In this paper, I examine minorities’
success in nine national parliamentary elections. Theory of consociational (or
power-sharing) democracy suggests that in heterogeneous societies, a
proportional electoral system will treat minority parties most fairly. The OSCE
Lund Recommendations on the Effective Participation of National Minorities in
Public Life proposes a number of electoral system features, which would improve
minority representation. Bearing these points in mind, I set out to investigate
the difference between various parties’ votes and seats, as measured by an
Advantage-ratio of votes and seats. In order to control for the size of the
party, non-minority parties have been divided into small and large parties. I
conclude that minority party success is due to the geographical concentration
and political unity of the minority rather than the electoral system itself.
Moreover, the size of the party is a major factor governing success in all the
systems investigated; large parties benefit in all the elections studied.