Malapportionment and Income Inequality: A Cross-National Analysis

with level of PT is the average gap between the first and second most popular parties. Regardless of electoral system, which has little association with it, this is the party system variable that is most closely linked with level of PT. It is this form of party system competitiveness that best fosters PT. In terms of elite strategy, grand coalitions very obviously provide the most effective way to minimize disproportionality of government tenure, not a move towards FPP. Under an ideal model of FPP, two parties compete in relative equilibrium in government tenure and long-term voting support. But this ideal is achieved through contingency, and is not systemic. Under FPP proportional tenure of government through alternation in power between two parties may occur, but may not. Jamaica provides the best example in the data to hand. Where this does not apply, under FPP an obvious problem emerges. One party might be consistently dominant, and able to exclude all other parties from office, as in Botswana. Bringing normative theory into play, in such a scenario it is not at all clear why a democratic elitist such as Pinto-Duschinsky would wish to apply proportional tenure as a yardstick of democratic judgement. If an opposition party never gains enough votes to form a government at a single election, why should a democratic elitist ever contend that it should gain office? By contrast, a moderate advocate of PR favouring responsible party government is in a far better position to make such an argument. A PR electoral system makes it possible to recirculate power away from a persistent plurality winner toward a majority coalition of singularly less but collectively more popular parties. Germany provides an example. Proportional tenure is a useful addition to the variables that may be used to evaluate democratic performance, but its limits must be appreciated. In particular, its implications for debates about electoral systems have been greatly over-stated.