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The Crisis of Party Politics and Electoral Reform : Suggestions from the New Zealand Case

Janghyun Choi 1

1전남대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The majority of voters are not accredited political parties. This is crisis of modern democracy. When questioning the cause of this crisis, two reasons can be presented. One stems from electorate change and the other is related to an inadequate party system. The first of these is the result of the electorate having been changed by economic growth, social structural change, the growth of cognitive abilities, communal heterogeneity and the development of post materialism. The distance between the electorate and parties has been widened and psychological identification from the former with the latter has been accordingly weakened. Considering the second of these reasons, the two party system cannot be argued to cover the diversities of modern society. These two reasons have interacted retrogressively. In 1993, New Zealanders voted in a referendum to change their voting system from the traditional first-past-the-post (FPP) method to Mixed Member Proportional representation (MMP). The origins of this electoral reform lay in a gradual breakdown of public trust and low confidence in politicians, Parliament, and the simple certainties of the old two-party system. MMP was introduced in New Zealand in 1996 to bring proportionality to the electoral system through the adoption of a ‘mixed member’ system in which the ‘party vote’ would determine the overall number of seats a party could hold in Parliament, and the ‘electorate vote’ would elect the local MP. This mixed member system was designed to reflect the best aspects of the two systems involved. MMP should be introduced to give social minority groups more representation in us parliament as is the case in NZ.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.