We selected the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party for obvious reasons. Those four words became the battle cry of the American Revolution. That phrase or slogan neatly asserts a profound moral principle of governance, a principle that while revolutionary in 1773, is widely accepted today. It expresses the basis for governmental legitimacy. And it succinctly expresses the essence of democracy.
Representative democracy is on the ascendancy around the world.
This worldwide movement has been particularly dramatic in recent years in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Since the sudden and spectacular demise of Soviet Communism and the Soviet Union itself, multiparty elections have been held in many countries that for decades knew only the tyranny of sham elections and one-party rule. This report is our first attempt to record significant efforts at electoral reform in a wide variety of countries, from South Africa to Russia, from New Zealand to the United States. Before 1993, the democracies using mixed member systems were Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria and Senegal. All told, in less than a year, countries comprising roughly 425 million people have switched to mixed member systems.