The Politics of Diplomatic Recognition

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was sworn into office on Friday.

The U.S. government last week announced it would not validate the results of Venezuela’s contested presidential election,  in which Hugo Chavez’s former Vice President, Nicolas Maduro, narrowly defeated challenger Henrique Capriles. Capriles’s campaign has called for a recount, but Maduro has refused. And while the Union of South American Nations (Unasur) has called for an emergency meeting to address the situation in Venezuela, many South American states, including Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, and Peru, have already recognized Maduro’s new government.

It’s important to note that recognition here is not the same as formal diplomatic recognition, though media reports make it difficult to understand the difference. Diplomatic recognition refers to the formal recognition of states and their governments. States will often use diplomatic recognition as a tool to promote or punish particular actions. The most notable examples of this include Taiwan, which the United States recognizes but China does not.

Diplomatic recognition can also take de facto or de jure forms. De facto recognition refers to the informal recognition of a new country. In this sense, Taiwan has de facto recognition by China in so far as China engages in negotiations with the Taiwanese government. But it does not give de jure, or legal, recognition. There is no Chinese ambassador to Taiwan. Similarly, after the Russian Revolution of 1917, Great Britain and the United States offered de facto recognition well before they engaged in the de jure exchange of ambassadors.

So if the United States’ decision via-a-vis Venezuela is not referring to diplomatic recognition, what exactly is it referring to? Here, we’re considering whether or not the United States considers the outcome of the election to be reflective of the will of the people? Were Venezuela’s elections, in other words, free and fair? The United States is effectively asserting they were not, and the government that resulted from them thus lacks legitimacy (and by extension, recognition).

What do you think? Should the United States withhold recognition of the new Venezuelan government? Are Venezuela’s most recent election results reflective of the will of Venezuela’s people? Take the poll or leave a comment below and let us know what you think.

Kings, Queens, and Contemporary European Politics

The Netherland’s Queen Beatrix Addressing Parliament.

The Netherland’s Queen Beatrix last week abdicated her position, handing the monarchy to her son, Willem-Alexander. Her decision was seen as both unexpected and usual, bucking the trend of other European monarchs, such as those in Spain, Belgium, Sweden, and Denmark, which have held on to power despite personal and political challenges. While far more popular than her son, it is unlikely that Queen Beatrix’s resignation will have any lasting effect on Dutch politics.

But what exactly do kings and queens do?

Many European countries retain a hereditary monarchy by tradition. The functions of the executive, which are fused into a single office in the United States, are separated into two offices under these systems. The monarch usually serves as the ceremonial head of state, while a president or prime minister serves as the head of government. The responsibilities of the head of state are largely symbolic; real power is vested in the head of government. In the United Kingdom, for example, Queen Elizabeth is the ceremonial head of state, while Prime Minister David Cameron is the active head of government. Queen Elizabeth performs public duties like opening parliament and receiving ambassadors, while David Cameron performs the real governing, introducing legislation, making policy decisions, and so on.

The separation of the two positions carries some advantages. In countries like Belgium, where language politics have created strong divisions within the country and made governance (at least at the national level) effectively impossible, a ceremonial head of state (King Albert II) can provide a sense of continuity and acts as a symbol of national unity. There are also some who argue that the separation of the two positions creates additional checks on the power of the government. In the United Kingdom, for example, Queen Elizabeth II must give “royal assent” (approval) to all legislation passed by parliament. While royal ascent has not been withheld in Great Britain since the 1700s, it has been denied more recently in some former British colonies. Canada’s Governor General (the Queen’s representative in Canada), denied royal assent to a bill in 1963. Despite its rare usage, many groups lobby the Queen to deny royal assent on measures they oppose.

That said, ceremonial heads of state can sometimes create headaches for

Spain’s King Juan Carlos Safaris in Botswana.

political leaders. Take, for example, Spain’s King Juan Carlos’s decision last year to participate in a €10,000-a-day hunting safari in Botswana as the country’s struggled with an ongoing economic crisis and an unemployment rate reaching 30 percent—hardly the image Spain wanted to project at the time.

What do you think? Does the division of executive power into multiple offices establish a stronger, more effective, or more democratic government? Or does it merely create greater opportunity for corruption and uncertainty? Would support the creation of a separate head of state in the United States? Take the poll below or leave a comment and let us know what you think?

Revisiting British Membership in the European Union

British Prime Minister David Cameron delivered his long awaited speech on the future of British membership in the European Union today. The full transcript of his speech is available on the BBC website.  The 38 minute speech is also available below.

In the speech, Cameron promises a referendum on British membership in the European Union if his Conservative Party wins reelection in 2015. The ballot, according to Cameron, will permit British voters the opportunity to choose between renegotiating British membership or complete British withdrawal.

Reaction to the speech was strong and quick. Germany warned that the United Kingdom could not “cherry pick” its membership criteria, while France asserted that an “a la carte” EU membership was not on the table. The United States has also weighed in on the debate, with President Obama last week asserting that, “he United States values a strong UK in a strong European Union.”  Obama’s preferences were reiterated by US Assistant Secretary for European Affairs, Philip Gordon, who today stated  “We have a growing relationship with the EU as an institution, which has an increasing voice in the world, and we want to see a strong British voice in that EU… That is in America’s interests. We welcome an outward-looking EU with Britain in it.”

The move, as we discussed last week,  appears to be a function more of domestic British politics than broader multilateral interests. Flanked on one side by nationalist parties in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland demanding greater devolution of political authority and on the other by British nationalists expressing a strongly Eurosceptic worldview, Cameron’s maneuver appears to have more to do with securing reelection of his party than developing a coherent policy towards Europe. Nevertheless, Cameron’s policy could have interesting implications for both British and European politics…even if we have to wait until 2015 to figure out exactly what those implications are.

The Future of Britain and the European Union

Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron

The hostage crisis in Algeria forced British Prime Minister David Cameron to delay a long-awaited speech outlining his government’s view of the future of British involvement in the European Union. Nevertheless, in a truncated address over the weekend, Cameron asserted that the European Union is undergoing a process of “fundamental change,” and that a central component of that change must be addressing the “gap between the EU and tis citizens which has grown dramatically in recent years and which represents a lack of democratic accountability and consent that is—yes—felt particularly acutely in Britain. If we can’t address these challenges,” Cameron stated, “the danger is that European will fail and the British people will drift toward the exit.”

Cameron stopped short of calling for a referendum on British membership in the European Union, as some in his party had been calling for. Nevertheless, the thought that a sitting British Prime Minister would contemplate leaving the E.U. has caused concern on both sides of the Atlantic. According to the British Mail Online, President Barack Obama called Prime Minister Cameron, urging him to express his commitment to British membership in the EU and noting that the European Union has spread “peace, prosperity and security” around the world.

The idea that the European Union suffers a democratic deficit is longstanding. A democratic deficit occurs when organizations (like the United Nations or the European Union) fall short of living up to the principles of democracy and representation to which they are ostensibly committed. In the case of international organizations like the EU, the relative weakness of popularly-elected institutions (the European Parliament) vis-à-vis the power of the major players (the European Commission and the European Council) often lead to assertions of a democratic deficit. Yet the structure of the European Union privileges the position of Member States relative to the position of European citizens. The most powerful institutions within the European Union, in other words, are beholden to the governments of Europe rather than directly to its people.

So why all the fuss?

Cameron is likely responding more to domestic British politics than to changing dynamics or concerns at the European level. Certainly the ongoing economic crisis in Europe is a reason for concern. The threat of a Eurozone meltdown (led by Greece, but fueled also by Spain, Portugal, and perhaps even France) give reason for pause. But Britain is not a member of the Eurozone and consequently maintains considerable economic and fiscal policy autonomy.

Rather, the growing influence of euroscepticism on the domestic British political scene likely plays a greater role. More specifically three trends are driving policy reform. First, the traditional pro-free trade elements of the Conservative party have increasingly been challenged by more Eurosceptic elements, including the Cornerstone Group, which claims some fifty conservative MPs as members, including several members of the cabinet. Second, the rise of several small parties, including the UK Independence Party and the British National Party, have exacerbated these concerns. Finally, a broad level of euroscepticism appears to be gaining support among the British electorate. According to recent public opinion polling, half the British population now supports British withdrawal from the European Union.

Importantly, the United Kingdom is not alone in this respect. Eurobarometer polling data show that popular support for EUY membership was waning across many EU member states, most notably in Latvia, Hungary, and the UK, in which all are home to a majority population opposing EU membership. Every EU member state now has at least one political party with an anti-EU platform.

All of this raises questions about the future of the European Union. What do you think? Does has European integration hit is high water mark? Are we now witnessing the beginning of the end of the EU? Or does all this talk of withdrawal merely represent politically maneuvering and bluster? Take the poll or leave a comment below and let us know what you think.

British Union and Devolution in Northern Ireland

Police respond to protests in East Belfast, Northern Ireland.

About 100 loyalists attacked police officers in East Belfast last week, using bricks, bottles and fireworks as part of a broader (nonviolent) protest against the decision of City Hall to fly the union flag on certain days. One person was arrested on charges of attempted murder after shots were fired at police. Police closed off certain areas of the city and responded to protesters with water cannons.

The protests mark a reversal in the progress towards peace in Northern Ireland. Following protracted negotiations between loyalists (those who want to remain part of the United Kingdom) and unionists (those who want independence for Northern Ireland), the Good Friday agreement was signed in 1998. The agreement established the Northern Ireland Assembly, which ensured representation for key political groups using an electoral system that encompasses both proportional representation and single-transferrable vote elements.

Recall that proportional representation provides seats in the legislature in relation to the portion of the national vote a party receives. Thus, if a party receives 20 percent of the popular vote, it is entitled to 20 percent of the seats in the legislature. Single-transferable vote requires voters to rank-choice their preferences, so that if no candidate receives a majority of the votes cast, the votes earned by the lowest ranked candidate are redistributed to the voter’s second choice, and so on, until a candidate receives an absolute majority. Both systems are intended to promote inclusion of minority voices in the parliament.

The establishment of the Northern Ireland Assembly was also part of a broader political agenda of devolution, or the dissemination of power from the national government to regional and local governments. The most well-known example of devolution is the Scottish Parliament, established in 1998, which has successfully governed Scotland under the terms established by the British government since then. In Northern Ireland, devolution was been more problematic, and the Northern Ireland Assembly has been suspended on several occasions as a result of political instability and violence.

The devolution of political authority to Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland has raised interesting questions in British politics. Perhaps the most interesting is known as the West Lothian question (sometimes also called the England Question). The West Lothian question is the result of the devolution of political authority in the United Kingdom. National legislatures in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland were established to deal with domestic affairs in those countries, while the (national) British Parliament in London continues to deal with key areas of reserved powers (such as national defense and currency) as well as issues of local interest to England. But while all countries are represented in the national parliament in London, regional parliaments have no national representation. Thus, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish members of parliament vote on domestic English issues, while English MPs do not vote on Scottish, Welsh, or Irish domestic issues. Many English MPs view this as fundamentally unfair, and the British government recently established a panel (the Commission on the Consequences of Devolution for the House of Commons) to investigate the question and report back this year.

What do you think? Is devolution politically problematic in the United Kingdom? Is it unfair? And how is it related to recent developments in Northern Ireland? Take the poll or leave a comment below and share your thoughts.

Scottish Autonomy and the Problem of National Sovereignty

Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond (left) and British Prime Minister David Cameron (right) sign an agreement to hold a referendum on Scottish independence in 2014.

Earlier this week, the British and Scottish governments reached an historic agreement that would see Scotland hold a referendum asking voters to decide whether Scotland would become an independent country or remain as part of the United Kingdom. Numerous issues are at stake, not least of which is control of the estimated 20 billion barrels of oil and natural gas located under the North Sea.

There is good reason to think that British Prime Minister David Cameron is making a strong political move. While the Scottish National Party has polled well in recent elections, the idea of Scottish independence is much less popular than the party which supports it. A recent poll found that only 34 percent of Scottish voters supported independence, while more than half believed Scotland’s economy would suffer if it declared independence.

What’s Braveheart got to do with it?

The referendum will take place in 2014, coinciding with the 700^th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn, where the Scots, under the leadership of Robert the Bruce, famously defeated English forces led by King Edward II. Interestingly, the strongest level of support appears to come from those Scots who came of age in the mid-1990s, when the film Braveheart popularized the Scottish struggle.

The move towards a referendum on Scottish independence raises one of the classic challenges of global politics: the problem of national sovereignty. The idea of national sovereignty links the concepts of state (the physical territory) and nation (the people who inhabit that territory and share a common sense of belonging). Within a country, the idea of legitimacy links the people and the state through the concept of sovereignty. The right of the state to exercise power, according to political thought since the Enlightenment, is rooted in the social contract. Since the end of World War II, and particularly since the end of the Cold War, the legitimacy of nondemocratic states has been strongly questioned.

The problem, of course, is at what level such popular consent takes place. The historical patterns of development has resulted in international legal boundaries between states which rarely correlate neatly with the common identity of those who inhabit those states. Indeed, it is relatively rare for the geographic boundaries of the political entity of the state and the cultural/ethnic entity of the nation to correlate much at all. Yet the tidy nation-state represents the ideal type of international relations.

Far more common are multinational states, countries in which multiple nations often compete for control of the state. Nigeria is perhaps the most well-known example. There, more than 250 ethnic groups—the three largest of which comprise about two-thirds of the population—compete for power. One of the most important legacies of colonialism in Africa was the creation of lasting political boundaries that bare little correlation to the politics on the ground, often undermining the sovereignty and legitimacy of the post-colonial state.

The status of the United Kingdom is similarly complicated by its history. There, four distinct “countries” are united. England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland exist as “countries within a country.” Over the past twenty years, political authority has increasingly devolved from the unitary state. Political power has been decentralized away from London and towards regional governments. Independence in Scotland would represent a dramatic culmination of that (admittedly much slower) historical trend.

And other groups might be watching. Around the world, there are countless groups who identify themselves as stateless nations. The Palestinians are perhaps the most well-known, but others include the Basques in Spain, the Tamils in Sri Lanka, the Uighurs in China, the Hmong in Southeast Asia, and the Kurds in Iraq and Turkey

What do you think: Should Scotland declare independence? What would the political, economic, and social implications of such a move likely be? And how would Scottish independence affect the claims of other nationalist groups seeking independence, such as the Basques, Tamils, or Kurds? Take the poll below or leave a comment and let us know what you think.

Merging Missions: A New Commonwealth Foreign Policy

British Foreign Secretary William Hague

The British and Canadian governments yesterday announced plans to launch a network of shared diplomatic missions. This initiative is intended to expand the reach of both countries, to counter the perceived growing influence of the European Union in global diplomacy, and to reduce the costs of maintaining missions around the world. It is hoped that Australia and New Zealand will join the initiate to create a network of “Commonwealth diplomatic missions.”

The current proposal, announced by British Foreign Secretary (and noted Eurosceptic) William Hague on Monday, would see Britain use Canadian diplomatic facilities in locations where there is currently no British mission, and vice versa. Hague hinted yesterday that this could lead to closer cooperation between the two countries moving forward. Canada and Australia already have a similar agreement, known as the Canada-Australia Consular Services Sharing Agreement, under which citizens of one country can receive consular assistance from the diplomatic missions of the other country.

The US Embassy in Brussels

All of this raises the question: What exactly do embassies and foreign missions do, anyway? The Council of American Ambassadors has an interesting list, written by Philip Lader, the US Ambassador to the Court of St. James (Great Britain). Generally, these services fall into three categories.

First, diplomatic missions provide assistance to home country nationals. An American living in Belgium, for example, might visit the US Embassy to register the birth of a child, obtain a social security number, or renew a passport. The diplomatic corps also provides limited assistance to Americans detained for committing a crime while abroad. In crisis situations, the diplomatic mission may also be called upon to evacuate personnel from the country during an emergency.

Second, diplomatic missions provide assistance and information to foreign nationals about the home country. Again, the American mission in Belgium might provide information about immigration to the United States, process requests for visas. Its staff might also perform public outreach (sometimes referred to as public diplomacy) by, for example, meeting with local schoolchildren or hosting events on American holidays.

Finally, but perhaps most importantly, diplomatic mission are expected to represent the interests of the home country in dealings with the host country. The US diplomatic mission in Belgium, for example, would engage in negotiations with the Belgian government across a wide range of issues, including trade, security, or other issues. US diplomatic staff would meet with personnel from the Belgian government to press US interests, and to hear Belgian concerns about US policy. In extreme situations, the US ambassador could be recalled by the US government (or expelled by the host government) to demonstrate dissatisfaction with a policy or decision.

What do you think: Does the proposed linking of British and Canadian diplomatic missions in selected locations sound like a good idea? How do you think it might affect British and Canadian foreign policy, if at all? Should other countries, like Australia and New Zealand, join the initiative? What dangers, if any, do you see in such a proposal? Let us know what you think.

The Strange Case of Julian Assange

Julian Assange addresses supporters from the Ecuadoran Embassy in London.

A little over a week ago, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was granted asylum in the Ecuadoran embassy in London. Assange had been slated for deportation to Sweden on charges of sexual assault. Assange is, of course, most well-known for his role as the head of Wikileaks, an organization that rose to prominence after it leaked more than 250,000 US diplomatic cables covering a wide range of topics in 2010.

The decision of the government of Ecuador to grant Assange asylum raises some interesting questions in international law. Traditionally, diplomatic missions are considered extraterritorial; that is, they are exempt from the jurisdiction of local law enforcement. While not necessarily considered the sovereign territory of the represented state (as is often incorrectly depicted in films and television), diplomatic missions nevertheless enjoy a special status which preclude local law enforcement officials from entering without the consent of the controlling state.

This status, afforded by the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, means that embassies are sometimes used by individual seeking to escape from the host country. In April 2012, for example, Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng was granted asylum in the US Embassy in Beijing, sparking a diplomatic row between the Chinese and US governments. In 2010, Iranian nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri sought refuge in the Pakistani embassy in Washington DC, claiming he had been kidnapped from Iran by covert US forces. Eventually he was returned to Iran.

Assange’s case follows in this tradition. While he faces criminal charges in Sweden, Assange maintains that those charges are politically motivated, resulting from his decision to leak classified US documents. Assange believes that if he is deported to Sweden, he will ultimately be departed to the United States, where he could ultimately face the death penalty on charges arising from the Wikileaks case. British officials have refused to permit Assange transit under Ecuadoran diplomatic cover, effectively confining him to the Ecuadoran Embassy in London.

Even without violating the Vienna Convention, Britain has several options. Under the Diplomatic and Consular Premises Act, passed by the British Parliament in 1987, the government of the United Kingdom could revoke the Ecuadoran Embassy’s diplomatic status, potentially permitting police to enter the premises and arrest Assange. The British government, however, would likely not want to undertake this dramatic course of action. The Act was originally passed in response to the 1984 Libyan Embassy crisis, when a British police officer was shot and killed by a bullet fired from inside the Libyan Embassy in London.

A far more likely course of action, however, is that the British government will continue to maintain officers outside the Ecuadoran Embassy, patiently waiting for Assange to come out. Diplomatic immunity does not extent to Assange outside of the Ecuadoran Embassy, so ironically he remains free only so long as he stays inside the Embassy itself. And in case you’re wondering, that can be a long time. Cardinal József Mindszenty sought political asylum in the US Embassy in Budapest following the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. The Soviet-backed Hungarian government refused to permit him to leave the country. As a result, he lived in the US Embassy in Budapest from 1956 until 1971, when he was permitted to leave the country for exile in Austria. Whether or not the Assange case will stretch out that long remains to be seen.

What do you think? Should the government of Ecuador have granted Assange asylum? Should the United Kingdom maintain a wait-and-see approach to the case? Or is more dramatic action called for? And if the United Kingdom entered the embassy without Ecuador’s permission, how would that decision affect other embassies and diplomatic staff around the world?

The Challenge of a Two-Speed Europe

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy at the Summit of EU Heads of State.

The recent spate of crises in the European Union has once again raised questions about the future of the European Union. As Greece and Ireland struggle to rebuild their economies, the debate over the future of the European Union is once again on the stage. At one extreme, Germany and France continue to push for further integration, particularly within the eurozone, the group of seventeen countries using the euro as their unified currency. At the other end, euroskeptics in the European Parliament continue to debate the need for the EU in the first place. Governments in the United Kingdom and many of the former Soviet-bloc countries appear to be hesitant about further economic integration.

This tension, which has long been known as the problem of a two-speed Europe, has become more pronounced in light of recent economic crises and the pressure placed on the euro by the collapse of the Greek and Irish economies. Blogging at the Finanical Times, Philip Stephens points out  that the euro has to date been maintained largely by the sheer will of the German government and its willingness to devote considerable resources (not to mention foreign policy clout) to support the euro and prop up several of the weaker European economies.  Euroskepticism, in other words, has not reached the German Länder. This is not to suggest that German magnanimity is the basis of the euro…Germany clearly benefits as well, as its exports to the rest of the eurozone indicate. But what happens if Germany decides that the euro is no longer a core part of its foreign policy vision?

Or more to the point, is the euro in danger? There is good reason to believe that future crises are in store for the eurozone. The economies of Portugal, Italy, and Spain leave considerable room for concern.

A far more likely scenario, however, would be the continued development of a two speed Europe, with France and Germany leading the charge for a more integrated economic policy within the eurozone, while Britain, the Scandinavian states, and many of the former Soviet-bloc countries, standing on the sidelines of economic integration while moving forward with political union. Certainly some interesting things to consider.

Clegg the Kingmaker

Gordon Brown, Nick Clegg, and David Cameron

Results from yesterday’s election in the United Kingdom are in, and they produced some surprising results. The Liberal Democrats, which had been riding high in the polls, performed worse than forecasted, losing five seats. As most analysts had been projecting, the Conservatives, who have been out of power for thirteen years, won a plurality of the votes. But they fell short of winning a majority of seats in the parliament—a situation referred to as a hung parliament. As a result, the Conservatives will likely be forced to enter an agreement with one or more of the smaller parties—most likely the Liberal Democrats—to gain control of parliament and the right to name the next Prime Minister.

The elections raise a few important points for students of comparative politics. First, they illustrate the challenges of Britain’s (and by extension, the U.S.) first-past-the-post system [glossary]. This system, in which the winner of each electoral district or riding is the candidate that secures the most votes, produces stable, majority governments when there are two dominant parties, as in the United States. But when a third party enters the mix, unusual results can develop. Take the results from yesterday’s election, for example.

The BBC is reporting the following results:

Party	Seats Won	Votes Received
Conservatives	305	10,681,417
Labour	258	8,601,441
Liberal Democrats	57	6,805,665
Democratic Unionist	8	168,216
Scottish National Party	6	491,386
Sinn Fein	5	171,942
Plaid Cymru	3	165,394
Social Democratic & Labour	3	110,970
All Others	3	2,406,787
Totals		29,653,638

So what does this tell us about the British electoral system? Several things. First, think about how votes convert into seats. If we look at the average number of votes each party receives to win an individual seat, we get the following:

Party	Votes per Seat Won
Conservatives	35,021
Labour	33,338
Liberal Democrats	117,339
Democratic Unionists	21,027
Scottish National Party	81,897
Sinn Fein	34,388
Plaid Cymru	55,131
Social Democratic & Labour	36,990
All Others	802,262

Consider the data. The Conservatives won 305 seats on 10,681,417 votes. They thus won a seat in Westminster for every 30,021 votes. The Liberal Democrats, by contrast, won just 57 seats on 6,805,665 votes, or one seat for every 117,339 votes. This means that the Conservatives were more than three times as efficient as the Liberal Democrats at converting votes into seats in Westminster.

How does this happen? Winning a district in a first-past-the-post system requires only that you get more votes than any other candidate, not that you receive a majority of the votes cast. If a party receives 30 percent of all the votes cast across the country but does not get more votes than other party’s candidates in any district, it would receive no seats. It’s even possible that a party that receives fewer votes could receive more seats in parliament. Again, the U.K.’s election provides an interesting example. Smaller parties that are concentrated in a relatively small area tend to be over-represented in parliament. For example, the Democratic Unionist Party (a party based in Northern Ireland) won 6 seats on just 168,216 votes. The U.K. Independence Party, by contrast, received more than five times the number of votes but failed to win a single seat in parliament. Voters supporting the U.K. Independence Party tended to be geographically dispersed, this diluting their support across a larger number of ridings (electoral districts). A similar phenomenon regularly occurs in Canada, where the regionally-based Bloc Quebecois tends to over perform, while the nationally-dispersed Liberal Democrats tend to underperform in national elections.

In a proportional representation system [glossary], like that used in most parliamentary democracies around the world, votes are translated directly into seats. A party that receives 40 percent of the votes would be entitled to 40 percent of the seats in parliament. Not surprisingly, proportional representation tends to expand the participation of small parties in parliament, often fracturing the political spectrum into a larger number of smaller parties. This can lead to instability, as the recent history of Belgium and Italy attests.

So how would the British parliament look under a PR-based system? Let’s think about the number of seats each party received and compare that to the percentage of the popular vote each party won, using that figure as an appropriate number of seats that party might win in a hypothetical proportional representation (PR) system. Here’s what we get:

Party	Seats Won under FPTP	% of Seats Held under FPTP	% of Seats Held under Hypothetical PR System	Difference
Conservatives	306	47	36	-11
Labour	258	40	29	-11
Liberal Democrats	57	9	23	+14
Democratic Unionists	8	1	0	-1
Scottish National Party	6	1	2	+1
Sinn Fein	5	0.7	0.6	–
Plaid Cymru	3	0.5	0.6	–
Social Democratic & Labour	3	0.5	0.4	–
Green	1	0.002	1	+1
Alliance Party	1	0.002	0.1	–
UK Independence Party	0	0	3	+3
British National Party	0	0	2	+2

The big winners are the Liberal Democrats, who would net an increase of eleven seats in the parliament. The other winners are the UK Independence Party, the British National Party, the Scottish National Party, and the Greens, all of which net an increase in representation. The big losers? The Conservatives and the Labour Party, each of which would lose eleven seats.

Given these hypothetical results, it’s not surprising that the Liberal Democrats have been pushing hard for electoral reform. It’s also not surprising that the Conservatives and the Labour Party have both historically opposed electoral reform. The interesting question now is whether or not Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, can translate his position as potential kingmaker in any governing coalition into real electoral reform that might solidify the position of the Liberal Democratic in the British political landscape. David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party, has already alluded to the possibility, promising to make a “big open and comprehensive offer” to the Liberal Democrats in exchange for their support. Labour leader Gordon Brown made a similar offer, stressing the “substantial common ground” that exists between Labour and the Lib Dems and promising real electoral reform.

There are, of course, other possibilities. The Liberal Democrats may choose not to enter an agreement with either party but agree not to oppose the Queen’s Speech or budget—a vote against either of the two could constitute a confidence motion in the government, triggering new elections.

Whatever happens, the next few days will certainly be interesting to watch.