Abstract
Although Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania share a common recent past as Soviet-era republics and as independent states before that, their electoral systems in the contemporary era differ significantly. These divergences span almost every electoral category, including assembly size, district magnitude, ballot structure, vote counting formulas and legal thresholds. Since the early 1990s, each country has travelled a separate path both in terms of the creation of electoral institutions as well as their reform later during the decade. They illustrate diverse patterns of conflicting political interests, limited knowledge about electoral systems, rushed institutional bargains, controversial compromises and post-hoc decision-making. As a result, the three states also represent an ideal laboratory to test for the effect of electoral institutions on parties, party systems and democratic governance (Pettai and Kreuzer, 1999). In this chapter, we will concentrate on the main tenets of the three Baltic electoral systems. But in our conclusion we will aim also to contribute to broader knowledge about institutional design by addressing these important after-effects.
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Further reading
Huang, Mel (2000) ‘Changing the Rules at the Half, Central Europe Review, 2/27, 10 July.
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© 2004 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Mikkel, E., Pettai, V. (2004). The Baltics: Independence with Divergent Electoral Systems. In: Colomer, J.M. (eds) The Handbook of Electoral System Choice. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230522749_18
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230522749_18
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