The Challenge of Proportional Representation: Nobel Laureate Gives a Talk to Students and Staff at HSE University
Eric Maskin, an American economist and recipient of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Economics, gave a talk at HSE University in which he shared his views on the shortcomings of the proportional representation system and outlined his proposals for reform.
According to Eric Maskin, proportional representation is the world’s most widely used parliamentary voting system, employed by about two-thirds of democratic legislatures.
'There are many variations to this system, but the simplest form goes as follows: there is a parliament whose seats are to be filled through an election. Each voter votes for a party that would like to have seats in parliament, and each party then receives a share of the seats proportional to its share of the vote. That is why this system is called proportional representation,' he explained.
In his view, the current system has one major flaw: if no party wins a majority, a coalition government must be formed by several parties. However, as Prof. Maskin noted, such coalitions may fail to reflect voters’ expectations.
He illustrated this problem using the example of the 2022 elections to the Israeli parliament. Under the current system, the president appoints the leader of a party, typically the one with the most seats, as the prospective prime minister and coalition builder. As a result, in 2022, the governing coalition in Israel turned out to be too right-wing, even though more than 50% of the electorate was at or to the left of the median party, Yisrael Beiteinu (YB). Eric Maskin sees a solution in reforming the electoral system. Had the system been different, he suggests, Israel’s political trajectory over the past four years might have taken another course, as different political leaders would likely have made different decisions.
The scientist proposes an electoral rule in which each voter submits a ranking of parties from favourite to least favourite. Each party would then receive a share of parliamentary seats equal to the proportion of first-place rankings it receives. If a party wins a majority of seats, its members of parliament would form the government, and its leader would become prime minister, he suggested.
It is also necessary to account for situations in which no party wins a majority. In such cases, voters’ preferences—expressed through their rankings of parties from most to least preferred—would be taken into consideration, Eric Maskin explained. He also illustrated what the Israeli parliament in 2022 might have looked like under his proposed system, showing that it would have been more left-wing.
Fuad Aleskerov
Fuad Aleskerov, a tenured professor at HSE University, thanked the Nobel laureate for his engaging lecture and invited him to publish the results of his study in the university’s publications once it is completed. 'An interesting method for forming a governing coalition has been proposed, which may lead to a restructuring of party preferences,' Prof. Aleskerov said.
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