A CONTINUUM OF ELECTORAL SYSTEMS? (OR, WHY LAW AND LEGISLATION NEED TYPOLOGIES)

Constitutions of several countries have provisions prescribing that elections to their parliaments be held in accordance with the principle of proportional representation, but they usually do not define "proportional representation". It is a task for ordinary legislators to decide which proportional system shall be adopted. At the same time, one of the strongest trends within electoral studies in recent decades is to reject a dichotomous classification of electoral systems (majoritarian and proportional). According to this trend, electoral systems should be organised along a continuum. In this article I advocate three main theses on the continuum of electoral systems. Firstly, I argue that the tenability of such continua is undermined by their organisation grounded exclusively in indices of disproportionality. Secondly, I claim that the fact that electoral systems may be organised as a continuum does not preclude the necessity of a typology of electoral systems. Thirdly, I argue that, because continuum theories are divorced from legal and legislative vocabulary, they are useless to serve as basis for legal or legislative decisions.