That the party line runs counter to public opinion, and that legislative decisions often fail to reflect public opinion, are two concrete examples of what many people from all quarters of society say are signs that our representative democracy is becoming increasingly dysfunctional.
Controversies such as whether to continue the construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in Gongliao District (貢寮), New Taipei City, the scandal over the amendment of the Accounting Act (會計法) and the lack of transparency in the handling of the cross-strait service trade agreement are obvious examples of this situation.
There is little doubt that the vast gap between how the electorate vote and the actual distribution of legislative seats, which is the result of the current legislative election system, is a critical factor behind these problems. This is why the recent constitutional reform proposal for changing the single-member district, double ballot system in the legislative election from a mixed-member majoritarian system to a mixed-member proportional system is gaining wider support.
Indeed, making the legislative structure as much as possible reflect different voter preferences and promote a diversity of views and values so that they are proportionally represented in the legislature would facilitate the sound and smooth operations of our representative democracy. This is also why the mixed-member proportional system, which is a better facilitator of proportional representation, is adopted in many advanced European democracies. However, it is also true that with the extremely high threshold required to revise the Constitution, there is a high degree of uncertainty as to whether Taiwan would be able to make a smooth transition to a mixed-member proportional system.
On the matter of reforming the legislative election system, there is another option worth considering in addition to the mixed-member proportional system and the mixed-member majoritarian system. The third option is to change the legislator-at-large election system from closed lists, as currently practiced, to open lists. The closed-list approach gives political parties the power to prioritize the order of its own legislator-at-large nominees, leaving voters with only two options: whether to support the candidates or not. The voters are not given the opportunity to have a say over the prioritization of nominees.
Closed-list systems can easily result in autocracy in a political party or trading of political interests between individuals or groups. Especially when the order of nominees in legislative elections is determined exclusively by a small group of party elites, the democratic legitimacy of legislators-at-large is greatly compromised. Besides, under such systems, legislators-at-large primarily serve and pledge allegiance to a political party instead of to voters, so that placing the party line above public opinion becomes be the norm. Past controversies over the nomination of legislators-at-large by the two main parties and the criticism of the performance of these legislators are evidence of the reality of the aforementioned flaws of the closed-list system.
That is why many nations have adopted some form of open-list system in their legislator-at-large elections. In these systems, voters, in addition to voting for political parties, can also exert a certain influence on the priority of the parties’ nominees for legislator-at-large seats. In Austria and Sweden, for example, voters can vote for individual candidates in addition to voting for parties. Hence voter preferences are allowed to directly affect the nomination priorities in legislator-at-large elections, thereby giving those candidates favored by voters a higher chance of being elected.
There are also other variations on the open-list system, but the basic idea is to give voters greater decision power so that they no longer have to blindly support everything the party throws at them. The open-list system is, on one hand, more in line with democratic values than the closed-list version, and, on the other hand, it also creates a different ball game in which legislators’ service is no longer directed at a political party, but at the public. In addition, relevant studies conducted in newly democratized countries in eastern Europe also show that the adoption of an open-list system improves governance and the implementation of important values such as transparency, civic engagement and democracy.
The nominations and priority sequence of legislators-at-large in our nation are completely controlled by a few political party elites. Voters can only choose to vote for a political party, but have no influence on the nomination process beforehand, nor do they have a clear idea of how to recall an unfit legislator-at-large. As a consequence, the system renders at-large legislators slaves to their political parties.
A question worthy of serious consideration is whether this really is the kind of legislator-at-large we want. Why not adopt an open-list system so voters can be directly involved in selecting legislators-at-large? This would also push at-large legislators to prioritize public opinion over the party line, and voters could finally stop being voting machines for political parties.
To fix our dysfunctional representative democracy, a constitutional amendment is certainly necessary, but it should not obscure the responsibilities of the main parties to revise the law and implement reform. Adopting an open-list system for legislator-at-large elections is a great example of how that could be done by amending the law without amending the Constitution.
Huang Kuo-chang is an Academia Sinica associate research professor.
Translated by Ethan Zhan
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