Beyond Nightmare and Hope : Engineering Electoral Proportionality in Presidential Democracies

This Article aims to reappraise the current academic debate on the prospects of proportional representation in presidential systems. Based on the case study of electoral reforms in the United States and Taiwan, this article confirms that governability and representativeness are the central concerns of electoral engineering. After a close examination of the relevant normative arguments and empirical evidence, it argues that neither the nightmare of constitutional breakdown nor the hope of consociational democracy should dictate our political judgment in designing the legislative electoral system. Instead, we should make the inevitable trade-offs on the grounds of pragmatic considerations as well as philosophical reflection