Personalisation | The Constitution Unit Blog

On 26 July the Constitution Unit held a launch event for a new book by Alan Renwick and Jean-Benoit Pilet on the ‘personalisation’ of electoral systems. At the event Alan Renwick outlined the book’s key findings, which were then discussed by electoral experts Justin Fisher, Darren Hughes and Roger Scully. Zander Goss reports on the event.

There is a well-known trend in contemporary democracies towards so-called ‘personalisation’, through which increasing attention is given to individual politicians and candidates rather than political parties. In a new book published earlier this year by Oxford University Press – Faces on the Ballot: The Personalization of Electoral Systems in Europe – the Deputy Director of the Constitution Unit, Dr Alan Renwick, writing with Jean-Benoit Pilet of the Université libre de Bruxelles, offers detailed analysis of one aspect of this phenomenon: the personalisation of electoral systems. At a launch event on 26 July chaired by the Unit’s Dr Jennifer vanHeerde-Hudson, Dr Renwick was joined by a panel of electoral experts consisting of Professor Justin Fisher (Brunel University), Professor Roger Scully (Cardiff University), and Darren Hughes (Deputy Chief Executive of the Electoral Reform Society), to discuss the book’s findings and its implications for electoral reform in the United Kingdom.

The ‘personalisation’ of electoral systems

Alan Renwick began the seminar by outlining some of the book’s core arguments. He defined the personalisation of an electoral system as ‘the degree to which voters under that system can express preferences among individual candidates and the degree to which those preferences determine which candidates win election’.

In order to examine trends in such personalisation, the book analyses changes in electoral systems in European democracies since 1945. It finds that electoral reforms changed fundamentally in the late 1980s. Whereas, before that time, there was no trend towards more or less personalised electoral systems, since then, many European countries have shifted their electoral systems towards greater personalisation. Furthermore, the processes underlying these reforms have also changed. Before 1989, electoral reforms were primarily driven by parties and political elites, while public opinion received scant attention. Since 1989, by contrast, reforms have often been motivated – at least in large part – by a desire to respond to public disengagement from or disillusionment with political parties in particular, and politics more generally. Thus, while political elites continue to hold the reins when electoral reforms are enacted, they have grown more responsive – or, at least, have sought to create the impression of being more responsive – to public opinion and voters’ desire for change. Yet the book also finds that these reforms have had only limited effects. There is some evidence that voters are now using opportunities to express candidate preferences in greater numbers, and these preferences are affecting who gets elected to a greater extent than before. But if reforms were intended to tackle rising dissatisfaction with democracy or reverse growing disengagement from electoral politics, there is no evidence that they have done so.

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A new book by Alan Renwick and Jean-Benoit Pilet examines the ‘personalisation’ of electoral systems. In this post, Alan Renwick outlines what such personalisation is, what patterns of personalisation the book identifies across European democracies, and what all of this means for the future of electoral reform in the UK. He argues that the importance of personalisation strengthens the case for first past the post for elections to Westminster but that the system used in European Parliament elections in Great Britain is ripe for reform.

Electoral systems are among the most discussed and studied of all political institutions. Few UK elections pass without debate about whether the electoral rules should be modified. Scholars have examined in enormous detail the effects of different electoral systems upon such diverse aspects of politics and life as the representation of women and minorities, corruption, budgetary discipline, electoral turnout, growth rates, and the stability of democracy.

Yet these debates have long been very partial. Though electoral systems are complex things, the great bulk of attention has focused on just one of their aspects: their proportionality, defined as the degree to which they share out seats across political parties in proportion to votes won. As is well known, the first past the post system used for elections to the House of Commons is not very proportional, whereas the various systems used for European Parliament and devolved assembly elections are more so.

Proportionality certainly matters. But it is not the only feature of electoral systems that deserves our attention. Indeed, as voters have become increasingly disengaged from and disillusioned with political parties, we might expect that their interest in proportionality – defined, remember, across parties – has declined in favour of other concerns.

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