PR system with a single national-level district and a large number of seats, a fraction of 1 per cent of the national vote can ensure representation in the legislature.)
• It promotes a link between constituents and their representatives, as it produces a legislature made up of representatives of geographical areas. Elected members represent defined areas of cities, towns, or regions rather than just party labels. Some analysts have argued that this ‘geographic accountability’ is particularly important in agrarian societies and in developing countries.
• It allows voters to choose between people rather than just between parties.
• It gives a chance for popular independent candidates to be elected. This may be particularly important in developing party systems, where politics still revolves more around extended ties of family, clan, or kinship and is not based on strong party political organizations.

Disadvantages of FPTP

• It excludes smaller parties from ‘fair’ representation, in the sense that a party which wins approximately, say, 10 per cent of the votes should win approximately 10 per cent of the legislative seats.
• It excludes minorities from fair representation. As a rule, under FPTP, parties put up the most broadly acceptable candidate in a particular district so as to avoid alienating the majority of electors. 
• It can encourage the development of political parties based on clan, ethnicity or region, which may base their campaigns and policy platforms on conceptions that are attractive to the majority of people in their district or region but exclude or are hostile to others. This has been an ongoing problem in African countries like Malawi and Kenya, where large communal groups tend to be regionally concentrated. The country is thus divided into geographically separate party strongholds, with little incentive for parties to make appeals outside their home region and cultural–political base.
• It exaggerates the phenomenon of ‘regional fiefdoms’ where one party wins all the seats in a province or area. If a party has strong support in a particular part of a country, winning a plurality of votes, it will win all, or nearly all, of the seats in the legislature for that area. This both excludes minorities in that area from representation and reinforces the perception that politics is a battleground defined by who you are and where you live rather than what you believe in. This has long been put forward as an argument against FPTP in Canada.
• It leaves a large number of wasted votes which do not go towards the election of any candidate. This can be particularly dangerous if combined with regional fiefdoms, because minority party supporters in the region may begin to feel that they have no realistic hope of ever electing a candidate of their choice. It can also be dangerous where alienation from the political system increases the likelihood that extremists will be able to mobilize anti-system movements.
• It can cause vote-splitting. Where two similar parties or candidates compete under FPTP, the vote of their potential supporters is often split between them, thus allowing a less popular party or candidate to win the seat. Papua New Guinea provides a particularly clear example.
• It may be unresponsive to changes in public opinion. A pattern of geographically concentrated electoral support in a country means that one party can maintain exclusive executive control in the face of a substantial drop in overall popular support. In some democracies under FPTP, a fall from 60 per cent to 40 per cent of a party’s share of the popular vote nationally can result in a fall from 80 per cent to 60 per cent in the number of seats held, which does not affect its overall dominant position. Unless sufficient seats are highly competitive, the system can be insensitive to swings in public opinion.

Advantages of PR system

• Faithfully translate votes cast into seats won, and thus avoid some of the more destabilizing and ‘unfair’ results thrown up by plurality/majority electoral systems. ‘Seat bonuses’ for the larger parties are minimized, and small parties can have their voice heard in the legislature.
• Encourage or require the formation of political parties or groups of like-minded candidates to put forward lists.
• Give rise to very few wasted votes. When thresholds are low, almost all votes cast in PR elections go towards electing a candidate of choice.
• Facilitate minority parties’ access to representation. Unless the threshold is unduly high, or the district magnitude is unusually low, then any political party with even a small percentage of the vote can gain representation in the legislature. This fulfils the principle of inclusion, which can be crucial to stability in divided societies and has benefits for decision making in established democracies, such as achieving a more balanced representation of minorities in decision-making bodies and providing role models of minorities as elected representatives.
• Encourage parties to campaign beyond the districts in which they are strong or where the results are expected to be close. The incentive under PR systems is to maximize the overall vote regardless of where those votes might come from. Every vote, even from areas where a party is electorally weak, goes towards gaining another seat.
• Restrict the growth of ‘regional fiefdoms’. Because PR systems reward minority parties with a minority of the seats, they are less likely to lead to situations where a single party holds all the seats in a given province or district. This can be particularly important to minorities in a province which may not have significant regional concentrations or alternative points of access to power.
• Lead to greater continuity and stability of policy.
• Make power-sharing between parties and interest groups more visible. In many new democracies, power-sharing between the numerical majority of the population who hold political power and a small minority who hold economic power is an unavoidable reality. Where the numerical majority dominates the legislature and a minority sees its interests expressed in the control of the economic sphere, negotiations between different power blocks are less visible, less transparent, and less accountable (e.g. in Zimbabwe during its first 20 years of independence). It has been argued that PR, by including all interests in the legislature, offers a better hope that decisions will be taken in the public eye and by a more inclusive cross-section of the society.

Disadvantages of PR system

• Coalition governments, which in turn lead to legislative gridlock and consequent inability to carry out coherent policies. There are particularly high risks during an immediate post-conflict transition period, when popular expectations of new governments are high. Quick and coherent decision making can be impeded by coalition cabinets and governments of national unity which are split by factions.
• A destabilizing fragmentation of the party system. PR can reflect and facilitate a fragmentation of the party system. It is possible that extreme pluralism can allow tiny minority parties to hold larger parties to ransom in coalition negotiations. In this respect, the inclusiveness of PR is cited as a drawback of the system. In Israel, for example, extremist religious parties are often crucial to the formation of a government, while Italy endured many years of unstable shifting coalition governments. Democratizing countries are often fearful that PR will allow personality-based and ethnic-cleavage parties to proliferate in their undeveloped party systems.
• A platform for extremist parties. In a related argument, PR systems are often criticized for giving a space in the legislature to extremist parties of the left or the right. It has been argued that the collapse of Weimar Germany was in part due to the way in which its PR electoral system gave a toehold to extremist groups of the extreme left and right.
• Governing coalitions which have insufficient common ground in terms of either their policies or their support base. These coalitions of convenience are sometimes contrasted with coalitions of commitment produced by other systems in which parties tend to be reciprocally dependent on the votes of supporters of other parties for their election, and the coalition may thus be stronger.
• Small parties getting a disproportionately large amount of power. Large parties may be forced to form coalitions with much smaller parties, giving a party that has the support of only a small percentage of the votes the power to veto any proposal that comes from the larger parties.
• The inability of the voter to enforce accountability by throwing a party out of power or a particular candidate out of office. Under a PR system, it may be very difficult to remove a reasonably-sized center party from power. When governments are usually coalitions, some political parties are ever present in government, despite weak electoral performances from time to time.
• Difficulties either for voters to understand or for the electoral administration to implement the sometimes complex rules of the system. Some PR systems are considered to be more difficult than non-PR systems and may require more voter education and training of poll workers to work successfully.

Necessity of Mixed Electoral System

While MES (Mixed Electoral System) maintains the proportionality advantages of PR systems, it also assures that elected legislators are assigned to geographical districts. However, in situations where voters have two votes—one for the party and one for their local representative—it is not always clear that the local representative vote is less relevant than the party vote in determining overall seat allocation in the legislature. Furthermore, MES can create two types of legislators: one who is primarily responsible to and subservient to a constituency, and another who is drawn from the national party list and is obedient to the party. This could have repercussions for the cohesion of elected political party groups.