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Ethnic Accommodation and Electoral Rules in Ethno-Geographically Segregated Societies: PR Outcomes Under FPTP in Myanmar Elections

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2016

Joel Selway
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Abstract

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In this article I explore how the current first-past-the-post (FPTP) rules contributed to the failure of ethnic compromise during the democratic period (1948–1962) in Myanmar by encouraging extremist parties, hardening ethnic divisions, and causing political deadlock, ironically the same charges the centripetal school lays against proportional representation (PR). This puzzle of “PR outcomes” under FPTP is explained using geographic information systems techniques that map the country's 2010 electoral districts onto an ethnic population map. It shows that ethnic party success in the 2010 election closely follows the distribution of ethnic groups in Myanmar and that given the high level of ethno-geographic segregation in Myanmar the representation of ethnic parties would be similar under PR and the alternative vote to the current FPTP. I conclude by discussing Indonesia's electoral rules as a possible solution for Myanmar. The general theoretic contribution is that, although past scholars have generally argued that FPTP is bad for ethnically divided societies, their mechanisms are incorrect for ethno-geographically segregated societies.

Keywords

MyanmarBurmademocracyelectionsethnicity
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of East Asian Studies , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , December 2015 , pp. 321 - 360
Copyright
Copyright © 2015 by the East Asia Institute 

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