Guidelines to Assist National Minority Participation in the Electoral Process Page: 20 In post-conflict situations where there may be external voting by refugees, a proportional representation system will generally better serve their interests. The use of compulsory multi-ethnic lists in which parties are legally compelled to include multi-ethnic representatives on their party lists is a further mechanism that can be employed to ensure that rather than creating purely ethnic parties, that the groupings are assimilated into “regular” party politics.28 The MMP and parallel systems discussed above are forms of PR and may also be used to enhance minority representation. However, as noted earlier, proportionality of outcomes is not guaranteed if a parallel system is used, particularly if the majority of seats are actually elected from single-member districts rather than national party lists. In Albania, Armenia and Azerbaijan, for example, over threequarters of all seats are elected from districts rather than nationally. The advantages of PR systems are as follows: - they faithfully translate votes cast into seats won, and thus avoid some of the more destabilising and “unfair” results thrown up by plurality - majority electoral systems; they facilitate minority party access to representation; they encourage parties to present inclusive and socially diverse lists of candidates; they make it more likely that the representatives of minority cultures or groups are elected; they make it more likely that women are elected; they restrict the growth of “regional fiefdoms”; and they make power sharing between parties and interest groups more visible. The disadvantages are as follows: - the lack of accountability and responsiveness between elected politicians and voters; the fact that ethnic leaders can be elected exclusively by members of their own group, thus replicating, rather than breaking down, social divisions in the legislature; the concentration of power at the centre of the political party in the hands of leaders who may be responsible for the compilation of party lists; the problem of government formation and stability in cases of multi-party coalitions; in cases of multi-ethnic candidacy there may be instances where “token” national minority representatives are included in party “lists” which may give a false impression of representation and inclusion. Option 3: Some forms of preference voting, where voters rank candidates in order of choice, may facilitate minority representation and promote inter-communal co-operation Preference voting systems enable electors to indicate how they would vote if their favoured candidate was defeated and they had to choose between those remaining. It is this particular feature that distinguishes preferential voting from other electoral system choices. The two key forms of 28 The Taef Agreement for Lebanon provides: “Until the Chamber of Deputies passes an election law free of sectarian restriction, the parliamentary seats shall be divided according to the following bases: a) Equally between Christians and Muslims, b) Proportionately between the denominations of each sect, c) Proportionately between the districts.”