The way the United States chose its president on Monday stands in stark contrast to how most of the world’s democracies select leaders.
In other democratic countries, heads of government are either directly elected by voters or by a parliamentary system in which the party winning the most seats in the national assembly selects the head of state.
Some processes are complex and intricate, others more straightforward. Here is a look at how some of those countries choose their leaders — and how complications can arise.
SOUTH AFRICA
In South Africa, which held its first all-race elections in 1994, citizens vote for political parties rather than for candidates. The president is then chosen in a vote by the National Assembly. The party that won the majority of seats would be able to elect its own leader as president. The African National Congress, the liberation movement turned political party, has dominated politics since Nelson Mandela became president in 1994. In 2019, however, the ANC obtained its weakest victory, winning only 57% of the vote.
POLAND
In Poland, its democracy reborn in 1989 after the fall of communism across eastern Europe, a candidate who gets at least 50% of the popular vote becomes president. If no candidate gets at least 50%, a second round pits the top two vote-getters against each other. There has only been only one first-round winner, with the re-election in 2000 of Aleksander Kwasniewski, a former communist who transformed himself into a pro-democracy figure. Even Lech Walesa, the famous founder of Poland’s anti-communist Solidarity movement, needed a second-round vote to become Poland’s first popularly elected president.
SPAIN
In Spain, the Congress of Deputies elects the prime minister. The party that wins the most seats but falls short of a majority must form alliances with other parties to select the country’s leader. In 1996, this led to an awkward situation for the would-be prime minister. As votes were being counted, Jose Maria Aznar’s conservative Popular Party thought it won enough seats to make him prime minister. Supporters, celebrating outside party headquarters in Madrid, aimed an ugly chant at Jordi Pujol, a diminutive politician from the autonomous region of Catalonia, where Catalan is spoken. “Pujol, you dwarf, speak in Spanish!” they chanted. They had to swallow those words a few hours later when final results showed Aznar needed the votes of Pujol’s coalition to win easy election as prime minister. The conservatives wound up humbly wooing Pujol’s coalition and offering Catalonia even greater autonomy.
UNITED KINGDOM
U.K. voters elect a lawmaker for their local area. Then, the party that wins the largest number of the 650 constituencies generally takes power, with the party leader becoming prime minister. A coalition government might be formed if no party wins a majority of seats. The winning party is almost always the one that took the biggest share of the popular vote. It is rare for any party to win a majority of the popular vote because several parties compete. Boris Johnson’s Conservatives got 44% of the popular vote in the 2019 election but won an 80-seat majority in Parliament, allowing him to remain as prime minister.
BRAZIL
Brazil chooses its president through direct election, held in two rounds unless the first-round winner gets more than 50% of valid votes. Voting is mandatory, leading to high turnout, and to a fair number of spoiled or blank ballots. In 2018, turnout was about 80%. The fine for failing to vote is less than a dollar.
SOUTH KOREA
The president is directly elected by a single-round, popular vote in which the candidate who gets the most votes wins outright. A person must be at least 40 years old to be eligible to run. The country’s current president, Moon Jae-in, won a by-election on May 2017, two months after South Korea’s Constitutional Court formally removed his conservative predecessor Park Geun-hye from office over a corruption scandal. She is now serving a prison term for abuse of power, bribery and other crimes.
TAIWAN
A constitutional amendment in 1994 instituted direct, popular elections for president. Previously, the office was filled indirectly by the National Assembly, dominated by the then-ruling Nationalist Party. The 1996 election marked the first time Taiwan selected its president by popular vote.
NEW ZEALAND
New Zealand’s prime minister is chosen by other lawmakers and typically is the leader of the party which gains the most votes in the election. Under New Zealand’s proportional voting system, parties must often form alliances to command a majority in the parliament. Although New Zealand functions as a fully independent and democratic nation, its head of state remains Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II. That means the prime minister must officially be approved by the Queen’s representative in New Zealand, the governor-general.
(AP)
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3 Responses
Interesting that you do not mention switzerland the most demoratic country in the world
In many countries (Britain, Canada, Australia, Netherlands, Belgium and Japan and most of Scandanavia) the Head of State is an hereditary monarch who stays above politics (the US rejected that idea in the 18th century), and the Head of Government is chosen by the legislature (i.e. the people never get to vote for the national leader, rather they elect a legislature). Most republican (small “r”) democracies (small “d”) follow the “royal” system with a non-elected (or rather, elected by the legislature) Head of State who is supposed to stay out of politics (this is the Israeli system, clearly based on the British).
In Western Europe, the only country where the Head of State is directly elected is France. In Eastern Europe it is more common to have a directly elected Head of State (e.g. Russia). It is also common in Latin America. The US system of an electoral votes is unique, though it should also be noted that the USA is fairly unique among republics in consisting of states who were previously independent; that is true in Britain but they don’t elect their Head of State, and also in Germany (but they also have an electoral college with the votes having no say in the matter, unlike the USA where the electors are chosen democratically).
It should be noted that the complains about the electoral college in the system only come from users (Trump didn’t object in 2016, and Obama never objected). It serves its purpose very well in preventing the large states from disregarding the small states – a feature that goes to the core of the Constitution. The only time it clearly failed was in 1860 when most voters favored candidates supporting compromise on slavery, but a radical won the electoral vote (though in all fairness, had they had universal suffrage then it is likely the Republicans would have won).
What? No explanation of Israel’s system?