Electoral Reform in the UK. Partisan Preferences and Elite-Mass Interactions

The issue of electoral reform emerged on the political agenda following the British general election of May 2010 which yielded a Conservative-Liberal Democratic coalition government committed to holding a referendum on the Alternative Vote (AV). The pyschological and mechanical effects of a change could have significant bearing on the incidence of strategic voting, on the degree of competition between and within parties, and on the proportionality of representation. The referendum will be held in May 2011, and this paper constitutes a first attempt at analysing the causes, the processes and the outcome of electoral reform. This paper therefore asks (1) how the issue of electoral reform emerged on the agenda and what factors shaped the choice of AV (2) what set of incentives and constraints (strategic and ideational) determined the position of British mainstream parties (3) what factors conditionned the interaction between mainstream parties and public opinion during the referendum campaign. This research builds on work on the politics of electoral reform (Blau 2008; Gallagher and Mitchell 2005; Renwick 2010) to formulate theoretical expectations. It focuses on two aspects of reform processes: the intra-party dimension and the internal divisions that arise within mainstream parties as a result of divergent preferences; the attempt of party leaders to appeal to or manipulate public attitudes in favour or in opposition to reform.The paper concludes by offering a comparison with other cases of successful (New Zealand) or failed (British Columbia) cases of electoral reforms in other plurality systems.