Distortions, coalitions, and support for PR

Abstract This chapter focuses on the politics of electoral system choice. Building on the relationship between containment measures and preferences for proportional representation (PR), this chapter develops our theoretical argument on how parties’ positions on electoral system change and the composition of reform coalitions depend on the type of electoral engineering available to incumbent parties. In this way, we also explain why the politics of PR adoption centred around the urban-rural cleavage in some countries, whereas in others, we observe urban-rural coalitions in favour of PR. In addition, we discuss why so many countries adopted PR after the First World War. We argue that incumbent parties’ resistance to reform was often broken by external events, most notably military conflicts. These external events removed incumbent parties or forced them to compromise with the political opposition.