Hong Kong 2016-Electoral systems against political parties

The small city-state of Hong Kong held general elections for their Legislative Council on September 4. Hong Kong, though technically a part of China (PRC), was granted substantial autonomy upon its return to China in 1997 by the British (it had previously been a British colony). The citizens of Hong Kong enjoy civil liberties not held by other Chinese, and, to some extent, they are able to choose how they are governed.

It is this extent that has been one of the key areas of debate in Hong Kong politics ever since the handover, and explains why the state's politics have traditionally been between pro-democratic parties (which support rapid transition towards democratic governance) and pro-Beijing parties (which support either no change towards democratic governance, or more gradual change than the pro-democrats).

Executive government in the region is controlled by the 'Chief Executive', and a cabinet of Secretaries appointed by him. The exact method of selection of this Chief Executive is, at present, by a 1,200 member 'Election Committee', which is indirectly elected and comprised of representatives mostly chosen by business interests. This has led to Chief Executives coming from the pro-Beijing faction of Hong Kong politics, which is usually in an electoral minority.

The Basic Law states that "the ultimate aim is the selection of the Chief Executive by universal suffrage upon nomination by a broadly representative nominating committee in accordance with democratic procedures", though no specific timeline is laid down for this process. Last year, I wrote about the proposal for a new way to elect the Chief Executive; direct elections, but with candidates chosen by a somewhat unrepresentative nominating committee, and with the possibility of no candidates from the pro-democratic camp being permitted to contest the election. The change would have required amending Hong Kong's Basic Law, which needs support from two-thirds of the Legislative Council. As the pro-democrats have over a third of the seats, and as they refused to acquiesce to the proposals, the changes were not made.

The Legislative Council's composition is also a bone of contention. Out of the seventy members of the council, thirty are elected from what are known as 'functional constituencies'. These members are elected by people registered as having an interest in certain areas of business, like law, fisheries and banking. Five additional members are elected in a 'super' functional constituency, in which all electors ineligible to vote in one of the other functional constituencies are permitted to vote; only members of local councils may run as candidates in this functional constituency.

On average, each of the Functional Constituencies that went up for election this year had approx. 8,500 voters. This is compared to approx. 62,000 voters per seat elected in a 'geographic' constituency, in which anyone over 18 may vote and stand as a candidate (with the exception of people who refuse to acknowledge Chinese sovereignty over Hong Kong). There is huge variation between the seats, with the largest district (Education) having 482 times the number of voters as the smallest (Agriculture and Fisheries); both elect one member. 

This over-representation of business interests, which tend to support pro-Beijing parties, have ensured a majority for the pro-Beijing faction has prevailed since Hong Kong was returned to China, despite these parties never receiving a majority of the votes in the geographic constituencies. Pro-democratic parties forcefully argue against this, claiming that it is undemocratic, while pro-Beijing parties would argue that given that business makes a large financial contribution to Hong Kong, they should have a large say in governance.

The electoral system for universal suffrage elections

As stated above, however, Hong Kong does allow all voters to choose some members of the Legislative Council. Thirty-five members are chosen in the geographic constituencies; as the name implies, these members are elected from five specific geographic areas. Another five are chosen in the special functional constituency.

The first universal suffrage elections to the Legislative Council took place under British rule in 1991. This was for only eighteen seats, with twenty-one being appointed by the colonial Governor, and another twenty-one being chosen by functional constituencies. These elections took place in nine two-member districts, with voters having two votes for individual candidates. The two candidates with the highest votes would win. 

In general, this system would be expected to result in the party or faction with the most votes winning both seats, given that voters for a party would vote for both of that party's candidates. The results seemed to bear this out, with the pro-democracy parties winning sixteen seats (later increased to seventeen after a by-election) of the eighteen, despite only receiving 58.2% of the vote. This clearly had little impact on the government of the city, since the members were outnumbered by the appointed, generally pro-establishment members. 

At the next election, held in 1995, a number of changes were made to the composition of the Council. Twenty members would be directly elected, and they would be elected in single-member districts, though the electoral system would still be plurality (one vote, candidate with the most votes wins). Nine new functional constituencies were added.

These results were a landslide win for the pro-democratic parties in the directly elected seats; they won 17 with 63% of the vote. This landslide, along with relatively strong support in the functional seats, allowed the pro-democrats to win a narrow majority in the Council. This obviously displeased Beijing, which was scheduled to take over the city in 1997.

For the immediate time, Beijing destroyed the pro-democrat majority Legislative Council by appointing their own Elections Committee to choose a Provisional Legislative Council, which took over the role of the provisional Legislative Council.  However, upon the resumption of elections post-Beijing takeover, an important change was made to the electoral law; for the twenty directly elected members of the LegCo, the single-member plurality system was replaced by party-list proportional representation, in districts with an average magnitude of four members.

The results of the 1998 election, the first held after the handover, resulted in the three main pan-democratic parties securing 57% of the vote. This figure does not include independent candidates, some of whom may have been sympathetic to the pan-democrat cause. These three parties were able to secure thirteen out of twenty seats in the direct seats. However, once the results from the thirty seats elected by the functional constituencies and the ten elected by the Elections Committee came in, the narrow pro-democratic win in the directly elected seats were more than balanced out by the massive pro-Beijing majority on these other seats, allowing the pro-Beijing parties to win a majority.

For the most part, the statement made by the Hong Kong Electoral Commission that results with PR would "more accurately reflect the wishes of the electorate" was correct. At the same time, the Legislative Council was not representative as a whole of the electorate of Hong Kong. PR also had its clear advantages to the pro-Beijing political parties. But the advantages for Beijing do not stop with preventing pan-democrat landslides in the elected seats.

SNTVisation

The specific party-list electoral system that was used for the geographical constituency elections was the largest-remainder method with the Hare quota. This particular method is notable for, compared to other electoral systems, advantaging small parties. It sounds rather counterintuitive, but for largest-remainder proportional representation systems, higher quotas advantage small parties. The reason for this is that distributing seats by remainder is very advantageous to small parties, given that fewer votes are needed for a seat won by remainder than a seat won by quota. Higher quotas also reduce the remainders for parties that win seats with a quota, but do not do that for parties that reach a quota. If you're more interested in this, I would encourage reading Michael Gallagher's paper on the matter.

Under an electoral system where small parties are advantaged, the rational thing for a large party to do is to transform itself into several small parties. The advantages given to parties that win seats by remainder means that these small parties should aim to win seats by remainder only, thus they should aim for each of these lists to win one seat. If elections are between lists, each trying to elect one member, with the lists with the highest M votes being elected (where M is the number of seats to be elected), the electoral system becomes roughly equivalent to the single non-transferable vote.

This process did not happen immediately after PR was introduced, as can be seen below. However, it is in the last two elections that it has become completely pervasive; all lists elected only one member.

For small parties, with enough support to win one seat in a district, SNTV is an easy electoral system to manage. They run a single candidate, and concentrate all their votes on that candidate. However, for large parties with enough support to win more than one seat, there is substantial difficulty involved in maximising that potential. Run too many candidates, or spread your vote too thinly between those you run, and you run the risk of all these candidates receiving too few votes; run too few, or concentrate your votes on only one, and that candidate could win far more votes than other elected candidates, thus depriving your party of seats.

The advantages that the system gives small parties has led to a more fragmented legislature as the number of lists electing only one member has increased, as can be seen below (the 'effective number of political parties' figure measures, roughly, the number of equal-sized political parties equivalent to the actual makeup of the legislature).

The effect of the electoral system, therefore, appears to have been to stunt the creation of a large party on either side of the major political divide. It would not be unreasonable to say that the possibility of a large, unified anti-Beijing party could be concerning to Beijing's interests. This is why, even as the electoral system appears to hurt the pro-Beijing parties, they may be wary about changing it to reward party consolidation.

Did the electoral system hurt the pro-Beijing parties?

The issue of whether the SNTV system hurt the pro-Beijing political parties is somewhat important, given that these parties have authority to amend the electoral law if they so desire. At the 2012 election, there were a number of cases where the pro-democracy parties made nomination errors. This was especially substantial for the Civic Party, which decided to run one list in the New Territories West and Hong Kong Island seats with two incumbents, and encourage all their voters to cast a vote for this particular list.

The strategy backfired quite substantially. In New Territories West, the Civic list received 14.5% of the vote. The quota was 11.1% of the votes, as there were nine seats. As a result, the Civic Party was allocated one seat for their full quota, and then had 3.4% of the votes left as a remainder. This was not enough to beat the other parties; the last seat went to a pro-Beijing list with 6.8% of the vote. Had Civic successfully divided their vote into two, they could have beaten the bottom list and won two seats. Nomination errors along similar lines occurred in other Civic districts.

The usage of functional seats means that the contest in the geographic seats cannot be meaningfully considered important for overall control of the Council. However, given that a two-thirds majority is needed to amend the Basic Law (which entrenches many of the civil liberties given to Hong Kongers), the pro-democrats need to do relatively well in the elected seats in order to ensure that this law cannot be amended without consultation with them.

At this election, however, a substantial fragmenting factor appeared on the pro-democratic side. Localist candidates, supportive of increased autonomy and in some cases independence for Hong Kong, ran for election. These candidates appear to have taken most of their support from existing pan-democrats, which fragmented the anti-Beijing vote. Fragmentation, however, can be an advantage under this electoral system; as stated above, vote division that is a consequence of fragmentation can be useful to parties under SNTV. On the other hand, there were only three large pro-Beijing parties running, and they would have to make difficult internal tactical decisions about how to win the most seats.

So, did the SNTV system advantage the anti-Beijing parties? In order to calculate this, I compared the SNTV results to results using the D'Hondt system and party vote figures. The D'Hondt system with party vote figures is equivalent to what the SNTV system would look like if parties nominated the exact number of candidates as seats they can win, and then divided these votes perfectly between these candidates. This represents what the result would look like if vote distribution were not a factor.

The results of the analysis were that the pro-Beijing parties would gain two extra seats out of thirty-five elected seats. In both of these seats, the seats were lost due to an overly conservative nomination strategy; the party nominated too few lists to win the number of seats that they are entitled to. For example, in the Kowloon West seat, the pro-Beijing Democratic Alliance's one list received 18.8% of the vote, above the 16.7% quota. Under largest-remainder, this list's remainder of 2.1% was not nearly enough to win a seat. However, under D'Hondt, the party's vote was divided by two, meaning that the 9.4% left after the first seat was enough to beat the localist 'Youngspiration' candidate, with 7.4% to the last seat.

If the results of this election are anything to go by, then, it may be in the political interests of Hong Kong's pro-Beijing parties to introduce a system, potentially like D'Hondt, that rewards consolidated parties. However, as stated above, this could conflict with broader political goals in Beijing to encourage the pro-democratic parties to be fragmented and to have internal arguments.

A pattern? Macau's electoral system

Macau is another one of the territories returned to China by Portugal where China's political system does not fully operate. Like Hong Kong, Macau has a Legislative Council which is partially elected directly and partially elected through 'functional constituencies', though there are also seven members appointed by the Chief Executive. The Chief Executive, who performs a similar function to the identically named leader of Hong Kong, and is chosen by a similar, not directly elected, Elections Committee.

In Macau, only 14 of 33 members of the Legislative Council are directly elected, so there is a much smaller risk to the government of the pro-democratic parties winning a large number of seats. However, the electoral system used for those elected seats is uniquely designed to produce party fragmentation.

The electoral system for the elected seats is a variant of the highest averages method, like the D'Hondt method described above. However, when seats are calculated, the list of numbers used starts with one, and then are multiplied by the next number; the list goes 1, 2, 4, 8, 16.... A formula for a party's divisor would be 2^n, where n is the number of seats the party has already won. 

The effect of this is to very heavily penalise large parties, since their vote is divided into much smaller groups as they win more seats. The below chart shows how a party with 1000 votes would have their vote go down to 2 under the Macanese system after ten seats, compared to 100 under standard D'Hondt.

The effects of an electoral system that disadvantages large parties is, obviously, to encourage small parties, or to encourage large political factions to form small parties. This is certainly the case in Macau, where the largest party at the last election had merely 18% of the vote.

While there are only two regions to sample from, it would certainly not seem inconceivable that Beijing would have a political interest in keeping political organisations in the areas that are democratic divided. Electoral systems can have a substantial impact on political party systems, and the two chosen for these regions, by pro-Beijing political parties, encourage small, divided political parties.

Taiwan 2014, Hong Kong, and the People's Republic of China

Taiwan's largest ever local elections are scheduled to be held today, and, despite being a relatively minor election in terms of actual power over Taiwan, they are expected to be a useful barometer of public opinion in an island that has traditionally been a thorn in the side of the People's Republic of China.

What is Taiwan?

Taiwan is not really a 'country', as recognised by most of the world. As Taiwan lays claim to all of China, plus some bits of Mongolia and Central Asia, governments cannot diplomatically recognise 'Taiwan' as an independent country; they have to go for either recognising the People's Republic of China (the commies) as the government of all China (including Taiwan), or recognising Taiwan (the Republic of China) as the government of all China. Most countries go for the former, seeing that Taiwan is less economically powerful and that the People's Republic is no longer really 'communist'. Taiwan has the diplomatic allegiance of a few Pacific and Central American countries (international heavy hitters like Nauru, Palau and Panama), as well as the Vatican City, but most countries have a 'one China policy', although there are usually warm words for Taiwan's democracy from Europe and the United States.

Taiwan was originally part of China, before being ceded to Japan in the dying days of the Empire. After World War 2, Japan handed Taiwan over to the Republican government who at that point controlled China. The civil war between the Republicans (Kuomintang) and the Communists broke out, and the Republicans were forced to retreat to Taiwan.

The Republicans, led by noted egomaniac Chiang Kai-Shek (who had his portrait on Tiananmen Square before Mao) then proceeded to run Taiwan like a military barracks. The original National Assembly and Legislature elected after World War 2 were kept, and elections only took place to fill seats vacated by dying members of these assemblies. Only the three approved parties (Kuomintang, Chinese Youth Party, and Democratic Socialist) were permitted to contest these elections, although independents could also run. Advocating independence for Taiwan was punished by death, and most of Taiwan's small wealth was spent on military equipment, which was useless as Taiwan was too small to either defend attacks from the People's Republic or retake the mainland. Things were not much better under Chiang Chiang-Kuo, Kai-Shek's son, who took over in 1975.

By this point, Taiwan had become an international pariah. Even the United States had cut off diplomatic relations with them, and they had relatively little international aid or military. China were too busy modernising to invade, but had they decided to, they would have squashed Taiwan like a bug. The economy was doing well, but Taiwan had become irrelevant. 

Ching-kuo, however, showed signs of softening in the late 1980s. He appointed a non-mainlander, Lee Teng-Hui, as Vice-President, removed martial law, and sent negotiators to the People's Republic over a hijacked aeroplane. When the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party was formed, he decided not to prosecute it, despite the fact that political parties were technically banned.

After Ching-kuo's death in 1988, he was replaced by Lee Teng-Hui, his vice-president. Lee immediately began a policy of democratisation, introducing direct elections for the National Assembly, Legislative Yuan, and the Presidency. The Republicans won all of these, with the Democratic Progressive vote hovering around 20%-30%. Teng-Hui moved the Republicans away from their reunificationist policy towards a pro-independence policy.

This did not go down all too well with the Republicans. In 1996, the New Party, a right-wing Chinese reunificationist party. contested the Legislative Yuan elections, winning 13% of the vote and 21 seats in the 164 member Yuan. In that election, the Kuomintang won 85 seats and the Democratic Progressives won 54. The New Party collapsed pretty quickly, though, and fell to 11 seats in the  1998 elections (in an expanded Legislative Yuan of 225).

The 2000 presidential election was far more controversial. Reunificationist Kuomintang candidate James Soong was the most popular candidate for the Kuomintang nomination, but Lee Teng-Hui, worried by Soong's radicalism, used his power within the party to nominate Lien Chan, Vice President and a moderate. A jilted Soong ran as an independent, and split the reunificationist vote, electing pro-independence Democratic Progressive nominee Chen Shui-Bian. Chen won only 39.3% of the vote, with Soong winning 36.8% and Chan winning 23.1%.

After the election, Soong formed his own reunificationist party, called the People First party. Teng-Hui, a hated figure within the Kuomintang for his effective election of Shui-Bian, was expelled from the Kuomintang, and formed his own pro-independence party called the Taiwan Solidarity Union.

In the 2001 legislative elections, the Democratic Progressives won 87 seats out of 225, beating the Kuomintang, who only won 68. People First won 46 seats and the Taiwan Solidarity Union won 13. The New Party won just 1 seat, while 10 independents were elected. While the reunificationists did have a majority, enough Kuomintang and People First legislators were convinced into supporting the Democratic Progressive-Taiwan Solidarity coalition.

Shui-Bian's term was very controversial. In his inaugural speech, he had laid out his "Four Noes and One Without" policy, saying that if the People's Republic of China did not take military action against Taiwan, they would not change their name to "Republic of Taiwan", declare Taiwanese independence, promote a referendum on either unification or independence, or promote special relations with the People's Republic. However, during his first term he made many controversial statements that contradicted this above sentiment. He won the 2004 presidential election against a Chan-Soong Kuomintang ticket, but only narrowly, and only after a controversial shooting incident.

In his second term, allegations of corruption made him deeply unpopular. His wife was arrested; he had presidential immunity from prosecution and could not be arrested. His approval rating went down to 8%, and the Democratic Progressive Party was solidly defeated in the 2008 election, losing to the Kuomintang's Ma Ying-Jeou. Chen was arrested, and sentenced to 21 years in prison for corruption.

The current state of affairs

At present, the Ying-Jeou government is supportive of accelerating the pace of unification with China. Free trade agreements have been pushed through the Legislative Yuan, direct travel to the mainland became legal, and meetings have been conducted between Taiwanese and People's Republic leaders. 

This was broadly accepted during Ying-Jeou's first term, with support for the Kuomintang remainin g high. In 2012, Ying-Jeou was re-elected against Democratic Progressive chairwoman Tsai Ing-Wen and James Soong, winning 51.6% to Ing-Wen's 45.6% and Soong's 2.8%. 

However, Ying-Jeou's support has quickly ebbed away. His approval rating has dropped significantly since his re-election, and a number of controversies regarding relations with China have dramatically reduced his popularity. Student protest movements have brought attention to perceived corruption and improper ties to China, and Taiwan's economy is still stagnating. 

The Democratic Progressive Party are relatively strong, but Taiwan's polarised political system creates something of a cap on their support. No matter how unpopular Ying-Jeou and his party are, there is a body of voters who will vote for them against the Democratic Progressives no matter what.

Taiwan's new electoral system will have something of an impact, as well. Taiwan used to use the single non-transferable vote system, but a change in 2005 to the mixed-member majoritarian system means that the Taiwanese Parliament is less proportional. This means that if the Democratic Progressives become the largest party in terms of the vote, as they were in 2001, they will likely win a majority in the Legislative Yuan, and have significant power.

The Hong Kong connection

Originally, the People's Republic's plans for unification of China involved the treatment of Taiwan as any normal province. However, Deng Xiopeng's "one country, two systems" proposal, that involved giving Hong Kong and Macau 'managed democracy' and 'regional autonomy'. After Taiwan's democratisation, this proposal was held up by pro-unification Taiwan politicians as a model for Taiwan's reunification.

However, events in Hong Kong may have changed this view somewhat. I have no opinion polling on this, but surely the People's Republic's refusal to allow democratic elections for Hong Kong would erode popular confidence in reunification. Reunification is already unpopular; Hong Kong's protests cannot do anything to make it less so.

What the results say

The result of the election were fairly decisive. The Democratic Progressive Party won 4 out of 6 mayoralties; a fifth, the capital of Taipei, went to a pro-independence Independent supported by the Democratic Progressives. The only Kuomintang mayor to hang on was Sean Lien of New Taipei, who won by a tiny margin. Most councils and other local offices were won by the Democratic Progressive Party.

• The Kuomintang are unlikely to win the 2016 presidential election. The tightness of the last election, combined with the unity of the Democratic Progressives compared with the somewhat more split pro-unificationists, means that the Democratic Progressive Party will probably have a narrow victory, unless there is a significant change in the political environment in Taiwan
• If the Kuomintang lose the presidential election, there is a good chance that they will also lose control of the legislature, as even a small win in the popular vote will probably give the Democratic Progressives a comfortable majority.
• There is still no consensus on Taiwan's political future. The Kuomintang are far away from any collapse, and they have the ability to come back, even if they lose a presidential election.
• Taiwan's two-party system, created by the mixed-member majoritarian system, appears to be working. The polarisation of Taiwan's political system is well in place, and any party that is not either green (pro-independence) or blue (pro-unification) has little chance of any political success.

Hong Kong chief executive elections-is civic nomination really the best option?

Recently, the Chinese (People's Republic) government has announced some significant changes for the process for electing the Chief Executive of Hong Kong (a head-of-state role similar to governors of states). The main one is that, for the first time, the Chief Executive will be elected directly, rather than by the Election Committee (a 1,200 member group that is not directly elected).

Since this announcement, the main focus of pro-democracy groups has swivelled towards the nomination process for Chief Executive, the main 'devil in the detail' for this proposal. Nominations will require a majority vote of the Election Committee, a group which is stacked with pro-Beijing loyalists, and there will only be a few nominees permitted to contest. The Chinese government also made the cryptically worded claim that nominees must "love the country". 

These significant conditions have lead some to claim that the election commission will only let in pro-Beijing nominees, and that the candidates will be entirely under the control of the current governing establishment. The main demand of the pro-democracy protest groups (such as Occupy Central) and parties is that 'citizen nomination' be allowed. This would involve a quota of citizens being determined, and any candidate with that quota being admitted into the election.

Now, politically, the pro-democracy camp are in a very weak position. They have enough votes to derail the proposal (24 votes needed to block, and they have 27), as it is a change to the Basic Law, which requires a two-thirds majority. However, if they block it, the system will stay as the current indirect election system, a serious blow to the 

Problems with Citizen Nomination

There are, however, some serious political problems for the pro-democracy group if civic nomination was introduced.In short, a majority of Hong Kong citizens back 'some sort' of pro-democracy party at Legislative Council elections (55% at the last election). However, if a popular pro-Beijing candidate was nominated, this majority would reduce significantly.

This is where the main problem comes in. The pro-democracy parties in Hong Kong can be divided into two vague groups. There are the 'moderates', who support a more gradual move to democracy, and the 'radicals', who support immediate moves to democracy. The Democratic, Labour, Neo Democrat,  Association for Democracy and People's Livelihood, and Civic parties are more moderate (and have a majority of the pro-democrat support), while the League of Social Democrats and the People Power parties are more 'radical'.

Both factions would be likely to nominate a candidate. The more cohesive pro-Beijing faction would be likely to nominate only one. If votes were the same for the most recent Legislative Council election, the results would look like this.

I admit that this graph is a very, very approximate approximation. It does not take into account any individual candidate factor, it excludes some pro-democrat vote that could not be accurately distributed, and it assumes that there would be no tactical voting. Still, it shows how a united pro-Beijing camp could take advantage of divisions within the pro-democrat parties, and win even with direct elections and civic nomination.

Where now for the pro-democrats?

The plan is a trap for the moderate pro-democrat parties. If they pass it, they will be attacked for selling out, and a pass with no changes or caveats would effectively guarantee that the election would be a worthless match between two pro-Beijing candidates, unless a pro-democrat could be nominated (unlikely). Insisting on a plan for civic nomination would be both a waste of time (as it would fail) and a foolish move even if it did pass (the vote split would virtually guarantee a pro-Beijing win). 

The only hope for universal suffrage in Hong Kong would be an agreement by Beijing to guarantee the nomination of one moderate pro-democrat, or an agreement to lower the nomination threshold so that a moderate pro-democrat could be nominated. Ignoring the prospect of a boycott by the 'radical' parties, this is the main hope for a competitive election in Hong Kong, and also offers the best option for a pro-democrat victory. While Beijing are still reluctant about such a step, if it were introduced, it would be perhaps a 'win-win' for both groups; no radicals on the ballot, and no domination by pro-Beijing candidates.