See Jonathan’s update on the prime ministerial vote, which put the former party back in power, despite its poor showing in the election. What was that I was saying (below) about it being hard in the Solomons for voters to throw out the “bums”? It is hard enough at the individual district level. Harder still at the aggregate government level when the cabinet-formation process is all about post-election bargaining and so many outcomes are possible, depending on the way the many non-party MPs break.
The parliamentary general election in the Solomon Islands was on 5 April. About half of the fifty incumbents lost their seats.
I do not follow Solomon Islands politics (can’t follow them all!), but from the little I know, I can surmise that the political process is similar to that of its larger neighbor, Papua New Guinea. Like PNG, the Solomons are one of the plurality-in-single-seat-districts systems that defy even the most relaxed and generalized versions of Duverger’s Law: No two-party system nationally; not even two-party competition at the district level. In fact, hardly a party system at all.
A look at the 2001 results shows a PNG-like fragmentation: Many districts won by very narrow pluralities, often by independent candidates. So, government-formation is all about post-election coalitions and PM candidates providing patronage to individual MPs and their constituents.
It is not as though the defeat of about half the incumbents in the 2006 election was a great sweep of “throw the bums out.” Election outcomes in many districts are almost random, given the numbers of candidates running and the narrow margins. And it is not as if voters in most cases could know on which opposition candidate they should coordinate if they had a collective “will” to oust their incumbent. Nor is there any obvious connection between the district vote and the government outcome, in the absence of broad national parties.
In 2001, by my count (not to be taken as definitive, but it should not be off by much), 12 of 50 districts were won with less than 25% of the vote (one by under 14%!). Another 10 were won by between 25% and 33%. Only ten were won with more than 50%, and nearly all of those were by huge margins, and hence were not meaningfully contested.
In 2001, 26 incumbents were defeated and 19 reelected (the other districts apparently were open seats). In one district, the incumbent obtained only 9.3% of the vote, although that was good enough for third place (against a winner who ‘ran away’ with the race with his 35.5). Obviously, if you do not like incumbency advantage, you will like Solomon Islands elections, where turnover is extremely high.
Twenty two of the 50 seats were won in 2001 by independents, and the largest party won 12 seats. (The BBC story linked above says 20, but I assume this counts independents or candidates of other parties who joined the leading party post-election, but pre-government-formation.)
These patterns are all quite similar to what is seen in PNG elections.
In few places is politics more “local” than in the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea.
PNG has altered its electoral system to Limited Preferential Voting to try and overcome these problems. LPV lets you express only 3 preferences and is otherwise a normal IRV system based on single member districts.
They’ve held 3 successful by-elections for LPV. Its first use in a general election will be in 2007.
Seed planted by Alan — 15 April 2006 @ 00:45
Alan, yes, PNG is now in IRV-land. Thanks for pointing that out. My students know that (because I used it as a case in my PMP class last fall). I should have mentioned it here for my non-PMP blog readers!
Seed planted by MShugart — 16 April 2006 @ 09:49
I’m told that PNG advisers in the RAMSI mission tried hard to persuade the Solomons parliament of LPV’s virtues. IRV’s an excellent solution for any nation whose parliamentary elections are not national or partisan elections.
Seed planted by Alan — 17 April 2006 @ 01:08
There’s a page with election results here – I haven’t taken the time to tabulate them, but I can see at least two pluralities of less than 20 percent. Unfortunately, the candidates aren’t listed by party affiliation although incumbents are specified.
There’s also a summary article here – apparently half the incoming MPs were elected with pluralities of under 30 percent, and only two were elected with majorities.
Seed planted by Jonathan Edelstein — 17 April 2006 @ 19:24
Did I exaggerate when I said that Solomons voters would have a hard time coordinating to “throw the bums out,” given the fragmentation and narrow margins between winning and losing a seat?
I asked the above question at The Head Heeb in response to a post in which Jonathan noted that “the Solomon Islands electorate seems to have voted against Kemakeza,” the incumbent Prime Minister. My comment continues…
I guess the test would be whether, controlling for margin, members of the governing coalition were more likely to lose (or tended to lose more votes compared to the last election) than members not in the coalition.
Jonathan’s response:
The turnover among government MPs did exceed that for incumbents in general. Unfortunately, I don’t yet have figures for their margins of defeat, and given that many of them were independents, I’d be wary of making guesses as to why they lost. Also, the newcomers who replaced them were pretty much a patchwork rather than representing any clear national movement. So for the moment at least, I’d say your point stands.
Seed planted by MShugart — 18 April 2006 @ 06:58
Given all this, I wonder if the Solomons can be said to be a democracy in any meaningful sense. There’s at least some built-in democratic accountability: the candidate with the most votes gets into Parliament, and any MP who displeases his constituents too much is likely to lose the next election. On the other hand, as you point out, there’s no real way to coordinate a nationwide opposition, most MPs don’t represent anywhere near a majority of their districts, and coalition-building is basically a matter of deals between individual MPs. So democratic discipline works only at the district level, and only to a limited extent – voters can punish MPs for bad policies, but they can’t really unite behind good ones.
In any event, the rioting in Honiara seems to be taking a nasty turn – conspiracy theories about Rini’s election being bought with Chinese money, and looting of Chinese-owned businesses. Jews of the Pacific indeed.
Seed planted by Jonathan Edelstein — 18 April 2006 @ 18:45
“Hundreds of rioters took to the streets in the Solomon Islands’ capital of Honiara, looting, burning and turning on New Zealand and Australian police officers keeping peace in the town.
The rampage was sparked by the election of a political insider Snyder Rini as the new Prime Minister. “
Seed planted by Antonio — 19 April 2006 @ 02:09
Australia’s sent additional troops to try and restore order. The Solomons opposition is claiming the new prime minister was improperly elected.
[Maybe it is just me, but that link did not work--MSS]
Seed planted by Alan — 19 April 2006 @ 05:28
On Jonathan’s question of whether the Solomons can be considered a democracy in any meaningful way, I asked my students that question about Papua New Guinea last fall. As I noted above, at a general level, the form of “democracy” in these two countries is quite similar. Many of the students could not accept PNG as a democracy due to the narrowness of constituencies for individual MPs and the absence of nationwide coordination in elections. This was near the end of the course, after surveying the variety of democracies and authoritarian systems. I think it is a very open question. Neither county is a dictatorship, but each sits uncomfortably in the family of democracies.
And that is all before we even consider that there are people ready to riot and loot over the outcome of parliamentary bargaining, as has been happening in the last two days.
Seed planted by MShugart — 19 April 2006 @ 09:10
I’ve got another big Solomons post up now, following on some of the discussion here.
Seed planted by Jonathan Edelstein — 19 April 2006 @ 10:19
[...] A very interesting (and sad) thread has developed here in recent days regarding the degeneration of the political situation in the Solomon Islands since the election results were announced and a prime minister was elected by parliament. [...]
Scion grafted by Fruits and Votes » Blog Archive » Solomons degeneration — 19 April 2006 @ 13:43
[...] Solomons election Propagation: [...]
Scion grafted by Fruits and Votes » Blog Archive » Solomons PM steps down — 25 April 2006 @ 17:47