IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/annopr/v215y2014i1p285-30710.1007-s10479-013-1457-6.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Evaluation and possible improvements of the Swedish electoral system

Author

Listed:
  • Victoriano Ramírez-González
  • Blanca Delgado-Márquez
  • Antonio Palomares
  • Adolfo López-Carmona

Abstract

The Swedish electoral system exhibits significant levels of proportionality compared with the systems used in other countries. However, it has several deficiencies that could be corrected. Therefore, this paper (a) evaluates the current Swedish electoral system by identifying the imbalances in the representation of political parties and the sizes of the electoral constituencies that can occur and (b) presents two proposals for improvement that seek to correct the previously identified deficiencies. The first proposal consists of a slight modification of the current system that applies when parties get more seats than they proportionally deserve according to their global number of votes, as occurred in the 2010 election. In this case, the proposal includes a criterion so that the overrepresented parties return their excess seats. The second proposal relies on the implementation of biproportional allotments and on the replacement of the electoral thresholds of 4 % of the total votes nationwide and 12 % of the votes in a given constituency by a new threshold based on a reduction in the number of votes of the parties. The application of any of these proposals to the Swedish election held in 2010 reveals that the deficiencies in the representation of political parties are eliminated. Furthermore, the second proposal also corrects the deficiencies in the sizes of the electoral constituencies for Sweden. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

Suggested Citation

  • Victoriano Ramírez-González & Blanca Delgado-Márquez & Antonio Palomares & Adolfo López-Carmona, 2014. "Evaluation and possible improvements of the Swedish electoral system," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 215(1), pages 285-307, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:annopr:v:215:y:2014:i:1:p:285-307:10.1007/s10479-013-1457-6
    DOI: 10.1007/s10479-013-1457-6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10479-013-1457-6
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10479-013-1457-6?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. M. L. Balinski & G. Demange, 1989. "An Axiomatic Approach to Proportionality Between Matrices," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 14(4), pages 700-719, November.
    2. Marjorie B. Gassner, 1991. "Biproportional Delegations," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 3(3), pages 321-342, July.
    3. Sebastian Maier & Petur Zachariassen & Martin Zachariasen, 2010. "Divisor-Based Biproportional Apportionment in Electoral Systems: A Real-Life Benchmark Study," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 56(2), pages 373-387, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Anderson Kenji Hirose & Cassius Tadeu Scarpin & José Eduardo Pécora Junior, 2020. "Goal programming approach for political districting in Santa Catarina State: Brazil," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 287(1), pages 209-232, April.
    2. David F. Muñoz & Héctor Gardida & Hugo Velázquez & Jorge D. Ayala, 2022. "Simulation models to support the preliminary electoral results program for the Mexican Electoral Institute," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 316(2), pages 1141-1156, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Demange, Gabrielle, 2012. "On party-proportional representation under district distortions," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 181-191.
    2. Oelbermann, Kai-Friederike, 2016. "Alternate Scaling algorithm for biproportional divisor methods," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 25-32.
    3. Gabrielle Demange, 2013. "On Allocating Seats To Parties And Districts: Apportionments," International Game Theory Review (IGTR), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 15(03), pages 1-14.
    4. Friedrich Pukelsheim, 2014. "Biproportional scaling of matrices and the iterative proportional fitting procedure," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 215(1), pages 269-283, April.
    5. Gabrielle Demange, 2018. "New electoral systems and old referendums," PSE Working Papers hal-01852206, HAL.
    6. Gabrielle Demange, 2021. "On the resolution of cross-liabilities," PSE Working Papers halshs-03151128, HAL.
    7. Michel Balinski, 2007. "Equitable representation and recruitment," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 149(1), pages 27-36, February.
    8. Paolo Serafini, 2015. "Certificates of optimality for minimum norm biproportional apportionments," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 44(1), pages 1-12, January.
    9. Demange, Gabrielle, 2017. "Mutual rankings," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 35-42.
    10. Kerem Akartunalı & Philip A. Knight, 2017. "Network models and biproportional rounding for fair seat allocations in the UK elections," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 253(1), pages 1-19, June.
    11. Moulin, Hervé, 2016. "Entropy, desegregation, and proportional rationing," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 1-20.
    12. Marjorie B. Gassner, 1991. "Biproportional Delegations," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 3(3), pages 321-342, July.
    13. Michel L. Balinski & Gabrielle Demange, 1989. "Algorithm for Proportional Matrices in Reals and Integers," Post-Print halshs-00585327, HAL.
    14. Haydar Evren & Manshu Khanna, 2021. "Affirmative Action's Cumulative Fractional Assignments," Papers 2111.11963, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2024.
    15. MESNARD, Louis de, 1999. "Interpretation of the RAS method : absorption and fabrication effects are incorrect," LATEC - Document de travail - Economie (1991-2003) 9907, LATEC, Laboratoire d'Analyse et des Techniques EConomiques, CNRS UMR 5118, Université de Bourgogne.
    16. Zhaonan Qu & Alfred Galichon & Johan Ugander, 2023. "On Sinkhorn's Algorithm and Choice Modeling," Papers 2310.00260, arXiv.org.
    17. Gabrielle Demange, 2018. "Mechanisms in a Digitalized World," CESifo Working Paper Series 6984, CESifo.
    18. Attila Tasnádi, 2008. "The extent of the population paradox in the Hungarian electoral system," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 134(3), pages 293-305, March.
    19. Ricca, Federica & Scozzari, Andrea & Simeone, Bruno, 2011. "The give-up problem for blocked regional lists with multi-winners," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 14-24, July.
    20. Gabrielle Demange, 2020. "Resolution rules in a system of financially linked firms," Working Papers hal-02502413, HAL.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:annopr:v:215:y:2014:i:1:p:285-307:10.1007/s10479-013-1457-6. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.