Electoral System Origins: Institutional Choice in Hungary

Studies of political institutions in general and electoral systems in particular have focused on their consequences; far less attention has been devoted to institutional emergence. The choice of an electoral system is especially critical for democratizing states, since electoral institutions fundamentally shape the democratic political competition to which new democracies seek a peaceful and stable transition. Hungary in 1989 was no exception in this regard, facing the necessity of a complete restructuring of its institutions of political representation. Less than necessary, however, was the outcome of selecting in this choice process what is arguably the most complicated electoral system in the world. In this paper we explain precisely why Hungary adopted such a system. Our study identi es the signi cant institutional features of the Hungarian electoral system and traces their origins in the 1989 National Roundtable negotiations. We focus on the participants, their positions of in uence and interest, and their motivations in negotiating the Hungarian voting law, using committee and middle-level minutes from the National Roundtable Talks. We also evaluate their expectations and stakes in the eventual outcomes, relying on participant interviews and voting data from the election in 1990 that took place under the new law. We conclude by discussing the Hungarian negotiations in the larger framework of institutional choice. 1 Electoral Systems and Institutional Choice Few students of politics|whether academics preoccupied with theory and political actors designing real world institutions|would contest the claim that political institutions greatly matter. Why and how they matter has been the subject of a growing body of (already not so) \new institutionalism. "1 Whatever the methodological tendencies of the adherents of this school and its variants, the vast majority treat institutions as an independent variable, examining their e ects on policy and political outcomes. By contrast, relatively few have turned attention to institutions as an outcome, examining the origins of institutions especially in particular cases. Work on electoral systems|an important subset of political institutions|mirrors this emphasis on institutional consequences. Electoral systems scholarship has grown remarkably in the decade since a number of prominent scholars recognized the need to focus new attention and modern methods of analysis on the topic (Lipjhart 1985). Several major publications have addressed electoral systems consequences through theoretical and comparative empirical analyses. Work on the relationship between electoral institutions and political outcomes for parties, representation, and governing has proceeded at a rapid pace (Taagepera and Shugart 1989; Lipjhart 1994). Partly this increase in attention is due to the inherent importance of the subject matter. Much of the attention, however, has to do with the needs of increasingly numerous numbers democratizing states who are confronting electoral systems issues not as academic concepts but rather as practical necessities. Recent changes in the world have brought scholars and political decision-makers together, with electoral systems theory in between. The result has been both unprecedented opportunity and unprecedented challenge. What the literature on electoral systems has scantily addressed, however, is the process by which electoral systems are initially chosen. Given that electoral systems determine the subsequent shape and slant of the political playing eld, is surprising that the speci c events surrounding their crafting have not received more attention. Such attention focuses on the players, their interests, and the procedures they followed in adopting a particular set of electoral rules, rather than simply analyzing the post hoc game played according to these rules. With the exception of David Brady and Jongryn Mo's analysis of the institutional choice of the Korean electoral system (1992), we know of no studies which have systematically examined the choice of electoral systems in terms of speci c cases. We propose to extend this literature by intensively examining the adoption of the Hungarian electoral law. Examples such as the Hungarian institutional choice point to even more fundamental political issues than that of general electoral systems design. Institutions structure political activity in any political system, but the founding institutional choices made by emerging democracies are especially crucial because they are likely to have long-lasting consequences; path dependence creates direct or subtle constraints on subsequent political institutions and actions.2 The institutions governing the election of parliament, moreover, are among the most important political institutions for edgling 1For an overview of the rational choice approach see James E. Alt and Kenneth A. Shepsle, eds., Perspectives on Positive Political Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990 and the other volumes in the Cambridge series edited by Alt and Douglass C. North. For overviews and examples of historical and organizational schools within new institutionalism, see Sven Steinmo, Kathleen Thelen and Frank Longstreth, eds., Structuring Politics: Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992 and James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, Rediscovering Institutions: The Organizational Basis of Politics. New York: The Free Press, 1989. 2Douglass C. North, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, p.94. 1 democracies. Electoral laws structure not just the procedures of voting, but also shape the nature and composition of parliament, the character of representation, and ultimately the eld of political competition and cleavages. Thus, the choice of electoral institutions was one of the most important political decisions in the Hungarian transition to democratic rule. Several unique features of the design of Hungary's electoral law, however, make this case a particularly fruitful one for analysis. Hungary's choice process was rst of all collective and negotiated, taking place in a series of negotiations held from June 13 to September 18, 1989, between the communist regime and its satellite organizations, and representatives of the newly formed opposition parties. The purpose of the talks was to guarantee a peaceful transition to democracy from communist rule by creating the institutional framework for free, multi-party elections. The other interesting feature of the Hungarian case is the outcome of the choice process. The outcome of compromise at the bargaining table was a structure whose complexity has virtually no rival in democratic experience. In an election each voter is asked to cast up to three ballots of two di erent types from two di erent voting units; these votes become seats through a combination of majority and plurality rules and two di erent proportional representation allocation formulas; these votes are transferred and shifted between electoral system levels, as are some of the seats they decide; nally, the award of seats at each level depends on votes and registration accomplished at di erent levels. It is no exaggeration to say that the system is a challenge to understand for voters, parties, and even electoral systems scholars. Yet for all its baroque unwieldiness, the Hungarian system has been one of the most stable in Eastern Europe, and is unlikely to be reformed in the current political climate. Our study explains exactly why Hungary chose its complicated electoral system. We trace the source of the multiple tiers of the Hungarian electoral structure to their origins in collective bargaining during the regime transition, evaluating that choice process as well as documenting the speci c facts of the Hungarian case. A full account of the Hungarian case requires signi cant detail into the political context of the events of 1989 and the parties to the Roundtable negotiations. To manage this detail we have divided our paper into sections which the reader may treat according to his or her familiarity with the Hungarian case. Section 2 explains the electoral law, the structure whose origins we propose to explain; section 3 provides an overview of the events leading up to the institutionalization of the electoral system in October 1989. Section 4 delves into the detail of the negotiations over the electoral law, linking the key players and their interests to the speci c features of the Hungarian electoral system. The nal section evaluates the overall process and its unexpected outcome in the broader context of institutional choice. 2 Hungary's Complicated Electoral Law Essentially three distinct electoral procedures, the Hungarian voting system is a hybrid between a majoritarian, single-member district (SMD) system, and a party-list proportional representation (PR) system. For elections to Hungary's unicameral 386-member parliament, each voter casts two ballots in a rst round of voting, and usually a third two weeks later in a run-o round. Voting is geographically based but occurs in two separate districts. Parties compete at three levels: through elding their candidates in SMDs, and by submitting candidates to both territorial and national lists. The rules for determining which candidates and parties are awarded seats at each level are 2 complicated, and each depends on how the other operates during the election. Act XXXIV of 1989 (plus subsequent minor modi cations3) govern the electoral rules to the 386seat single house of the Hungarian legislature. From three levels (or tiers) of the electoral system come 176 seats from single-member constituencies, a maximum of 152 seats from 20 regional party lists, and a minimum of 58 seats from national party lists. Each tier has both inputs and outputs. Inputs for the rst two levels come from parallel but independent ball