Any of the electoral systems outlined under this topic area can be used at the local or municipal government level, but often there are a number of special considerations arising from the particular role of local government. In particular, because local government is more about the ‘nuts and bolts’ issues of everyday life, geographical representation is more often given primacy.
Single-member districts can be used to give every neighbourhood a say in local affairs, especially where political parties are weak or non-existent. Where these districts are small, they are usually highly homogeneous. This is sometimes seen to be a good thing, but if diversity within a local government district is required, the ‘spokes of a wheel’ principle of districting can be applied. Here, district boundaries are not circles drawn around identifiable neighbourhoods but are segments of a circle centring on the city centre and ending in the suburbs. This means that one district includes both the urban and the suburban voters, and makes for a mix of economic class and ethnicity.
In contrast, the municipalities in some countries which use PR systems for local government have one single-list PR district which can proportionally reflect all the different political opinions in the municipality. In order to achieve this, however, specific space may need to be made for representatives of local associations who are not driven by party-political ideology to nominate lists, and perhaps also for independents to be nominated as single-person lists.
It is also true that the choice of local electoral system may be made as part of a compromise involving the system for the national legislature. For example, in some newly democratizing countries such as Congo (Brazzaville) and Mali, tradition and the French influence have resulted in a Two-Round System for the national legislature, while a desire to be inclusive and more fully reflect regional and ethnic loyalties resulted in the choice of PR for municipal elections.
The debate between parliamentarism and presidentialism in national constitutions has a counterpart in discussion of the structure of local government. Directly elected governors and mayors who head executive authorities that are separate from the elected local legislative body are becoming more popular worldwide, at the expense of elected authorities with collective committee structures directly responsible for services. The range of systems available for electing governors and mayors is in principle the same as that for the direct election of presidents, and parallels may also be drawn when considering the issues surrounding the relationship between the electoral system and the legislative–executive relationship at local level.
