3Introduction: The Politics of Electoral Reform

Countries commonly introduce minor changes to the legal and procedural regula-tions of elections, such as revisions of constituency boundaries or campaign finance rules. Some have occasionally implemented more significant modifications, such as switching electoral formulas between d’Hondt and Saint-Lague, or expanding parliamentary assemblies (see Lijphart, 1994: 78-94). A few have experienced more radical change; the French National Assembly has oscillated between proportional and majoritarian elections, while Greece and Argentina have experimented with frequent reforms (Taagepera and Shugart, 1989: 219-222). But in most countries the basic electoral system-the rules by which votes are translated into seats-has usually persisted without fundamental change since their emergence as liberal democracies. Once established, the constitutional framework develops entrenched interests from incumbent parties which benefit from the status quo (see Dunleavy and Margetts this issue). In &dquo;normal politics&dquo; the rules of the game are taken for granted, and politicians merely dispute the spoils. In the early 1980s David Butler noted that, except for Britain, there was almost no serious discussion of changin