The past twenty five years has seen the rapid proliferation of democracy. Notably, the areas of Eastern Europe and Latin America have experienced both the demise of autocratic and dictatorial regimes and in turn their replacement with Democratic forms of government. The two most common forms of democratic government are firstly majoritarian democracy, often associated with either presidential systems or Westminster style parliamentary regimes, with single member district or 'first past the post' systems, and secondly Consensus democracies, which are mostly associated with proportional representation electoral systems in parliamentary government.

When looking at when majoritarian democracies are more representative than Consensual democracies it is important not only to centre on the electoral or legislative side of democracy, but in addition, the executive representation of the electorate, an equally crucial dimension of the political process and furthermore, other attributes of the electoral system such as district magnitude and the influence of presidential elections on legislative elections.

Allen argues that on face value, we may assume that the higher the score of legislative disproportionality based on the Sainte Lague method, the less democratic the country . Most often these systems are majoritarian ones. The single member districts and the 'first passed the post' electoral rules unsurprisingly distort the disproportionality index, allowing them to be clearly seen as less representative than consensual democracies. However, as Anderson argues, when we additionally consider how much government alternation is present in each system, majoritarian systems may actually be more democratic in practice than consensus systems that score very low on legislative disproportionality indices .

This is evident in a majoritarian democracy such as that of the United Kingdom where more parties win greater amounts of the popular vote, but are denied legislative representation in Parliament. As Allen quotes, 'proportionality, for majoritarian systems, is not a primary concern' . This is highlighted by looking at the electoral performance and the consequent seat allocation of the several 'third parties' in majoritarian countries, noticeably the Liberal Democrats in the United Kingdom, where there is a palpable lack of proportionality between votes gained and seats attained. However as Allen quotes, ' The disproportionality between the earned vote and seat allocation in majoritarian democracies is not necessarily a failure of democracy or the concept of representation, but a discrepancy which results in majoritarian systems that utilize 'first past the post systems'' .

Another important aspect of the electoral system which effects representation is district magnitude. As Lijphart notes, 'the magnitude of an electoral district denotes the number of candidates to be elected in the district' . District magnitude is of significant importance as it has both an effect on plurality-majority systems and proportional representation systems, but, as Lijphart quotes, 'in opposite directions' . An increase in district magnitude in plurality-majority systems has

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1418
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)