TY - JOUR
T1 - The overstated merits of proportional representation. The Republic of Macedonia as a natural experiment for assessing the impact of electoral systems on descriptive representation
AU - Wagner, W.M.
PY - 2014
Y1 - 2014
N2 - For the comparative study of the effects of electoral systems on the descriptive representation of ethnic minorities in parliament, Macedonia is a highly interesting case because the country had several elections under majoritarian as well as under proportional systems. Whereas most observers claim that ethnic Albanians have benefitted from the introduction of proportional representation, the article argues that the merits of PR have been overstated. First, scholars have often only reported members of political parties but not independent candidates in parliament. Second, when comparing the share of seats before and after the introduction of PR, the growing share of the Albanians in the population is usually ignored. © 2014 The Editor of Ethnopolitics.
AB - For the comparative study of the effects of electoral systems on the descriptive representation of ethnic minorities in parliament, Macedonia is a highly interesting case because the country had several elections under majoritarian as well as under proportional systems. Whereas most observers claim that ethnic Albanians have benefitted from the introduction of proportional representation, the article argues that the merits of PR have been overstated. First, scholars have often only reported members of political parties but not independent candidates in parliament. Second, when comparing the share of seats before and after the introduction of PR, the growing share of the Albanians in the population is usually ignored. © 2014 The Editor of Ethnopolitics.
U2 - 10.1080/17449057.2014.916125
DO - 10.1080/17449057.2014.916125
M3 - Article
SN - 1744-9057
VL - 13
SP - 483
EP - 500
JO - Ethnopolitics
JF - Ethnopolitics
IS - 5
ER -