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Mixed compensatory systems (some call them “mixed-member proportional systems”), are praised for combining "the best of both worlds.” Yet, we know fairly little about their outcomes in practice. We still lack a genuine model that explains how many compensation seats are needed for the outcome to be proportional. Without this knowledge we will neither be able to estimate how many parties we expect to compete and to win representation in parliament under mixed compensatory systems; a key question of comparative research on electoral systems and party systems. This paper provides a quantitative model that shows under which conditions a mixed compensatory system might lead to proportional vote-seat conversion.

The electoral system for the state presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina guarantees the representation of the three constituent people, Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats, but it violates the political rights of other ethnic minorities and of citizens who do not identify themselves with any ethnic group. Following the 2009 judgment of the European Court of Human Rights, Bosnia was urged to reform its electoral law. This paper discusses alternative practices of ethnically based political representation and their possible application in the Bosnian state presidency elections. Several innovative electoral models that satisfy fair political and legal criteria for desirable electoral dynamics in divided societies can be envisaged in the Bosnian context. Specifically, these are: the introduction of a single countrywide electoral district, the adoption of the single non-transferable vote, and the application of a geometrical mean rule. They guarantee the representation of the three constituent people, while strengthening...

Contemporary political discussion in Serbia sometimes reads like a history book of Serbia in the twentieth century. Figures such as Dragoljub ‘Draža’ Mihailovic (Chetnik2 leader in the Second World War), Josip Broz ‘Tito’ (Partisan leader and then president of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, SFRJ), Slobodan Milosevic (Serbian and Yugoslav president in the 1990s), or Vojislav Seselj (paramilitary leader in the 1990s) would fit in very well among the members of today’s parliament. Indeed, the most recent bloody episodes of Serbia’s history are so little distant that the two latter persons on this list were still both influential players in Serbian party politics in the early twenty-first century, which is the subject of this chapter. Seselj is still running in parliamentary elections, and would be an MP if he were not facing trial for war crimes at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

‘Condorcet cycles’ (or ‘paradoxes of cyclical majorities’) are an empirically rare phenomenon. A referendum in the Swiss canton of Bern on 28 November 2004 presents a rare occurrence. This study presents a new multi-option referendum procedure that makes Condorcet cycles visible, and it argues that in this case, the paradox might have resulted from strategic voting patterns.