Following the recently concluded elections for members of parliament of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia, as many as 102 of 174 cities and municipalities in our country will not have their representatives in the new convocation of parliament. That makes 58.6% of the total number of local self-government units. Even more important is the fact that almost 1.3 million voters (1,271,988), the number entitled to vote in the territory of these cities and municipalities, will not have their representatives in the highest legislative body for the next 4 years. If we look at the territory of Serbia excluding Kosovo and Metohija, the result is as follows: 77 of 145 LSGUs (53.1%) are without a member of parliament, i.e. 1.2 million registered voters (1,186,548). Such data unambiguously points to insufficient geographic representativeness, as one of the basic shortcomings of the existing electoral system in Serbia – a proportional system with electoral lists and a single electoral unit.
Ensuring adequate geographic representativeness is one of the key criteria that an electoral system must meet in order to be assessed as efficient and fair. This type of representativeness implies that different parts of the country are represented in parliament in accordance with their size and number of inhabitants, i.e. registered voters. This criterion can, in practice, be considered in relation to various territorial units, such as municipalities, cities, regions, and other, smaller or larger units. It is crucial that territorial units receive equal treatment, regardless of parameters such as economic development, ethnic composition of the population, the ratio of urban to rural population, etc.
In this context, we will cite some further statistical data testifying to the devastating impact of the existing electoral system on the geographic representativeness of the National Assembly. Namely, after the elections held on April 3, 2022, the new parliamentary convocation will count as many as 105 members of parliament from Belgrade. This means that Belgrade, with 24.6% of the total number of registered voters, was allotted as much as 42% of parliamentary seats (“metropolization of representation”). Even more drastic is the fact that Belgrade and Novi Sad, as the two largest cities, together have more than half of the members of parliament – 129, even though only 29.7% of the electorate lives in them. It is particularly interesting that there will be 24 members of parliament from Novi Sad in the assembly benches, which is more than in all parliamentary convocations in the last 20 years.
While, on the one hand, Belgrade and Vojvodina together count 159 mandates (63.6%), on the other hand, 29 of 47 local self-government units (61.7%) belonging to Southern and Eastern Serbia do not have their representatives in the legislative house. This also speaks to the unequal relationship between the North and South of our country. However, although it may seem so at first glance, the situation regarding representativeness is not significantly better in Vojvodina – 53.3% of the cities and municipalities belonging to this autonomous province do not have members of parliament.
It is a curiosity that there are three municipalities that did not even have candidates on any of the 19 electoral lists in these parliamentary elections. These are Irig, Varvarin, and Ražanj.
Of course, it should be kept in mind that the previous statistics cover members of parliament elected from electoral lists, whose mandates will be verified at the constitutive session. As always, shifts will soon occur due to the resignations of a certain number of members of parliament. The first part covers those members of parliament of the ruling majority who will move into the executive branch. The second part relates to certain well-known persons, who were on party lists due to campaign needs and marketing reasons, but will not want to be members of parliament. However, none of that will significantly change the statistics on territorial representation in parliament.
The problem of uneven representation of different parts of the state in parliament is not new. It dates back to 2000, when the proportional electoral system with a single electoral unit and electoral lists for candidates was introduced. According to Professor Milan Jovanović of the Faculty of Political Sciences (“Redesigning the electoral system – one failed attempt”), in the parliamentary convocations formed after the 2000, 2003, 2007, and 2008 elections, an average of 100 municipalities per convocation did not have their representative. At the same time, 17 municipalities, which according to the criteria of the Government of the Republic of Serbia are classified as extremely underdeveloped and devastated, did not have representatives in eight consecutive legislatures.
Furthermore, an analysis by the Center for Free Elections and Democracy (CESID) showed that in the convocation that lasted from 2014 to 2016, 96 local self-government units, in which more than 1.5 million voters live, did not have a single member of parliament with residence in their territory in the assembly, and in the period from 2016 to 2020 these indicators are even more drastic (107 LSGUs – 1.6 million voters).
The lack of geographic representativeness is deeply connected to other weaknesses of the current electoral system. When a voter does not have the opportunity to directly choose, by first and last name, the candidate who will be their voice in parliament, but only chooses between different parties and their lists, the connection between citizens and elected representatives is severed. Members of parliament are not accountable to citizens, do not communicate with them, and show an absence of responsiveness to their views and interests. Hand in hand with the absence of accountability goes blind loyalty to party headquarters, which compile the electoral lists and make all key decisions. As a consequence of this, there is no real debate in parliament: all government proposals are automatically accepted, and the opposition’s are automatically rejected. It is also a major question what the capacities of such a parliament are to perform its oversight role.
In a democratic system, both parliament and political parties have one common task – to perform the function of representation. This is also the key function for the survival and development of democracy. However, the electoral system in force in Serbia provides exactly the opposite incentives to political actors. It distances the legislative branch and parties from citizens, and brings them closer to non-transparent and illegitimate centers of power, and narrow circles of interest.
For these reasons, the Foundation for Liberal Practical Politics advocates a transition to a personalized proportional electoral system, specifically to the subtype closest to the one that exists today in Slovenia. In such a system, citizens are enabled to directly choose members of parliament from their electoral units who will represent them in parliament, by circling their first and last name. The proposed system is fair, because it implies the retention of the proportional method – each party, coalition, or group of citizens receives, in the elections, a number of mandates proportional to the number of votes it won in the elections. However, within the party candidates, the mandates themselves ultimately belong to those among them who, based on their biographies and reputation, achieved the best electoral results in their local communities.
The personalized proportional system with electoral units and electoral districts that we propose will ensure far better territorial representation for all parts of our country. Members of parliament will be accountable to citizens, who will be able to reward or punish them in the next elections for their work up to that point. In the long run, this change will decentralize and democratize political parties in Serbia. The expected effect is the creation of developed intra-party competition instead of the authoritarian structure that exists today in most political organizations.
In accordance with this, the research team will publish Framework Recommendations for Amending the Electoral System in the upcoming period. The recommendations will be offered as a framework and incentive for discussion and exchange of opinions with relevant democratically oriented political parties, civil society, and expert public. The ultimate goal is to arrive at a detailed and comprehensive proposal for electoral system reform, which would gain the widest possible support in society and among political actors.
Research team of the Foundation for Liberal Practical Politics