| Summary: | 碩士 === 佛光人文社會學院 === 政治學研究所 === 93 === Abstract
This essay discusses how electoral system can affects representative democracy. The representative democracy means that the elected agents represent their constituency members. Thus, how to elect representatives becomes a fundamental issue in a democratic system.
The plurality electoral system has a tendency of strong party politics in order to form a ruling coalition. On the other hand, in the proportional representation system, constituency votes for there parties. Therefore, people pay a special attention to the platform of each party. The plurality system can maintain a more relatively stable government. It has difficulties in reflecting the real opinions of the people. In contrast, the election results of a proportional representation system can reflect voter opinion. However, it makes the government instable.
The current electoral system of Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan is SNTV (multi-member district, single non-transferable vote). It has the following characters. First, number of ballots and number of seats of each party are highly correlated. Second, the minority in any district can be represented in the Legislative Yuan. Third, constituencies and representatives have a close interaction. However, candidates of SNTV system emphasize their personality and individual opinions to attract ballots. This leads to the following consequences. First, constituencies have a more understanding towards candidate’s opinions than the parties platforms. Second, the intra-party competition is more intense than the inter-party competition. Third, buying ballots is common in this kind of electoral system.
This essay examines German and Japanese electoral system, studies the process of reform of their electoral system, and offers some solutions to improve Taiwan’s SNTV electoral system in Taiwan. However, the conclusion of this essay is that these solutions may be difficult to promote, unless such a reform can maintain the vest interest of current representatives.
KEYWORDS：Proportional Representation System、 Compensatory Two-Vote System、 Separated Two-Vote System、 Multi-member district, Single Non-Transferable Vote SNTV
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