When football matches -- at least those that must produce a winner -- end in a draw, a penalty shoot-out must resolve the matter, as the last World Cup demonstrated so dramatically. The shoot-out's individual competition for heroism or misery is really alien to such a team game as football, but it is accepted as a necessary way to resolve the stalemate. But when it comes to elections -- which ideally should always produce a winner -- there is no such device.
Yet quite a few recent elections have ended in a near-stalemate. Mexico's presidential election is only the latest example. Several weeks ago, the general election in the Czech Republic yielded a total impasse, with the left and right each gaining 100 lower-house seats and no resolution in sight. In Italy, a curious rule that provides for a group that has a handful of votes more than the other to get a bonus of several dozen seats in the lower house. Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi's government must operate on a razor's edge in the Senate.
There are other recent examples, including, perhaps most notoriously, the 2000 presidential election in the US. Why are we suddenly experiencing so many close results in democratic elections? How should we best deal with them? And what do they do to the legitimacy of the governments that result from them?
The first question is the hardest to answer. To the committed observer, it does not appear that democratic countries' electorates are so evenly divided along class or similar lines as to cause political stalemate. On the contrary, electorates everywhere seem more volatile, with voters prepared to change their preferences from one poll to the next. Often they want change, and only that.
Nor is there any sign that political ideology has made a return among ordinary people. Yet nowadays divisions between candidates for office are deeper than ever -- and are even sharper among party activists.
This is certainly true in Latin America, where a wave of leftist populism has swept many countries. Several European countries, too, have revealed a less dramatic left-right split, with Spain and Italy -- though not Poland and the Czech Republic -- moving somewhat to the left.
But the real issue is not so simple. Increasingly, the divisiveness of democratic polities reflects a combination of undecided voters, motivated by ephemeral sentiments, and the emergence of political activists, often focused on narrow issues, who exploit electoral volatility for their purposes.
So what can be done in practical terms when division leads to stalemate? One solution is to form a grand coalition, as in today's Germany. It is amazing to watch how quickly Christian Democrats and Social Democrats have forgotten their electoral promises and agreed on a program of higher taxation. One may doubt whether this will increase popular confidence in the political class, but for now, at least, the arrangement is working.
Another possibility is to turn razor-thin majorities into one-sided governments that remain centrist in policy. This is what has happened in Italy, and it may well occur in the Czech Republic. In Latin American countries, on the other hand, an all-or-nothing attitude seems to prevail, with 50.1 percent of the popular vote regarded as being sufficient to stage a revolution of sentiment, if not of policy.
What does this do to the legitimacy of governments, and of political institutions in general? As long as winners with razor-thin majorities, once in office, steer a middle course, they are more likely to remain acceptable to an electorate that is more volatile than divided.
By contrast, grand coalitions are, in the long term, likely to raise doubts about the system and encourage radical groups. The same may also be true if narrow winners adopt a radical agenda, as some think President George W. Bush has done in the US and many feared Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador would do in Mexico. Yet, as long as such leaders respect the democratic constitution, they are not likely to get very far; the next election will dislodge them. Playing divisive games with an electorate that is not deeply divided never succeeds for long.
The real question is whether an uncertain electorate is prepared to defend democratic constitutions if an extremist who wins by a hair tries to overturn it and usher in a new era of tyranny. There is currently no such risk in Europe. However reluctantly, former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi accepted in the end that he had lost, if just by a whisker, as did prime minister Viktor Orban in Hungary.
But one conclusion is perhaps more compelling than ever. Britain's last election also produced a narrow outcome. However, seats in parliament, not percentages of the vote are what matters, owing to Britain's winner-take-all electoral system based on single-member constituencies, which encourages political parties to gravitate to the center.
A volatile electorate can replace last time's winner, but both can try to persuade voters and govern without having to go to extremes to gain a majority. The first-past-the-post system is still the most effective method of ensuring orderly change.
Ralf Dahrendorf, a former European commissioner from Germany, is a member of the British House of Lords, a former rector of the London School of Economics and a former warden of St. Antony's College, Oxford.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
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