Hello, my name's David Rundsenman, and this is past, present, future, the History of Ideas

podcast. Today, we're starting a new series. We're calling it fixing democracy. I'm going to be speaking

to a range of guests about the ideas that could change the way we do democracy and perhaps

change it for the better. We're going to be talking about how elections work and about the ways

in which they can be corrupted. We're going to be talking about how parliaments work, how government works,

about the different ways that citizens can be involved from referendums to citizen assemblies.

We're starting with a conversation with the political historian David Klemper,

who is a research fellow at the Constitution Society,

and he and I are going to be discussing the past, present and future of proportional representation.

Are PR systems simply better?

David, we're talking about proportional representation, and we're talking about it as a possible

reform, improvement of democratic politics. So two things to say up front here. First of all,

for that to be a plausible argument, it has to be in the context of systems that aren't PR systems.

So apologies to people now who live in PR systems. We will be talking about their

history and some of their merits and demerits. But the assumption here is that there are

certain systems, I would say three prominent ones, United States, Britain and the lower

house of the Indian Parliament, three of the world's biggest democracies in their

different ways, which still use first past the post. And then the second caveat, I guess,

is when you start talking about PR, people will often say, yeah, but it really depends what kind

of PR you mean. And there's not just one thing, proportional representation. And I had a look at the

electoral reform society website just before we started. So. And I had a look at the Electoral Reform Society website

just before we started. So they just as a starter list nine different types, right? Everything.

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