election in asia and pacific i

Elections in Asia

and the Pacific

A Data Handbook

VOLUME I

The Middle East, Central Asiaand South Asia

Edited by

DIETER NOHLENFLORIAN GROTZ

andCHRISTOF HARTMANN

OXFORDUNIVERSITY PRESS

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Preface

This two-volume work constitutes the second instalment in the series ofelection data handbooks published by Oxford University Press. Twoyears after the apparition of the first title, Elections in Africa, we nowpresent the first-ever compendium of electoral data for all the states inAsia and the Pacific, since their independence to the present day. Thefourth volume, covering national elections on the American continent, iscurrently underway, and a final work dedicated to Europe will close theseries of Elections Worldwide.

The basic idea of these handbooksa systematic and historicallycomplete documentation of elections in all the countries of the worldisalmost 40 years old. It was born in the early 1960s, when Dolf Sternber-ger and Bernhard Vogel embarked on a voluminous research project atthe Institute for Political Science at the University of Heidelberg (Ger-many), on 'The Election of Parliaments and other State Organs'. Sincethen Heidelberg has been witness to several projects on elections andelectoral systems, including empirical and theoretical publications cov-ering all world regions. The first major data-oriented publication wasDie Wahl der Parlamente (1969), which recorded and analyzed the na-tional elections in all European countries. In 1978 a second voluminouswork on Africa was published under the subtitle Politische Organisationund Reprdsentation in Afrika. In the late 1980s a multinational researchteam directed by Dieter Nohlen began working on parliamentary andpresidential elections in Latin America and the Caribbean. The main re-sult concerning electoral data was published in 1993 in German (Hand-buch der Wahldaten Lateinamerikas und der Karibik) and in Spanish(Enciclopedia Electoral Latinoamericana y del Caribe). A new projecton 'Elections and Democratization in Africa and Latin America', begunin 1996, provided the perfect framework to revive the old idea of aworldwide compendium of electoral data handbooks. This path led us toElections in Africa, edited by Dieter Nohlen, Michael Krennerich, andBernhard Thibaut, yet it did not end there, but continued to Asia and thePacific. This latter work was by far the most challenging part of thishandbook series, since Asia and the Pacific were the only world regionsfor which we could not rely on a preceding 'Heidelberg product'.

For this reason, we are especially grateful to those individuals and or-ganizations without whose support it would have been impossible to

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complete this book. First of all, we are deeply indebted to the DeutscheForschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) for its generous funding of this project.

Many scholars around the globe were asked to author one or anothercontribution. Some of them refused or withdrew their promised partici-pationadmittedly, for comprehensible reasons, since most of thecountry articles demanded a huge amount of time and energy in theirelaboration: collecting the relevant information, pressing the quantitativeand qualitative data into a strict corset of guidelines, sometimes recalcu-lating national data according to international standards and dealing withnever-ending questions from the editors. And such work would producean apparently paradoxical outcome: the more demanding the elaborationof an article was, the clearer and simpler it finally appears to the reader.We are therefore, more than grateful to our 50 contributors from about20 different countries; not only have we learnt plenty from them in thesethree years, but their encouragement and empathy with this project havebecome a decisive stimulus for us to finish it.

Furthermore, we owe much to our editorial team at Heidelberg, espe-cially to Alexander Somoza and Philip Stover who have tirelessly as-sisted in collecting and standardizing the relevant information. EmiliaConejo provided most valuable help in correcting the English version.

Two of us left Heidelberg during the work on this book. We are thus,particularly grateful to our academic institutions, the European Centrefor Comparative Government and Public Policy (Berlin) and the Instituteof Development Research and Development Policy (Bochum) respec-tively, for having given us the opportunity to finish this project besidesour newrather differentcommitments. We would also like to expressour gratitude to the Institute of Political Science at the University ofHeidelberg, the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law andInternational Law in Heidelberg, the International Foundation for Elec-toral Systems (IFES) in Washington, the International Institute for De-mocracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) in Stockholm and the depend-encies of the Konrad-Adenauer Foundation in various Asian countries.

Last but not least, we have to thank Dominic Byatt and Amanda Wat-kins at Oxford University Press for their encouraging words and theirprofessional support. Working with them has been a real pleasure.

Heidelberg/ Berlin/ Bochum, June 2001 Dieter NohlenFlorian Grotz

Christof Hartmann

Contents

Notes on Editors and Contributors viiTechnical Notes xv

Elections and Electoral Systems in Asia and the Pacific.The Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia(Dieter Nohlen, Florian Grotz, and Christof Hartmann) 1

Middle East 47Bahrain (Christof Hartmann) 49Iran (Ralph Kauz, Hamid Khosravi Sharoudi, and Andreas Rieck) 57Iraq (Dirk Axtmann) 85Israel (Matthias Ries) 109Jordan (Renate Dieterich) 141Kuwait (Christian Koch) 155Lebanon (Thomas Scheffler) 169Oman (Abdullah Juma Alhaj) 199Qatar (Sherif Wadood) 203Saudi-Arabia (Ferhad Ibrahim) 207Syria (Eyal Zisser) 213Turkey (Harald Schuler) 233United Arab Emirates (Christian Koch) 289Yemen (Iris Glosemeyer) 293

Caucasus and Central Asia 317Armenia (Florian Grotz and Maria Rodriguez-McKey) 319Azerbaijan (Florian Grotz and Raoul Motika) 347Georgia (Natalie Kuchinka-Lancava and Florian Grotz) 371Kazakhstan (Marie-Carin von Gumppenberg) 407Kyrgyzstan (Beate Eschment and Florian Grotz) 431Tajikistan (Florian Grotz) 455Turkmenistan (Florian Grotz) 471Uzbekistan (Florian Grotz) 483

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South Asia 501Afghanistan (Abdul Wahed Sarabi) 503Bangladesh (Nizam Ahmed) 515Bhutan (Peter Lehr) 553India (Mike Enskat, Subrata K. Mitra, and Vijay Bahadur Singh) 559Maldives (Peter Lehr) 585Myanmar (Burma) (Tilman Frasch) 597Nepal (Karl-Heinz Kramer) 621Pakistan (Wolfgang-Peter Zingel) 661Sri Lanka (Christian Wagner) 697

Glossary 743

Notes on Editors and Contributors

Editors

DIETER NOHLEN is Professor of Political Science at the University of Hei-delberg and a well known expert on electoral systems, regime change anddemocratization processes, and development studies with a focus on LatinAmerica. In 1991 he was awarded the Max Planck prize for internationallyoutstanding research. His numerous books include Wahlsysteme der Welt(1978; Spanish edition 1981), Sistemas electorates y partidos politicos (3rdedition 1998), Elections and Electoral Systems (1996). He is also co-editorof an eight-volume Handbook of the Third World (with F. Nuscheler, 3rdedition 1991-1994) and editor of a seven-volume Encyclopedia of PoliticalScience (1992-1998).

FLORIAN GROTZ (Ph.D., University of Heidelberg, 1999) is Assistant Pro-fessor of Political Science at the European Centre for Comparative Gov-ernment and Public Policy, Free University of Berlin (Germany). His re-search has focused on electoral systems, party systems, and institutionalaspects of political development in Western and Eastern Europe. He haspublished several articles on elections and electoral systems and is authorof a book on political institutions and party systems in post-communistEast Central Europe (2000).

CHRISTOF HARTMANN (Ph.D.) is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute ofDevelopment Research and Development Policy, Ruhr University of Bo-chum (Germany). He holds a master's degree (1994) and a Ph.D. (1998) inPolitical Science from the University of Heidelberg. He has worked on re-gime change and democratization, development issues and conflict resolu-tion in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, and is author of a book on the inter-national dimension of political transitions in Benin, Cote d'lvoire, Kenyaand Uganda (1999).

Vlll

Contributors

NlZAM AHMED is Professor of Public Administration at the University ofChittagong (Bangladesh). He obtained a master's degree from the Univer-sity of Tasmania (Australia) and a Ph.D. from the University of Melbourne(Australia). His writings on parliamentary politics, bureaucracy, and localgovernment have appeared in scholarly journals in UK, USA, Canada,Australia, Belgium and the Netherlands. He is co-editor of a book entitledParliaments in Asia (1999); another book on Parliament in Bangladesh isawaiting publication.

ABDULLAH JUMA ALHAJ (Ph.D.) is the Cultural Counselor of the UnitedArab Emirates (UAE) in the USA and Canada, and Assistatit Professor ofPolitical Science at the UAE University in Al Ain. He has earned his Ph.D.from Reading University (England) and a MA from Ohio University. DrAlhaj has published numerous articles on the political development in theGulf in both Arabic and English; he is also a freelance journalist and haspublished articles in prominent newspapers all around the Arab World.

DIRK AXTMANN holds a master's degree in Political Science from the Uni-versity of Heidelberg (Germany) and is Ph.D. candidate at the University ofHeidelberg and fellow at the German Orient Institute in Hamburg (Ger-many). His current research interest focuses on the comparative analysis ofthe evolution of Maghrebi electoral systems and constitutions as well as onpolitical party systems in the region.

RENATE DIETERICH (Ph.D.) is a researcher at the Institute for OrientalStudies at the University of Bonn (Germany). Her research has focused on20th century history in Iraq and Jordan and on Muslim migrants in Ger-many. The process of democratization in Jordan since 1989 has been thesubject of her doctoral thesis. She has published a book and numerous arti-cles on politics and society in modern Jordan, on aspects of the Turkishmigrant society in Germany, and on the involvement of an Iraqi nationalistleader in the 1940s in German Nazi politics.

MIKE ENSKAT holds a Master in European and International Politics fromthe University of Edinburgh. Currently, he is a Lecturer in Political Scienceat the South Asia Institute at the University of Heidelberg (Germany). His

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major research interest is in the fields of political economy, privatization,energy policy, youth studies, political parties, elections and democratiza-tionareas of interest in which he has authored articles for books and in-ternational periodicals. He is currently co-editing a volume on PoliticalParties in South Asia.

BEATE ESCHMENT (Ph.D.) is Research Associate at the Institute of CentralAsian Studies at the Humboldt University, Berlin (Germany). Her currentresearch focuses on political development and minority problems in post-soviet Central Asia. She has published numerous articles on Central Asianpolitics in various journals.

TlLMAN FRASCH (Ph.D.) is Assistant Professor of History at the South AsiaInstitute of the University of Heidelberg (Germany) where he studied In-dian History, Indian Languages and European History. He has written hisPh.D. thesis on the first Burmese kingdom of Pagan (1995), and has pub-lished several articles on the history of Buddhism in Burma and Sri Lanka.At present he is working on the historiography of Sri Lanka.

IRIS GLOSEMEYER (Ph.D.) is Research Associate at the Stiftung Wissen-schaft und Politik (German Institute for International and Security Affairs)in Berlin. She holds a master's degree (1992) from the University of Ham-burg (Germany) and a Ph.D. (2001) in Political Science from the Free Uni-versity of Berlin. As a freelance expert she was involved in monitoringelections and she has published extensively on Yemeni electoral politicsand parliaments.

MARIE-CARIN VON GUMPPENBERG holds a Ph.D. in Political Science fromthe University of Munich (Germany). She acquired her expertise on Ka-zakhstan through several long-term stays in the country. She has publishedseveral articles on regime change and democratization in Kazakhstan and abook on the challenges of state- and nation-building in this post-sovietcountry.

FERHAD IBRAHIM is Professor of Middle East History at the University ofErfurt (Germany). He has specialized in international relations, nationaland ethnic relations and Middle East Studies. His books include EthnischeKonflikte in der Dritten Welt (1983) and Konfessionalismus und Politik in

der arabischen Welt (1997). He is also co-editor of a number of volumesincluding Problem der Zivilgesellschaft im Vorderen Orient (1995), Ver-sohnung im Verzug (1996) and The Kurdish Conflict in Turkey (2000).

RALPH KAUZ (Ph.D.) is currently a post-doctoral fellow of the German Re-search Foundation (DFG). He received a master and doctoral degree in Ira-nian and Modern Oriental Studies from the University of Bamberg (Ger-many). He was subsequently fellow of the Alexander-von-Humboldt Foun-dation at Nanjing University (China) and of the Institut Franais des Re-cherches Iraniennes in Tehran. His research and publications have focusedon the modern and contemporary history of Iran.

HAMID KHOSRAVI SHAROUDI obtained his doctoral degree in IranianStudies from the Eberhard-Karls-University of Tubingen (Germany), wherehe was until recently lecturer at the Department of Oriental Studies. He hasspecialized in modern Iranian history and socio-cultural approaches to de-mocratization. His publications include a study of the Iranian Constitu-tional Movement of 1906.

CHRISTIAN KOCH (Ph.D.) is Senior Researcher at the Emirates Center forStrategic Studies and Research in Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates)where he specializes in current political and strategic affairs of the ArabGulf region. His interest in Kuwait stems from his Ph.D. thesis, which fo-cused on the role of voluntary association in the political development ofKuwait. He undertook his doctoral studies at the University in Erlangen-Niirnberg (Germany) and studied at the American University in Washing-ton, D.C. and the University of South Carolina. He is the co-editor of GulfSecurity in the 21st Century which received the Ibn Turki Award for Fu-turistic Studies in 1998.

KARL-HEINZ KRAMER (Ph.D.) is affiliated to the Department of PoliticalScience at the South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg (Germany)and Nepal tutor for the German Foundation for International Development,Bad Honnef (Germany). He has specialized in the Himalayan region and isan expert on modern history and politics of Nepal. His books include DasKonigtum in der modernen nepalischen Geschichte (1981), Nepalderlange Weg zur Demokratie (1991), Ethnizitat und nationale Integration inNepal (1996).

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NATALIE KUCHINKA-LANCAVA holds a M.A. in Political Science from theUniversity of Tubingen (Germany) and is Ph.D. candidate at the Gesch-wister-Scholl-Institute for Political Science, Ludwig-Maximilians-Univer-sity of Munich. Her research has focused on parliamentarism in post-sovietGeorgia.

PETER LEHR (M.A.) is a Lecturer at the Department of Political Science,South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg (Germany). His major re-search interests are in the field of security studies with a focus on the Asia-Pacific and the Indian Ocean. He is currently conducting a research projecton maritime security in the Indian Ocean. He is co-founder of the IndianOcean Centre Heidelberg, a clearing center for activities concerned withIndian Ocean studies.

SUBRATA K. MlTRA is Professor and Head of the Department of PoliticalScience, South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg (Germany) and aVisiting Fellow of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi(India). He has studied at the universities of Delhi, JNU, and Rochester(Ph.D. 1976) and taught at the universities of Hull, Berkeley, and Notting-ham. Governance, subnationalism, rational choice and quantitative appli-cations in Political Science are among his main areas of interest. His publi-cations include Culture and Rationality (1999), Elections and SocialChange (co-authored; 1999), Power, Protest and Participation: LocalElites and Development in India (1992), Democracy in South Asia (1992),The Politics of Positive Discrimination: A Cross National Perspective(1990), The Post-Colonial State in Asia: Dialectics of Politics and Culture(1990), and A Changing Landscape: National and State Politics in Post-Election India (Jointly edited; 1992).

RAOUL MOTIKA (Ph.D.) is Assistant Professor at the Institute for IslamicStudies at the University of Heidelberg (Germany). His research has fo-cused on Middle Eastern (Turkey, Iran) and Caucasian politics as well ason the history of the Ottoman Empire, Iran and the Caucasus. He has pub-lished numerous articles on Caucasian history and politics, has edited sev-eral volumes on Ottoman, Iranian and Caucasian history and is author ofthe book Die politische Offentlichkeit Iranisch-Aserbaidschans wahrendder Konstitutionellen Revolution im Spiegel der Tabriser Zeitung 'Azar-baycan' (2001).

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ANDREAS RIECK (Ph.D.) is Research Fellow at the German Orient Institutein Hamburg since 1989. He has mainly written on political and religiousdevelopment in Iran, Lebanon, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.

MATTHIAS RIES received his Ph.D. from the University of Heidelberg(Germany) and is currently the German coordinator of the Center for En-counters and Communication Jerusalem, Honoring the Heritage of WillyBrandt. He works in the framework of civil peace service, internationalconflict management and inter-cultural mediation. His research has focusedon the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In this field he has published several ar-ticles as well as a book on the Oslo-Accord.

MARIA RODRIGTJEZ-MCKEY has a BA from the University of Vermont anda JD (Juris Doctor) from the D.C. School of Law, and holds a master's de-gree in Russian Law from the Institute of State and Law of the RussianAcademy of Science. She is currently working at the Center for the Com-parative Study of Elections, CERSA, Paris University II. She has re-searched for the draft electoral laws of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Armeniaand Kosovo (1997-1999).

ABDUL WAHED SARABI is Professor emeritus of Economics at Kabul Uni-versity and holds a Ph.D. in Trade from the Vienna University of WorldTrade (today Vienna University of Economics and Business Administra-tion, Austria). He served as State Minister, Minister of Mines and Indus-tries, Minister of Planning, Minister of Trade, Deputy Prime Minister andVice-President of Afghanistan, before going to Rostock (Germany), wherehe has been living since 1993.

THOMAS SCHEFFLER (Ph.D., Free University of Berlin, 1993) is a re-searcher at the Political Science Department of the Free University of Ber-lin and a Rockefeller Visiting Fellow (2001-2002) at the Kroc Institute forInternational Peace Studies at Notre Dame University, Indiana. He is cur-rently working on a project of the German Research Foundation (DFG) onReligion, Violence and Cultures of Civil Conflict in Lebanon. He haswritten extensively on ethno-religious conflicts in the Middle East and onGerman-Middle Eastern relations. His books include Ethnisch-religioseKonflikte und gesellschaftliche Integration im Vorderen und Mittleren Ori-ent (1985), Ethnizitat und Gewalt (editor, 1991), Die SPD und der Algeri-

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enkrieg (1995), and Religion between Violence and Reconciliation (editor,2001, forthcoming).

HARALD SCHULER studied Turkology, History and Political Science at theuniversities of Hamburg and Bamberg and was then involved in a researchproject about Civil Society and Political Culture in Contemporary Turkey.His Ph.D. Thesis Die tiirkischen Parteien und ihre Mitglieder (1998) ex-amines the social structure of the SHP in the early 1990s.

VlJAY BAHADUR SINGH is the Senior Fellow at the Centre for the Study ofDeveloping Societies, Delhi (India). His main areas of interest are electoralstudies, party systems and ethnic politics. His publications include Profilesof Political Elites in India (1984), Elections in India: Data Handbook onLok Sabha Elections 1986-91, Elections in India: Data Handbook on LokSabha Elections 1952-85, State Elections in India: Data Handbook onVidhan Sabha Elections 1952-85 (five volumes), Hindu Nationalists in In-dia: The Rise of Bharatiya Janata Party (co-authored; 1994), Social andPolitical Science Research Methods (co-authored; 1996), and Electionsand Social Change (co-authored; 1999).

SHERIF WADOOD is a Research Assistant and graduate student in PoliticalScience and Economics at the University of Heidelberg (Germany). Hiscurrent research focuses on corruption in developing countries.

CHRISTIAN WAGNER is Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Develop-ment Research at the University of Bonn (Germany). His main areas of in-terest include ethnic conflicts, problems of democratic development, re-gional cooperation, and foreign policy, with a regional focus on SouthAsia. His books include Die Muslime Sri Lanka (1989) and ASEAN undSAARC (together with Jorn Dosch, 1999). He is co-editor and author ofRegional Security, Ethnicity and Governance (1998) and of an introductionto Political Science.

WOLFGANG-PETER ZINGEL (Ph.D.) is Senior Research Fellow at the De-partment of International Economics, South Asia Institute, University ofHeidelberg (Germany). He represented the South Asia Institute in Pakistan(Islamabad) and India (New Delhi) and taught Public Finance at the Hi-machal Pradesh University, Shimla (India). He works in the field of eco-

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nomic and related agricultural, ecological, political, social and securityproblems of South Asia. His publications include: Verhaltene Reformpoli-tik in Pakistan (1995), Alleviating Urban Poverty: The Pakistan Way(1998) and Pakistan: Militdrherrschaft ohne Ende? (2001).

EYAL ZISSER (Ph.D.) is Senior Lecturer at the Department for the ModernHistory of the Middle East and Africa and a Senior Research Fellow at theMoshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, both at TelAviv University (Israel). He is the author of Lebanon: the Challenge of In-dependence (2000) and Asad's LegacySyria in Transition (2000).

Technical Notes

The data in this handbook are presented in the same systematic mannerfor all countries in order to provide electoral statistics in line with inter-nationally established standards of documentation. The tables are or-ganized in ten parts:

2.1 Dates of National Elections, Referendums, and Coups d'Etat: Table2.1 provides an overview of the dates of elections to national politicalinstitutions, referendums as well as interruptions of the constitutionalorder by coups d'etat since national independence. Where necessary, thedates of indirect elections are indicated by footnotes. The signs xx/xx areused to indicate that no information could be found regarding the exactpolling date.

2.2 Electoral Body: Table 2.2 provides a comparative overview of theevolution of the electoral body, and records the data on population size,registered voters and votes cast. The figures of registered voters andvotes cast are drawn from the relevant tables 2.5, 2.6, 2.7, and 2.9.Population data have been generally rounded and their sources arenamed in a relevant footnote. Where electors have multiple votes, thecolumn for 'votes cast' documents the numbers of 'ballots cast'. A longhyphen () indicates that no information was available. All percentagesare based on the figures given in the respective columns of this table.

2.3 Abbreviations: The abbreviations and full names of the political par-ties and alliances that appear in tables 2.6, 2.7, and 2.9 follow an alpha-betical order. Party mergers, splinters or successions are generally indi-cated in a footnote. As a rule, party names are given in their original lan-guage, and the English translation is provided in parentheses. The ab-breviations used in the tables are the ones commonly used in the countryor in the international reference texts. In the few cases where no abbre-viation is mentioned in electoral documents or reference texts, theauthors have resorted to party acronyms. These cases are explicitly men-tioned in footnotes.

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2.4 Electoral Participation of Parties and Alliances: The data regardingthe participation of political parties and alliances in all direct nationalelections are presented in a chronological order; they include the year ofthe elections and the number of elections contested. Only parties re-corded in tables 2.6, 2.7, and 2.9 appear in this table. If a party contestedan election as part of an alliance, its participation is counted both withregard to the party and to the alliance.

2.5; 2.6; 2.7; 2.9 Distribution of Votes in National Referendums, Elec-tions to Constitutional Assembly, Parliamentary and Presidential Elec-tions: In these tables we try to provide exhaustive documentation ofelectoral participation, both in total numbers and in percentages, forevery general election held since independence. The percentages refer tovotes cast as a percentage of registered voters, invalid and valid votes asa percentage of votes cast and party votes as a percentage of valid votes.For the purpose of this handbook invalid votes are those that enter theballot box but are disqualified out of different possible reasons, andtherefore do not affect the electoral outcome. Regarding national refer-endums, their purpose is indicated in a footnote. According to interna-tional standards the book uses the term 'referendum' for both plebiscitesand (constitutional) referendums. Generally, those political parties whosecured less than 0.5% of the vote were subsumed in a residual category('Others'). The category of 'Independents' includes all the candidatesthat did not run on a party label. A long hyphen () indicates the lack ofexact data. A short hyphen (-), on the other hand, indicates that the in-formation did not apply in this case, because the political party did nottake part in a particular election. As far as exact data were available, theregional distribution of votes is presented in subsections following therespective chapter'2.7 a)' for absolute numbers and '2.7 b)' for per-centages.

2.8 Composition of Parliament: This table illustrates the distribution ofdirectly elected seats per party/ alliance as the immediate result of theelection. Subsequent changes in party affiliation are not documented. Allparties and alliances that won at least one seat in the respective legisla-ture are taken into account. In addition, the numbers of appointed or in-directly elected members are documented in footnotes. A short hyphen(-) indicates that the information was not applicable, because the politi-cal party was not represented in Parliament in that particular term. Op-tional subsections provide differentiated accounts of bicameral cham-

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bers, as well as the distribution of seats according to regions and to seg-ments of electoral systems (in case of combined systems).

2.9 Presidential Elections: see 2.5.

2.10 List of Power Holders: Table 2.10 provides information on the suc-cession in the executive branch of the political system. For presidentialsystems only the Head of State (corresponding also to the Head of Gov-ernment) is given. For semi-presidential and parliamentary systems boththe Head of State and the Head of Government are provided. As a rule,the remarks describe the circumstances surrounding the accession to andresignation from office.

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ELECTIONS AND ELECTORAL SYSTEMS IN

ASIA AND THE PACIFIC

The Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia

by Dieter Nohlen, Florian Grotz, and Christof Hartmann*

A cross-national analysis of elections in Asia and the Pacific is certainlynot an easy task. With an overall land extension of about 53,636,000square kilometers, comprising 61 independent states,1 Asia is not onlythe largest continent in the world, but also the most heterogeneous inseveral respects. Demographically, it includes states as different as thePeople's Republic of China, with more than one billion people, and thePacific island of Nauru, with just a few thousand inhabitants. From thesocio-economic viewpoint, we have to speak of highly industrializedcountries like Japan, contrasting heavily with some very scarcely devel-oped states like North Korea. Finally, the political-structural diversity ofAsia is also immense: in contrast to Africa, America, and Europe, inAsia it is possible to find old states that have never been colonized (likeThailand); countries with a classical colonial past (like India); and a se-ries of statesespecially in Central Asiathat became independent onlyten years ago. Similarly, we find side by side old democracies like Aus-tralia or Israel; new democracies like Mongolia or South Korea; and aconsiderable number of non-democracies, be they communist (e.g. Viet-nam), Islamist (e.g. Iran) or other types of authoritarian regimes (e.g.Myanmar).

In view of this extreme heterogeneity, the key question is, how can wecompare elections and electoral systems of the Asian-Pacific regionwithout getting entangled in a mere enumeration of idiosyncratic char-acteristics of the countries concerned? In other words, can wedespitegreat contextual divergences among the different countriesidentify

* We would like to thank Andreas M. Wiist for his valuable research assistance.1 These numbers include Australia, New Zealand, and the South Pacific Islands. For the purposeof this handbook, Asia-Pacific is considered in a geographical sense, covering the whole territoryfrom Turkey, the Caucasus and the Near East to the South Pacific Island States (including Aus-tralia). The only deviation from this geographical definition of Asia is the case of the RussianFederation, considered a European state and therefore excluded from this handbook despite itslarge territory in north-eastern Asia.

2 Elections and Electoral Systems

some cross-national patterns of electoral regulations and of their effects?And if so, which factors can explain the different forms of nationalelectoral provisions and/ or their relevant political outcomes?

With regard to other world regions, these fundamental questions ofcomparative election research have been more or less well-investigated.Let us take Western Europe, for instance, for which many scholarsparticularly since the seminal work of Stein Rokkan (1970)haveanalyzed continuity and change of electoral institutions, party systems,and voter alignments in a systematic-comparative manner.2 But also alook at the relevant literature on Latin America, Africa, and EasternEurope reveals a considerable number of cross-national studies onelections, electoral systems and party systems, especially since the thirdwave of democratization began in the mid-1980s.3

In the case of Asia, however, comparative studies on elections andelectoral systems are astonishingly scarce. There are only few cross-national analyses in this area, and these refer to more or less the samesamples of selected countries.4 Interestingly enough, we have not beenable to find any article, essay or book comparing elections over thewhole Asian continent.5 The reasons for this striking void in the usuallyhighly productive field of comparative election research have alreadybeen hinted at: the Asian-Pacific area is extremely large and heterogene-ous. This may also explain whyin contrast to all other continentsno

2 To mention only a few major publications in this field: von Beyme 1985; Daalder/ Mair (eds.)1983; Kate/ Mair 1995; Mair 1997; Rose 1974, 1980; Sartori 1976; Sternberger/ Vogel (eds.)1969.3 For relevant literature on Latin-American countries see Bendel 1996; Krennerich 1996; Main-waring/ Scully (eds.) 1995; Nohlen (ed.) 1993 and Nohlen/ Picado/ Zovatto (eds.) 1998. Re-garding Africa see Bogaards 2000; Bratton/ Posner 1999; Hartmann 1999; Nohlen/ Krennerich/Thibaut (eds.) 1999 and Reynolds 1999. For analyses of elections and party systems in post-communist Eastern Europe see for example Grotz 2000&; Kitschelt et al. 1999; Klingemann et al.(eds.) 2000; Nohlen/ Kasapovic 1996 and Ziemer (ed.) 2001.4 With regard to the Middle East we may cite the book edited by Landau/ Ozbudun/ Tachau(1980) about elections in Turkey, Lebanon, and Israel. Southeast-Asian elections are, for exam-ple, covered in volumes edited by Taylor (1996) and Sachsenroder/ Frings (1998). The onlycross-national overview we found on elections in post-soviet Central Asia is an essay by JohnAnderson (1998), who did not include the three Caucasian republics. The sole comparative studyon elections in the South Pacific was written by Yash Ghai (1988), who mostly refers to the rele-vant legal provisions at the time of independence.5 Even most recent reference titles, as for example the International Encyclopedia of Electionsedited by Richard Rose (2000), show this structural lack of information on Asian countries. Inthis sense it is quite indicative that the index of the Encyclopedia gives only two references forAsia, in comparison to seven for Africa, and seventeen for Latin America. Moreover, main en-tries such as 'founding elections' have sub-sections on Africa, Latin America, Eastern and West-ern Europe, but not on Asia.

Elections and Electoral Systems 3

cross-national data collection for elections in Asia has been published sofar.6

This handbook offers a systematic presentation of the legal frame-work and the political results of all direct national elections and referen-dums in 61 Asian-Pacific states since their independence. It is thereforea unique source to find profound answers to the key questions raisedabove. In this sense, we hope that these two volumes will stimulatescholars to get involved in more cross-national analyses of elections andelectoral systems in the Asia-Pacific region and thus to break newground in this field of political research.

In the introductory chapter to this volume we try to approach a sys-tematic comparison of elections and electoral systems in Asia and thePacific. Of course, we do not want to draw a rather simplistic generalpicture of the whole continent, nor can we dwell in detailed explanationsfor all historical peculiarities of the relevant electoral provisions andtheir consequences. Rather, we follow a middle-range approach to high-light the similarities and differences between regional and national con-texts that have most clearly influenced the relevant structure of electoralprovisions and electoral results. In order to deal more easily with theimmense contextual diversity of Asia, we decided to use the commondistinction between six sub-regions that are relatively homogeneous withregard to their political culture and their political history. These areas arethe Middle East, Central Asia, South Asia, South East Asia, East Asia,and the South Pacific.7

The subsequent paragraphs present a comprehensive overview of na-tional elections and referendums in all sub-regions. After this generalpart, the succeeding sections focus on the areas studied in this volume:the Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia. For these countries, themost important features of the legal provisions on suffrage, parliamen-tary, and presidential electoral systems are described and analyzed in acomparative manner (2). We then proceed to analyze some of the politi-cal effects that elections and electoral systems have in those states (3).The final section deals with region-specific problems of availability andreliability of official electoral statistics (4).

6 For relevant data collections on Europe see Sternberger/ Vogel (eds.) 1969, Mackie/ Rose 1991,Rose/ Munro/ Mackie 1998, and Caramani 2000; for Latin America see Nohlen (ed.) 1993a,\993b and Nohlen/ Picado/ Zovatto (eds.) 1998; for Africa refer to Sternberger/ Vogel/ Nohlen/Landfried (eds.) 1978 and Nohlen/ Krennerich/ Thibaut (eds.) 1999.7 The 61 country chapters of this handbook are also arranged according to these six areas: Thisfirst volume covers the Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia, while the countries of SouthEast Asia, East Asia, and South Pacific are included in the second volume.


1. Elections in Asia and the Pacific: A Historical and Sub-regionalOverview

Any overview of elections and electoral systems in Asia-Pacific needs tobe based on a set of criteria that make it possible to systematize the floodof heterogeneous data in a sensible way. For this introductionand forthe handbook as a wholewe have relied on an area approach foundedon the assumption that countries with a similar historical and/ or culturalbackground share more relevant characteristics than a random selectionof cases (Lijphart 1971). Following this hypothesis, the subdivision ofthe Asian continent into historical-cultural areas provides benchmarksfor fruitful comparisons in at least two respects: first, at the inter-arealevel, a comparative analysis may reveal some structural patterns ofelections and electoral systems that are characteristic of certain Asiansub-regions; second, within a single area, we may, for example, analyzethe degree of homogeneity of electoral provisions in the states of thatarea, and thus find country-specific variables which explain the evolu-tion of the relevant electoral systems and their effects.

Table 1: Independent States and Sub-regions in Asia and the Pacific*Middle East(14)BahrainIranIraqIsraelJordanKuwaitLebanonOmanQatarSaudi-ArabiaSyriaTurkeyUAEYemen

Central Asia/Caucasus (8)ArmeniaAzerbaijanGeorgiaKazakhstanKyrgyzstanTajikistanTurkmenistanUzbekistan

South Asia

(9)AfghanistanBangladeshBhutanIndiaMaldivesMyanmarNepalPakistanSri Lanka

South EastAsia (9)BruneiCambodiaIndonesiaLaosMalaysiaPhilippinesSingaporeThailandVietnam

East Asia (6)

China PRlapanKorea (North)Korea (South)MongoliaTaiwan

South Pacific(15)AustraliaCook IslandsFS MicronesiaFiji IslandsKiribatiMarshall Islds.NauruNew ZealandPalauPapua NGSamoaSolomon Islds.TongaTuvaluVanuatu

"This table divides the independent states of Asia-Pacific into six sub-regions. This classificationis followed all through the handbook. The figures in parentheses indicate the number of countriesper region. Abbreviations: China PR = People's Republic of China; FS Micronesia = FederatedStates of Micronesia; Islds. = Islands; Papua NG = Papua New Guinea; UAE = United ArabEmirates.


Hence, methodological reasons have determined our division of theAsian-Pacific continent: six sub-regions which are relatively homogene-ous with regard to the historical and political-cultural background of thecountries concerned (see Table 1). In the following we will briefly intro-duce each of these areas, highlighting the features crucial for the histori-cal evolution and the political functions of the relevant national elec-tions.

(i) The Middle East: This most westerly sub-region of the continentcovers the area from Asia Minor and the Caspian Sea in the north to theArab peninsula in the south. It includes a total of 14 independent states.8

From a historical, cultural and political perspective, the most distinctfeatures of the Middle East are the predominance of Islam and the for-mer belonging of most countries to the Ottoman Empire until 1918. It istrue that these countries experienced different degrees of dominance bydifferent European powers (Britain, France), and that concerning the Is-lamic factor we find not only differences among the major sects, but alsosome notable exceptions (Israel, Lebanon). This notwithstanding, theMiddle East can be considered being one of the most homogeneous sub-regions in Asia-Pacific.

(ii) Central Asia and the Caucasus9: Although territorially divided bythe Caspian Sea, these eight states situated along the southern border ofthe Russian Federation probably constitute the most homogeneous areain Asia, at least in historical-political terms. 'Colonized' under the Rus-sian Tsardom from the 18th century on, the relevant countries were sub-sequently incorporated into the Soviet Empire after the 1917 Revolutionand, in their present borders, they were made federative republics of theUSSR during the 1920s/ 30s. With the breakdown of the Soviet Union,they all became independent in 1991. These far-reaching similaritiesamong the post-soviet countries should however not overshadow thespecific differences concerning state- and nation-building. Broadlyspeaking, a first subgroup in this regard includes the three Caucasiancountries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia) which saw a short period ofindependence before sovietization and later actively contributed to thedissolution of the USSR. The five countries of Central Asia, on the otherhand, are totally new states and their independence arrived rather to theirown surprise.

8 We did not include a separate country chapter for the Palestinian Authority since in mid-2001 ithad not yet achieved the internationally recognized status of full independence.9 For practical reasons, in the following we will mostly use the abbreviated form 'Central Asia'for all eight post-soviet states of this area.


(iii) South Asia: The political history of South Asia, the area coveringthe whole Indian subcontinent from Afghanistan in the west to Myanmarin the east, is mainly characterized by the British dominance until theend of World War II. Apart from this general uniformity, however, thereare significant differences concerning the extent of the external influ-ence in the relevant countries: the British legacy has obviously beenstronger in the core states of the subcontinent, all real colonies (Bangla-desh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka) than in the five countries at the periph-ery of British colonial rule. Moreover, like in the Middle East, religiousfactors have played an important role in South Asian national politics. Inthis regard, it is important to differentiate not only between countrieswith Hindu/ Buddhist majorities (Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, SriLanka) and Islam(ist) states (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Maldives, Paki-stan), but also between different degrees of religious dominance in thepublic sphere.

(iv) South East Asia: The countries situated between the Indian sub-continent and the South Pacific are generally considered to form the areaof South East Asia. In the following we use this sub-regional definitionas well, though national political contexts in South East Asia are defi-nitely more heterogeneous than those in the aforementioned areas. Forthe nine relevant countries, we have to distinguish at least five groupswith different historical backgrounds: (a) the previous British territoriesof Malaya (Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore); (b) the former French coloniesin Indochina (Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam); (c) Indonesia, which was un-der Dutch rule until World War II; (d) the Philippines, with a strong US-American influence until 1935; and (e) the Kingdom of Thailand, whichhas never been a western colony.

(v) East Asia: The countries forming the sub-region of East Asia arean area in the geographical sense, but not in the strict methodologicalsense explained above. They rather make up a set of individual cases,and are indeed brought together in this handbook for primarily pragmaticreasons. None of them has ever been a classical western colony. Despitetheir divergence, this sample of countries offers some remarkable his-torical-political peculiarities. Firstly, among the East Asian states wefind two nationsthe Chinese and the Koreansthat are divided intodifferent regimes: the communist systems in North Korea and the Peo-ple's Republic of China on the one hand, and the (newly democratic) re-gimes in South Korea and in Taiwan on the other. A second striking caseis Mongolia, a communist regime for over seven decades that has devel-oped surprisingly fast towards a successful democracy after 1989. And,finally, there is a deviant case, which, though widely known, is none-


theless remarkable: Japan, whichapart from Israel and Indiais thesole old democracy on the Asian continent. These and other peculiaritiesof East Asia might be interesting for further comparative election stud-ies. In the following we will return to them only selectively, given thelimited scope of this introductory overview.

(vi) The South Pacific: In contrast to the two preceding sub-regionsthe South Pacific is fairly homogeneous, given the overall Anglo-American heritage within this area. Of course, a distinction should bemade between the large democracies Australia and New Zealand and the13 island states with only a few (ten) thousand inhabitants each. Ac-cording to their colonial heritage, the island states could in turn be di-vided into the former member states of the American Congress of Mi-cronesia (Palau, Federated States of Micronesia, Marshall Islands), thestates with a British background (Fiji Islands, Kiribati, Solomon Islandsand Tuvalu, in a certain sense also Tonga although never a colony), andthe former German territories, subsequently administered by New Zea-land or Australia, such as Nauru, Papua New Guinea and Samoa. Vanu-atu is the only example of a former French-British-administered countryin the region with other French territories that remain under the jurisdic-tion of the French Republic until today.

On the basis of this regional subdivision it is now possible to start ahistorical overview on elections and referendums. Between 1945 and2000 Asia-Pacific was witness to a total of 481 general elections to na-tional parliaments, 108 direct presidential elections and 105 referen-dums. Rather than being evenly distributed among the relevant coun-tries, the frequency of national elections has been quite different, bothsynchronically and diachronically. Tables 2a and 2b therefore differenti-ate the numbers of elections and referendums in Asia and the Pacific ac-cording to the six sub-regions and to four historical phases10. Thoughthis quantitative overview remains sketchy, it does point out some fun-damental similarities and differences between the types of elections, ar-eas and phases.

In this sense, let us first of all take a look at the regionally specificpatterns of achieving national independence after World War II: in threeareasEast Asia, South East Asia and South Asiathe number of states

10 The phases coincide with the main periods of political development in the Asian-Pacific coun-tries (1945 defeat of Japanese and European colonialism in South, East and South East Asia,1960 Republican Phase in the Middle East, Breakdown of Democracy in South East Asia; 1975Independence in South Pacific, 1990 Dissolution of Soviet Union and [Re-]Democratization inall regions).

Elections and Electoral Systems

Table 2a: Number of Parliamentary Elections, Presidential Elections andReferendum^ in the Asian-Pacific Sub-regions, 1945-2000

Regions2

ElectionParliam.

elections

Phase45-60

61-7576-9091-00

TotalPresid.elections

45-6061-7576-9091-00

TotalReferen-dums

45-6061-7576-9091-00

Total

MiddleEast

33(8)27 (14)24 (1423 (14

1075(8)2(14)7(14)7(14)

214(8)4(14)5(14)1(14)

14

CentralAsia

18(8)18

_

22(8)22

-

24(8)24

SouthAsia

17(7)12(9)

23(9)

16(9)

680(7)3(9)8(9)4(9)

750(7)2(9)5(9)1(9)8

South

EastAsia

24(8)

22(9)25(9)

21(9)

924(8)8(9)3(9)3(9)

187(8)5(9)7(9)0(9)

19

EastAsia

20(6)

18(6)

22(6)

12(6)

724(6)4(6)5(6)6(6)

191(6)4(6)2(6)

0(6)7

SouthPacific

18(3)28(7)58(15)

43(15)147

0(3)0(7)8(15)5(15)

135(3)4(7)

16(15)

12(15)37

Total

112 (32)107 (45)152 (53)120 (61)481

13 (32)17 (45)31 (53)47 (61)

10817 (32)19 (45)32 (53)37 (61)

105a Numbers of direct national elections and referendums per sub-region since World War n indifferent phases (7945-7960, 7961-7975, etc.). 'Parliam. elections' refers to general polls held tothe lower chamber of Parliament, 'Presid. elections' to the popular elections of the relevant headsof state. The numbers of independent states per region/ phase are given in parentheses.

Table 2b: Average Number of Elections in Asia-Pacific, 1945-2000

Regions

Parliam.elections

45-6061-7576-9091-00

TotafPresid.elections

45-6061-7576-9091-00

Total3

Referen-dums

45-6061-7576-9091-00

Totaf

MiddleEast

4.11.91.71.62.30.60.10.50.50.40.50.30.40.10.3

CentralAsia

--2.32.3_2.82.8-3.03.0

SouthAsia

2.41.32.61.82.00.00.30.90.40.40.00.20.60.10.2

SouthEastAsia

3.02.42.82.32.90.50.90.30.30.50.90.60.80.00.6

EastAsia

3.33.03.72.03.00.70.70.81.00.80.20.70.30.00.3

SouthPacific

6.04.03.92.94.20.00.00.50.30.21.70.61.10.81.1

Total"

3.52.42.92.03.00.40.40.60.80.60.50.40.60.60.5

' 'Total' refers to the averages of the relevant figures for sub-regions and phases respectively.

8


has remained almost unchanged from the 1950s on.11 The Middle East,on the contrary, saw a second wave of independence in the 1960s, whilemost of the Pacific island states gained full sovereignty in the 1970s (ex-ceptions Samoa, Nauru). At last, the breakdown of the Soviet Union in1991 gave rise to the sudden emergence of a whole area of independentstates in Central Asia.

A second general feature is the greater number of parliamentary elec-tions than of direct presidential elections and referendums. This factclearly reflects the predominance of pure parliamentarism throughoutAsia; in contrast to Africa, America and Eastern Europe, where clearlymore (semi-)presidential systems have been in use. Beyond the conti-nental level, however, one should not overlook the different numbers ofdirect parliamentary elections and referendums in certain sub-regionsand phases. The most striking case in this respect is post-soviet CentralAsia: since independence, i.e. during the last ten years, one fifth of thetotal presidential polls (22) and nearly one quarter of all referendums(24) in Asia-Pacific were held in these eight states. The double concen-tration of presidential elections and referendums in this area mainly re-sults from plebiscitarian practices of the relevant authoritarian leaderswho were confirmed in office by (undemocratic) polls and could expandtheir constitutional powers and/ or their terms of office with 'popularapproval' (Anderson 1997; see also 2.3). Less surprising, but nonethe-less remarkable, are some variations and trends in other sub-regions. Re-garding direct presidential elections, the number has increased slightlyover time. This is most obvious for the South Pacific, where three micro-states that achieved independence in the 1980s have established a presi-dential form of government12, but also for the Middle East, where fourcountries13 have introduced direct presidential polls since the late 1970s.On the contrary, the globally 'growing use of direct democracy' (Butler/Ranney 1994) is not observed in most Asian sub-regions. Besides Cen-tral Asia, only the states in the South Pacific have held an increasingnumber of referendums since the mid-1970s which are related to the re-gional and international status of these micro-states (popular ratificationof external treaties, compacts and association agreements).

" The relevant exceptions for South Asia include the Maldives, which gained full independencein 1965, and Bangladesh, which became a separate state after its secession from Pakistan in1971. Deviant cases for South East Asia are Singapore (independence in 1965) and Brunei(1984) on the one hand, and on the other Vietnam, which was re-unified in 1975.12 Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati and Palau.13 These states are Iran, Iraq, Syria and Yemen; of course, two of them hold 'presidential referen-dums'. Syria had already held direct presidential elections in 1949 and 1953.


A third interesting point in this respect are the quantitative differences ofparliamentary elections in Asia-Pacific across time and sub-regions (seeTable 2b). If we assumed all relevant countries elect their national par-liaments for four-year terms, we would expect averages of 3.5-4.0 forthe 15-year periods (1945-1990) and 2.5 for the decade of the 1990salone. Most of the relevant figures in Table 2b, however, are lower thanthese theoretical benchmarks. Yet, temporal and especially regionalvariations are quite large. For all periods, the highest averages of parlia-mentary polls per country are found in the South Pacific, followed byEast Asia and South East Asia. While the number of elections in CentralAsia has been beyond the average since its independence, the MiddleEast14 and South Asia score lowest. The latter result may seem surprisingat first glance since there are states with a long parliamentary traditionamong the South Asian countries, such as India and Sri Lanka.

This last consideration leads us from the purely quantitative dimen-sion to the main political-structural differences between the Asian-Pacific countries across and within the sub-regions, i.e. with regard tothe competitiveness of elections (Krennerich 2000). In this regard Table3 provides an overview of the most recent parliamentary elections in the61 relevant countries. The results are remarkable in several respects. Thefirst can be drawn from a comparison with other world regions: whereascompetitive parliamentary elections are currently the rule in Europe15,both Americas16 and most parts of Africa17, this is true only for half thestates in Asia and the Pacific (30 of 61). Eleven countries hold multi-candidate parliamentary polls, but these do not comply with the interna-tional standards of free and fair elections (semi-competitive). The type ofnon-competitive elections formerly in use in the communist systems ofEastern Europe is still present in seven Asian countries. And there are atleast 13 countries that hold no parliamentary elections at all, seven ofwhich have not ever seen a general election.

14 The high number of elections in the Middle East between 1945 and 1960 may be explained bythe unstable parliamentary governments in most countries with frequent fresh elections due tointerruptions of parliamentary rule by military coup d'etats.15 At present the only European country where no competitive elections to the national parlia-ment are held is Belarus.16 For Latin America, the only full exception nowadays is Cuba.17 In Africa, the principle of competitive elections is so far recognized in all countries exceptEquatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Sudan and Swaziland. There are actually several countries whereconstitutional life is interrupted by civil war, or whose political practices lead us to classify themas semi-competitive settings (Cameroon, Chad, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Guinea,Kenya, Mauritania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe).


Table 3: Competitiveness of Recent Elections in Asia and the PacificRegion

Middle East

Central Asia

South Asia

South EastAsia

East Asia

South Pacific

Degree of Competitiveness3

Competitive

IsraelLebanonTurkey

ArmeniaGeorgia

BangladeshIndiaNepalSri LankaCambodiaIndonesiaPhilippinesThailandJapanKorea (South)MongoliaTaiwanAustraliaCook IslandsFiji IslandsFS Micronesia0

KiribatiMarshall Islds.c

Nauruc

New ZealandPalauc

Papua NGSamoarrl C dTongaTuvalu0

Vanuatu

Semi-competitiveIranJordanKuwaitYemen

AzerbaijanKazakhstanKyrgyzstanTajikistanUzbekistan

MalaysiaSingapore

Non-competitiveIraqSyria

Turkmenistan

Maldives

LaosVietnam

Korea (North)

No Elections"

BahrainOmanQatarSaudi ArabiaUAE

AfghanistanBhutanMyanmarPakistan13

Brunei

China PR

Solomon Islds.

a This qualitative classification of elections in Asia-Pacific relies exclusively on the relevant in-formation given in the following country chapters. The assignment of the countries refers to themost recent parliamentary elections (held before May 2001). As for the categories, general elec-tions without any formal alternatives are considered non-competitive, i.e. in most relevant casesthere is a state party whose candidates/ (single) list(s) are simply confirmed; semi-competitiveelections are formally multi-candidate races that cannot be considered democratic due to various


reasons (e.g. absence of a substantial political competition, (in)formal restrictions of electoralcampaigns, fraudulent practices in vote counting, etc.); competitive polls are those that meet in-ternational standards of 'free and fair elections' (see Elklit 2000; Krennerich 2000). The category'No elections' includes those countries where currently no direct elections to national politicalinstitutions are held. For abbreviations of countries see Table 1.

In Pakistan, after the 1999 putsch, the (democratic) constitution was put in abeyance; electionshave not been held under the new regime, but they were announced for 2002.0 Political parties are either non-existent or do not play any significant role in the electoral contest.d Only a minority of parliamentary seats are distributed via general elections.

It is also difficult to detect a clear pattern regarding the degree of com-petitiveness of the different regions. There is certainly a clear concentra-tion of countries without elections in the emirates of the Arab peninsulaand in the periphery of South Asia, and a concentration of competitivesettings in the South Pacific (although some micro-states do not havepolitical parties). The intra-regional distribution is also relatively uni-form only in the South-Pacific. Due to these intra-regional differenceswe have to restrict our analytical focus to the three regions of this vol-ume when trying to shed some light on the more detailed structure of therelevant electoral provisions.

2. Structure and Evolution of Electoral Provisions

2.1 Suffrage

At the beginning of the 21st century the principles of universal, equal,direct and secret suffrage are generally accepted and applied worldwide.In Asia and the Pacific, however, there are many more deviations fromthese international standards than in other world regions, especially inthe Middle East.

In contrast to Central Asia and South Asia where universal suffragewas introduced at the moment of state independence or even long be-fore18, most Middle Eastern countries franchise expansion has been moregradual since the beginning of self-government in the 1920s. Initially,

18 In the former Soviet republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus, the 1936 Stalinist Constitu-tion declared franchise legally universal, equal, direct and secret, but elections remained non-competitive until the dissolution of the USSR. Armenia and Georgia had even held general elec-tions during their first period of independence after World War I. Most countries in South Asia,on the other hand, introduced universal suffrage immediately before their first post-independenceelection, after more or less intense experiences with electoral practices under British rule sincethe late 19th century. Exceptions in this regard are Sri Lanka, where universal suffrage has beenapplied already since 1931, and the Maldives, where women remain disenfranchised until today.

b


voting rights were restricted to property owners and literates, but by1946 universal male suffrage had been introduced in all successor statesto the Ottoman Empire. As regards the illiterate part of the population,this saw its electoral participation further hindered by the write-in bal-lots practiceballots where the voter had to write the name of the can-didate selected. Likewise, women's franchise in the Middle East hasbeen introduced later than anywhere else. In most states female suffragewas formally granted during the 1950s/ 60s, becoming effective consid-erably later.19 In the Maldives and in Kuwait, however, women are stilldisenfranchised. In December 1999 the Parliament of Kuwait refused topass a draft electoral law that would have permitted female citizens tovote in the 2003 elections. Apart from these both conspicuous excep-tions, the principle of universality is now affirmed in all Asian stateswhere popular elections are held.

There is, however, a series of countries in Asia-Pacific in which na-tional political offices are not popularly elected. At present five of these13 states are situated on the Arab peninsula, and four are in South Asia(see above Table 3). Yet, these two groups are structurally different in atleast one respect: while the relevant Arab states have never seen generalelections at the national level,20 the citizens of Afghanistan, Myanmarand Pakistan are currently deprived of their voting rights due to contin-ued civil war or military rule (though in the first two cases this alreadylasts for more than a decade). Finally, Bhutan is a borderline case, sinceits traditional society does not entrust the election of the National As-sembly (Tshogdu) to the individual citizens; rather, parliamentary candi-dates are chosen unanimously at public meetings by village heads andadult representatives of extended families and clans.

As regards the remaining two principles of suffrage, today we findneither indirect nor unequal elections in the three Asian sub-regionsdocumented in this volume.21 Historically, however, indirect elections

19 In Lebanon women suffrage was introduced in 1952 and became effective in 1957. In Syria,after the introduction of women franchise in 1953 and its abrogation one year later, female citi-zens have been allowed to vote uninterruptedly since the 1971 presidential referendum. In Iraq,women could effectively participate in national elections since 1980. Female franchise in Iranwas introduced in 1963 and, despite massive protests of conservative clerics, it was maintainedafter the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Jordan saw the first electoral participation of women in1984, ten years after the relevant legal provisions had been passed.20 The only deviant case in this group is Bahrain, where general elections to national representa-tive organs were held in 1972 and 1973.21 Currently, the only state in Asia-Pacific which holds indirect parliamentary elections is thePeople's Republic of China. And there is one country, the Fiji Islands, that until recently did notcomply with the international norm of equal elections, in the sense that each vote had roughly thesame weight. For both cases see the introduction to the second volume of this work.


were the norm in the successor states of the Ottoman EmpireincludingTurkeyuntil the 1950s. This holds also true for Afghanistan (until the1960s) and Pakistan (until 1970). There are, on the contrary, no exam-ples of formally unequal elections in the history of the three regions.Still, the case of Lebanon should be mentioned, since the 6:5 'propor-tional' attribution of seats to the two main confessions fixed in the 1943National Pact (changed in 1990) for a long period over-represented theChristian sects, by giving their votes a bigger weight in the distributionof seats.

Apart from these general principles, a relative uniformity is found insome of the more specific regulations worldwide, and Asia-Pacific pres-ents again the greater number of exceptions to it. The first example is thelegal stipulation that citizens must have reached a certain age of voting(see Grotz 2000a). While this threshold of political maturity has variedthrough time and space, an internationally uniform limit of 18 years hasbeen in existence for the last two decades. Interestingly enough, 16 ofthe world's 22 deviant cases22 are situated in Asia-Pacific. In the coun-tries of the six sub-regions we find age limits both above and below the18-year threshold.23 Although each case is of course at best explained byanalyzing the individual context, it is nevertheless possible to state thatan abnormally high voting age is usually found in traditional or conser-vative regimes (Jordan, Kuwait, Pakistan). On the other hand, populistand/ or leftist regimes tend to lower the voting age under 18, since theyneed to compensate the lack of political competition by extending par-ticipation. In the Philippines, for example, President Marcos lowered thevoting age from 21 directly to 15 in 1973, thereby almost doubling thenumber of registered voters. With the re-democratization and the 1987Constitution, voting age has been readjusted to the international standardof 18 years. Similarly, in post-revolutionary Iran, voting age was low-ered from 20 to 15 years in 1981 and raised again to 16 in 1999.Another international trend towards convergent franchise provisionsconcerns the traditional stipulation that registered voters must have apermanent residency within the relevant territorial constituency. Sincethe past few years there has been a worldwide tendency to expand the

22 There are currently three states with a lower voting age (16 years) in Latin America (Cuba,Nicaragua and Brazil). Three countries have a higher age limit, two of them in North Africa (Mo-rocco and Tunisia with 20 years) and one in Europe (Austria with 19 years).23 In Asia-Pacific a voting age limit of 21 years exists currently in Azerbaijan, the Fiji Islands,Kuwait, Lebanon, Malaysia, Pakistan, Samoa, and Singapore. In Japan, Nauru, South Korea, andTaiwan it is set at 20 years, while in Jordan it is 19 years. Lower thresholds are found in Indone-sia, North Korea (17 years respectively), and Iran (16 years).


democratic rights of the people by weakening this residency requirementand permitting citizens living abroad to participate in national electionsfrom their foreign place of residence (external voting). Yet, unlike in thecase of voting age, nowadays there are still not homogeneous structuresof external voting provisions across and within other continents (seeNohlen/ Grotz 2000).

Table 4: Cases of External Voting in the Middle East, Central Asia and South Asiaa

Countries withregulations forexternal voting

Countrieswithoutregulations forexternal voting

Middle EastIranSyria"Turkey0

IraqIsraelJordanKuwaitLebanonYemen

Central AsiaArmeniaAzerbaijanGeorgiaKazakhstanKyrgyzstanTajikistanUzbekistanTurkmenistan

South Asia

BangladeshIndiaMaldivesNepalSri Lanka

"This table includes only those countries that currently (mid-2001) hold general elections to na-tional parliaments.

In Syria external voting is allowed only for presidential referendums.0 Although in Turkey external voting provisions contain both postal mail and voting in diplo-matic missions, in both the 1995 and 1999 parliamentary elections the Supreme Election Boardissued an exceptional decree that invalidated the relevant provisions. Therefore, citizens wishingto cast their vote had to enter the country, as it had been all along.

In the light of this fact it is very remarkable that one can distinguishclear patterns of external voting for the three Asian sub-regions of thisvolume (Table 4). The countries of South Asia and the Middle East, onthe one hand, have almost completely resisted the international trend ofintroducing external voting provisions. Two of the deviant casesIranand Syriacan hardly be considered a real extension of democraticrights; rather, the introduction of the external voting provision appar-ently responded to the desire of both autocratic regimes to increase therelevant participation rates and thus to enhance their legitimacy. In thissense, we find here an analogy to the lowering of the voting age in Iran.On the other hand, nearly all post-soviet states in Central Asia and theCaucasus have introduced legal regulations for external voting duringthe 1990s. This is best explained by the strong influence of internationalactors such as the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe


(OSCE) on the reforming of the electoral legislation in the relevantstates. It is very significant that the most authoritarian system in this re-gionTurkmenistancontinues to be the only regime that has not yetsubstantially altered its electoral legislation in order to give the new stateat least the appearance of conformity with international standards ofdemocratic rule.

2.2 Parliamentary Electoral Systems

A worldwide overview of parliamentary electoral systems reveals thatone principle of representation is predominant on each (sub-)continent.Whereas proportional representation (PR) is the rule in Europe and LatinAmerica, majority electoral systems have been applied in North Amer-ica, the Commonwealth Caribbean and wide parts of Africa (see Nohlen/Grotz/ Krennerich/ Thibaut 2000). Since the 1990s, however, there is aninter-regional trend towards the combination of majority formulas andPR in electoral systems.24

If we turn our attention to Asia and the Pacific, we will find thatde-spite the great historical-political divergencesmajority systems pre-dominate throughout the whole area. Only six of the 48 Asian-Pacificcountries which currently hold general parliamentary elections applyPR-systems.25 Yet, the electoral systems in the 42 remaining states differconsiderably among themselves in their technical elements, i.e. in thesize of their constituencies, voting procedures, majority requirements,etc. Furthermore, the historical evolution of electoral systems variesquite a lot through time and space, and so do the reasons for the relevantinstitutional choices.

Let us take a look at the Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asiaand we will clearly identify area-specific patterns of parliamentary elec-toral systems. Table 5 illustrates the strong influence of the relevanthistorical-political background on both structure and evolution of elec-toral systems in these sub-regions.

24 This is especially true for post-communist Eastern Europe where seven of the 19 relevantstates currently apply combined electoral systems. Countries in Africa and America that havereformed their electoral systems in similar ways include Bolivia, Ecuador, Guinea, Lesotho (notyet applied), Mexico, Senegal, Seychelles, and Venezuela.25 These are Israel, Turkey, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Indonesia, and New Zealand. In Lebanon, wehave a pre-electoral proportional distribution of seats to confessional groups combined with amajority electoral system.


In general, the states of the Middle East have shown an astonishing ho-mogeneity when choosing an electoral system. No doubt, this is ex-plained by their common underlying model, the electoral provisions ap-plied under Ottoman rule, namely the plurality system in (multi-member)constituencies of different size. It is interesting that most of the countriesthat belonged to the Ottoman Empire until World War I remained loyalto this preexisting electoral system after their independence, and did noteven change the constituency boundaries, which usually coincided withthe established administrative districts. There are certainly some devia-tionsboth long-past and more recentfrom this institutional setting;for instance, the temporary application of qualified majority systemsduring the 1950s was a consequence of the strong French influence inthe respective countries26. Other states have maintained the Ottoman plu-rality formula, but modified the voting procedure in order to cope withcontext-specific needs.27 Nevertheless, the Ottoman model has remainedthe norm in this area, even in those countries like Iran (until the 1979Revolution) or Kuwait, which were never part of the Ottoman Empire. Itis also significant that the Palestinian Authority opted for exactly thistype of electoral system when discussing with Israel about institutionalchoices for the new state.28 The maintenance of the Ottoman modelthroughout the region is even more striking insofar as the Turks them-selves opted for PR in multi-member constituencies in 1961 and have re-confirmed this institutional choice in the 1982 Constitution, thoughsome technical details of the electoral system have been modified sev-eral times.

Israel is a very specific case in this regard: it is the sole Asian-Pacificstate that has continuously applied PR in one nationwide constituencysince independence. This institutional choice was mainly determined bythe well-institutionalized multi-party system that existed already beforethe foundation of the Israeli state: in the constitutional debates precedingthe first parliamentary elections, the numerous small parties were able tosecure an almost pure PR-system against the predominant Mapai party,which had opted for a majority system (Nohlen 1978: 238).

26 This applies to Lebanon and Syria, which were a French Mandatory territory between 1920 and1943.27 Examples are Jordan, with the shift from plurality to SNTV in 1993, or Lebanon (since 1943)with its fixed proportional allocation of seats to sects, which is operated before the elections (fordetails see chapter on Lebanon). Yemen (re-)introduced the plurality system in single-memberconstituencies in 1993.28 The very useful contribution on the electoral system of the Palestinian Authority by Waldman(2000) does not take adequately into account this path dependency of institutional choice.


Similar to the situation in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Cauca-sus confirm the significance of historical legacies in order to choose anelectoral system. The preexisting institutional arrangement in this sub-region was the Soviet model, i.e. the absolute majority system in single-member constituencies that was applied in the non-competitive electionsof the USSR and Eastern Europe until 1989. From this common starting-point, the evolution of the relevant electoral systems has taken differentpaths. On the one hand, Georgia introduced a segmented system alreadyfor the 1990 parliamentary elections, and was followed by its Caucasianneighbors Armenia and Azerbaijan after their independence. On theother hand, the five Central Asian states maintained the absolute major-ity system until the late 1990s. While Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Ta-jikistan opted recently for a limited number of parallel PR-seats, Uzbeki-stan and Turkmenistan have preserved the Soviet model?'9 In sum, thereis a certain trend in this area from absolute majority towards segmentedsystemsa similar pattern could be observed in the post-communistcountries of Eastern Europe (see Nohlen/ Kasapovic 1996). This trans-formation of the electoral system has been mainly determined by thebalance of power between governments and (regime) oppositions. Geor-gia was the first country in the region to see the emergence of a stronganti-communist organization demanding a fundamental reform of theSoviet electoral legislation. In Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, on theother hand, a politically organized opposition to the authoritarian leadersdoes not exist to date. The other Central Asian states are situated some-where between these two extremes.

Finally, the countries of South Asia show the strongest continuity intheir historically inherited electoral system, i.e. the classical British typeof plurality system in single-member constituencies. With the highly re-markable exception of Sri Lanka, which in 1978 introduced a PR-systemalong with a (semi-)presidential system of government, all South Asianstates have continuously applied the British model since their first post-independence election.30 In Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan this optionhas even survived various regime changes.

29 Of course, the evolutionary pattern described above only concerns the types of the electoralsystems, and not changes of technical elements within the basic types. For those changesmostnotable are those in the Caucasian statesrefer to the relevant country article in this handbook.30 Strictly speaking, the Maldives are a deviant case as well, since it is the only state in the worldbesides Chile where the binomial system is applied (see Nohlen 20006). In contrast to Chile,however, the binomial system in the Maldives is not a politically designed institutional arrange-ment, but rather a historical modification of the original plurality system in two-member con-stituencies (with multiple vote). Moreover, due to the absence of political party competition, itdoes not show the effects ascribed to binomial systems.


Table 5: Parliamentary Electoral Systems and Historical Backgrounds in theMiddle East, Central Asia and South Asia"

Plurality Systemin SMCs

Plurality Systemin constituenciesof different sizes'1

QualifiedMajority Systemsin SMCs/ MMCs

Absolute MajoritySystem in SMCs

SegmentedSystems

PR-Systems'1

BritishBackground

Bangladesh (73-)India (51-)Myanmar (51-90)Nepal (59-)Pakistan (70-97)Sri Lanka (47-78)

Yemen PDR (78-86)Bahrain (72-73)Kuwait (63-)Maldives (75-)

Sri Lanka (89-)

OttomanBackground

Yemen AR (71-88)Yemen (93-)

Iraq (80-)lordan (47-)Lebanon (53-)Syria (73-)Turkey (46-57)

Iraq (53-63)Lebanon (43-51 fSyria (47-63)

Turkey (61-)

SovietBackground

Armenia (90)Azerbaijan (90)Kazakhstan (90-99)Kyrgyzstan (90-00)Tajikistan (90-00)Turkmenistan (90-)Uzbekistan (90-)

Armenia (95-)Azerbaijan (95-)Georgia (90-)Kazakhstan (99-)Kyrgyzstan (00-)Tajikistan (00-)

Other

Afghanistan(31/65-88)

Iran (06/63-79)

Iran (79-)

Israel (49-)a This table includes all electoral systems of the Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia thathave been applied in general elections to (the lower house of) Parliament since state independ-ence. States' names in italics refer to electoral systems that are not applied any longer. The peri-ods of application are given in parentheses. No general elections at all have been held in Bhutan,Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Currently there are no parliamentaryelections in Afghanistan, Bahrain, Myanmar and Pakistan. Abbreviations: MMCs = multi-member constituencies; SMCs = single-member constituencies; Yemen AR = Yemen Arab Re-public (North Yemen); Yemen PDR = People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (South Yemen).b This category includes a series of plurality systems that vary considerably with regard to the sizeof the constituencies and voting procedures. In Kuwait (since 1981) and the Maldives, for exam-ple, deputies have been elected in two-member constituencies, while in most other countriesMMCs of variable size have been the rule. Whereas in most of the electoral systems included theelectors have had multiple votes, this is not the case in Jordan (SNTV) and the Maldives (bino-mial system). For technical details of the relevant electoral systems refer to the appendix to thisintroduction and the relevant country articles in this handbook.


c Since the 1920s under the French Mandate and between 1943 and 1947 as absolute majoritysystem, in 1951 with a 40% majority requirement.d This category includes proportional representation systems that differ technically among them-selves. While Israel's Parliament has been elected in one constituency with a relatively low legalthreshold, so that the system comes close to pure PR, in Turkey PR is applied in constituencies ofdifferent size with a national threshold of 10%. Sri Lanka finally combines PR in sub-nationalMMCs with additional seats allocated in a nationwide constituency. For historical variations ofthe electoral systems refer to the relevant country articles.

2.3 Presidential Electoral Systems

As mentioned before, direct presidential elections have been less com-mon in Asia than in America, Africa and Europe. Until the dissolution ofthe Soviet Union and the subsequent creation of (semi-)presidential sys-tems in the former member states there were only very few countries inAsia-Pacific where the Head of State was chosen by popular vote. Un-like in Africa, most authoritarian rulers in Asian states did not see anyneed to organize presidential referendums.

Some notable exceptions in this regard are found in the Middle East:in the leftist-populist regimes of Iraq and Syria presidential plebisciteshave been heldwith only one candidate to be popularly confirmedsince the 1970s, and are still an instrument of legitimization of the rele-vant ruler.31 Most other Middle Eastern countries have remained monar-chies or emirates with hereditary succession of the Head of State. Yemenintroduced direct and multi-candidate presidential elections, but the firstpolls, held in 1999 were closer to the plebiscites in Syria or Iraq than toopen competitions. A special case is Iran, where the Shah's reign wasreplaced in 1979 by a Shi'ite Mullah regime with a popularly electedPresident, whose political competencies are, however, rather limited.32

Central Asia differs totally from the other sub-regions insofar as alleight states have directly elected Presidents. This unusual uniformity re-sults from the institutional imitation of the last years in the Soviet Un-ion, when most republican leaders followed the example of MikhailGorbachev, who introduced the office of a President of the USSR inMarch 1990. Immediately before independence all Asian Soviet repub-

31 In Syria in 1971, 1978, 1985, 1991, 1999 and 2000, in Iraq in 1995. In both republican statesthere are tendencies to introduce a quasi-monarchical succession of family members to the Presi-dency. This has already been the case in Syria in 2000, with the succession of Bashshar al-Asadto his father Hafiz al-Asad.32 The direct elections for Prime Minister held in 1996, 1999 and 2001 in Israel represent a par-ticular institutional arrangement and are therefore excluded from our comparative analysis.


lies held direct elections to their presidencies33 and have retained this in-stitutional stetting to date. A historical exception was Georgia, whichafter the coup d'etat against President Gamsakhurdia in 19917 92 re-turned temporarily to the Soviet-type parliamentary system (with theSpeaker of Parliament as Head of State), before re-establishing the di-rectly elected presidency via the 1995 Constitution. Turkmenistan is cur-rently the only country where the relevant electoral provisions are inabeyance, since President Saparmurat Niyazov's term of office becamelife-long in December 1999.

In South Asia direct presidential elections are rare. Apart from theMaldives, in which the authoritarian President is confirmed by referen-dum, Sri Lanka is presently the only country in this area with the Headof State popularly elected. Between 1978 and 1986, Bangladesh had aperiod of direct presidential elections introduced by the military rulerGeneral Zia, who wanted to civilianise the regime but retain the reignsof power. With the beginning of the democratic transition in 1990 thecountry returned to its traditional parliamentary form of governmentwith an indirectly elected Head of State.

Regarding the specific electoral provisions, one can say that the presi-dential electoral systems of the aforementioned countries basically re-veal the authoritarian nature of most regimes (see Table 6).34 The rele-vant regulations under these regimes provide for relatively long terms ofoffice (mostly seven years); no serious legal restrictions for re-election;35

no concurrency with parliamentary elections and in some cases specificpre-selection mechanisms by the ruling party central committee or theParliament (Iraq, Syria). At first glance it seems striking that all men-tioned cases of presidential elections in the Middle East, Central Asiaand South Asia require an absolute majority of votes in order for thecandidate to be elected, whereas in most relevant countries of otherAsian-Pacific sub-regions plurality is the predominant formula. Yet, thislegal provision has hardly been of any practical significance: in Georgiaand Armenia presidential elections were fully competitive only sincevery recently, and in 1998 Armenia was witness to the first and only run-off in the history of presidential elections in post-soviet Asia. Againstthis background, it is most telling that in Iraq both the Constitution and

33 Turkmenistan was the first republic to elect its President in October 1990, while Uzbekistanheld the latest pre-independence presidential elections on 29 December 1991.34 Main exceptions are the countries in the Caucasus and Sri Lanka.35 The Presidents in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, who faced relatively short legalterms and constitutional limits to re-election, have successfully circumvented these thresholds bypopular referendums, confirming the prolongation of the term of the acting President.


the Electoral Law are totally silent regarding the procedure to follow incase the selected candidate does not reach the required absolute majorityof valid votes.

Table 6: Basic Features of Direct Presidential Elections in the Middle East,Central Asia and South AsiaRegion/Country

Pluralistelections51

Con-cur-rency

Term(years)

Conse-cutiveterms

Requiredmajority

Furtherprocedure

Lastelection

Strongestcandidate0

Middle EastIranIraq"Syriad

Yemen

7

1

nonono

no

477

T

twon. 1.n. 1.

two

50 %+\50 %+\50 %+l

50%+1

run-offnonenewcandidaterun-off

199719952000

1999

69.6100.099.7

96.2Central AsiaArmeniaAzerbaijanGeorgiaKazakhstanKyrgyzstanTajikistanTurkmenistan1

Uzbekistan

34433302

nononononononono

55575155

twotwotwotwotwotwotwotwo

50 %+lqualified1

50 %+l50 %+l50 %+l50 %+l50 %+l50 %+l

run-offrun-off'run-off8

run-off*1

run-off*1

run-offrun-offrun-off

19981998200019992000199919922000

38.577.682.081.076.497.699.595.7

South AsiaMaldives"

Sri Lanka 4

no

no

5

6

n. 1.

two

51 %

50 %+l

newcandidateSTV

1998

1999

90.9

51.1Abbreviations: n. 1. = not limited; '' = data not available.a Number of multi-candidate presidential elections held since independence.b 'Yes' means: Both presid

election in asia and pacific i

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