OFFICIAL ROUTING SLIP

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80-01446R000100020008-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 13
• Document Creation Date: December 12, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 27, 1998
• Sequence Number: 8
• Publication Date: April 23, 1956
• Content Type: FORM

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25X1A9
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Nfl k H L WOMM TOM
UNCLASSIFIED CONFIDENTIAL SECRET
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
OFFICIAL ROUTING SLIP
TO
NAME AND ADDRESS -
-INITIALS
DATE
25X1
9a
fJ`:~ i C ~ .J7 e
4
5
6
ACTION
DIRECT REPLY
PREPARE REPLY
APPROVAL
DISPATCH
RECOMMENDATION
COMMENT
FILE
RETURN
CONCURRENCE
INFORMATION
SIGNATURE
Remarks :
25X1A5a1
Attached is submission on
the Director s speech be ore the Univ,
of Pennsylvania Law Review Banquet on
Friday, 4 May, He will be speaking
before a group composed of leading
members of the local bar, by Review
alumni from Pennsylvania and nearby
states, by the faculty of the law
school and the present editorial board
of the Review, As I indicated to you,
Mr. Dulles would like your thoughts and
comments.
FOLD HERE TO RETURN TO SENDER
FROM: NAME, ADDRESS AND PHONE NO.
DATE
23 Apr 56
UNCLASSIFIED CONFIDEN AL
SECRET
FORM NO. n O 7 Replaces Form 30-4
APR 55 LJ which may be used.
20 April 1956
Mr. Dul]2W' 1A5a1
sent over the attached.
He said you wished to go over it this week end,
in connection with the next speech you will be
making.
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 Executive fleg,stcy {
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10 April 1956
INTERNATIONAL COMMUNISM AND PARLIAMENTARY ELECTORAL SYSTEMS
Background
I. Twentieth Party Congress of the CPSU on Parliamentarianism
The 20th CPSU Congress proclaimed a number of "doctrinal modifications",
which are still being studied and analyzed to determine their nature and
significance. One of the most striking is the possibility of achieving
socialism through Parliamentary means, without recourse to violence or
"The right wing bourgeois parties and their governments are
suffering bankruptcy with increasing frequency. In these circum-
stances, the working class, by rallying around itself the toiling
peasantry, the intelligentsia, all patriotic forces, and resolutely
repulsing the opportunist elements who are incapable of giving up
the policy of compromise with capitalists and landlords, is in a
position to defeat the reactionary forces opposed to the popular
interest, to capture a stable majority in parliament, and transform
the latter from an instrument of bourgeois democracy into a genuine
instrument of the peoples' will. In such an event this institution,
traditional in many highly developed capitalist countries, may
become an organ of genuine democracy - democracy for the working
people." (Khrushchev speech, 14 February 1956).
II. What is the background of established Communist doctrine?
Basic governing laws for International Communism remain the Theses
and Statutes of the Third or Communist International adopted by the Second
Comintern Congress, July-August 1920 (never rescinded despite the
dissolution of the Comintern). A few quotations will suffice:
"Parliament at present can in no way serve as the arena of a
struggle for reform, for improving the lot of the working people
as it has at certain times of the preceding epoch.... It is the
immediate historical task of the working class to tear this
apparatus out of the hands of the ruling class, to break and
WCNo. 5 .dest3ay it, and to create in its place a new proletarian apparatus....
TO: TS S C -1-
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In this warfare of the masses, developing into a civil war,
the guiding party of the proletariat, must as a general rule,
secure every and all lawful positions.... The Communist Party
enters such institutions, not for the purpose of organization
work, but in order to blow up the whole bourgeois machinery and
the Parliament itself from within."
Once elected, a Communist delegate, "by decision of the
Central Committee is bound to combine lawful with unlawful work....
Each Communist member must remember that he is not a 'legislator'
who is bound to seek agreements with other legislators, but an
agitator of the party, detailed into the enemy's camp in order
to carry out the orders of the Party there. The Communist member
is answerable not to the wide mass of these constituents, but to
his own Communist party - whether lawful or unlawful."
III. Has this destructive purpose been abandoned or modified?
The Soviet leaders, despite some double talk, made it clear at the
20th Party Congress, they have not reconciled themselves to Parliamentarianism
as it is understood in the Free World. Their purpose is still revolution.
necessary for the state and leadership of society to
"It i
s
pass over to the working class (which)..... will take power into its
own hands and liquidate private ownership as the basic means of
production. Historical materialism teaches that the replacement
of capitalism by a classless society constitutes a revolutionary
Jump. This transfer, in its essence, is a revolutionary change of
one social order into another. Therefore any transfer from capital-
ism to socialism, a change in social relations is a revolution,
varying in acuteness, but nevertheless revolution which all peoples
will experience." (Mikoyan speech, 16 February 1956).
IV. What, then, does this "doctrinal modification" amount to?
Stripped of double talk, the Soviet leaders have announced: (a) their
purpose of destroying capitalist society remains unchanged, (b) in the
process they will destroy parliamentary institutions and substitute
institutions patterned on the Soviet system. The only "modification" is
(c) this may be easier than Lenin thought, because conditions are ripe
in many "decadent" countries of the Free World for accomplishing (a) and
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(b) without recourse to violence. We may conjecture what countries the
Soviet leaders have in mind, as plums ripe for picking. Probably France
had
and. Italy where Communism seems to have/an almost indestructible core of
votes on the order of 25%. Alliance with left wing Socialism is a fact
in Italy (raising the total parliamentary representation to the order of
37%), a hope in France, which if it could be realized might create a
Communist dominated majority, or at least a situation in which anti-
parliamentary elements of the left and right (Poujadists) would dominate.
Possibly they have in mind the so-called underdeveloped countries,
where parliamentary institutions are new and precarious, and where an
element of political inexperience or gullibility makes the prospects of
subversion look attractive to the Communists.
V. How can the Free World Democracies defend themselves against this
threat to the Parliamentary system?
This is an infinitely complex and difficult problem, which this
speech will not attempt to answer. Only one point is to be established:
the election machinery, per se, is not the answer to the containment of
Communism. The answer lies in the will and determination of the people
and of their representatives to defend their democratic system by all
legal means.
Manipulation of Electoral Systems.
I. Basic Electoral Systems
All basic democratic electoral systems are variants of the majority
or the proportional representation principles. These have given rise to
end:Less theoretical discussion, which still arouses passion, though less
so than formerly.
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Principal valid generalizations: (a) majority system provides
clear cut decision; it emphasizes the responsibility of the individual
delegate as a representative of the entire voting population of the
constituency, though this is frequently lost in partisanship. (b) Pro-
portional representation brings out the political complexion of the
electorate, but may promote, as well as reflect, tendencies toward
atomization, resulting in indecisive or instable governments. On the
whole the majority system really works only when the social and economic
issues of a country are sufficiently simple and clean cut to be adequately
reflected in a two party system. This appears to have been a near monopoly
of the Anglo-Saxon peoples. (Austria is an exception - see below). In
most other countries, fundamental economic issues are likely to be confused
by equally fundamental cross currents of social or religious issues,
which call for a multi-party system to do justice to the realities of
the situation. There are, of course, a number of countries with basically
two party alignments, complicated by a third factor, such as the Liberal
Party in England, where proportional representation would produce an
entirely different outcome from majority elections.
In any case proportional representation is a tricky subject for
Americans to generalize about. There are said to be 200 different systems
which have been proposed for the actual distribution of seats under PR.
fteints to influence European countries to adopt the majority system
have been made, on the ground that what is good for the US must be good
for other democracies. n one rather spectacular case, an American
ambassador succeeded in persuading a party group in power to adopt the
majority system, with the result that in the election a minority party
winning less than a majority of the total vote nevertheless
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75% of the seats! (Greece). Such an experiment is not habit forming:
II. Manipulations of Electoral Systems
Basic principle of all parties in power is to manipulate the electoral
system to preserve or enhance their position. This applies equally
under proportional and majority systems. We are familiar with geographical
gerrymandering, but there are also forms of what has been called vertical
gerrymandering in multi-party states. This is the form with which we
are primarily concerned, and which has characterized the bulk of mani-
pulation under the proportional system.
Electoral manipulation is also directed against extremist and splinter
parties. Against the splinters, chiefly because they are in fact a source
of confusion and dissipated political energy. Against the extremists
because they are in general opposed to the parliamentary system as such,
and constitute a danger to the democratic state. Most measures against
the extremists are designed to affect both the left and the right, but
for our purposes, we are concerned only with manipulations directed
against the left, specifically the Communists.
We shall devote our discussion primarily to examples from postwar
European elections. But there have been interesting examples from our
own American past of electoral manipulations, intended purely for the
advantage of one of the major parties, which have, through ingenious
exploitation been used by the Communists to their own advantage.
case in point is the New York City Council before World War II.
ri
The Council, comprising 25 members, was originally elected with a large
predominance of Democratic Councilors. The so-called Fusion group
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introduced proportional representation. The Democrats continued to
maintain their majority; the Republicans achieved approximately their
proportionate share of the Council. In 1939 the American Labor Party
gained five seats, and in 19+0 and 19+1 two Communist candidates were
elected under an open Communist ticket. Both the Communists were elected
in constituencies of predominant foreign population. They would not have
been elected under a majority system.
..rn
III. Types of manipulation under proportional representation, directed
primarily against the extreme left.
A. The classic form of manipulation is that of the premium vote.
In a multi-party system it is invariably associated with the principle
of electoral alliances ("apparentements" in France) "collegamenti" or
""apparentamenti" in Italy). Under this system, linked tickets of several
parties are presented in a large number of constituencies or electoral
districts. Under the French Electoral law of 1951, any such linkage which
gathered an absolute majority in a given constituency, was granted all the
seats for that district. If no party or linked group polled a majority the
seats of the district were assigned on a basis of proportional representation.
This system was introduced in 1951 for the exptess purpose of weakening
not only the Communists on the left, but the Gaullists on the right. It
succeeded admirably. The Communists did get 98 seats, the Gaullists 101, but
under pure proportional representation the figures would have been Communists
172, Gaullists 113, an actual majority of the 627 seat assembly. The
elections of 1956 were fought under the same system, despite efforts by
Mendes France and others to introduce the single candidate constituency
system. This time, as we all know, the Left and Right Center were torn
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by the bitter feud of Mendes France and Edgar Faure. The Communists
proposed electoral alliances with the Socialists, but this was turned
down by the Socialist Party organization, although nearly a third of the
Party delegates were in favor of such alliances. On the extreme right,
the Poujadistes emerged as the new threat replacing the fragmented
Gaullists. When the votes were counted, Right or Left Center alliances
had gained absolute majorities in only 10 districts. The net result:
proportional representation was applied almost generally and the Communists
got 25.60 of the popular vote and 24.1% of the seats. Thus, while we
cannot; say that the Communists were able to exploit the electoral system
for any major advantage, we can say that the premium vote device failed
to protect the broad spectrum of democratic parties from the menace of
powerful anti-parliamentary parties at either extreme. The future of
the French parliamentary system is overcast with a somber shadow. If
dissension continues within the Center, another election under the present
system might (as it would have in 1951 under pure PR) yield a parliament
with the anti-parliamentary extremes actually in a majority. The basic
generalization emerges clearly: when extremism, especially Communism, is
weak, a majority system will effectively keep it so. When a Communist party
and its affiliates command a large popular vote (on the order of 35 to 40%)
there is serious risk that under a majority system they may gain control of
the representative body. Under those circumstances, proportional represen-
tation operates as a safeguard to insure that Communism does not gain more
representation than its popular vote would justify.
The case of Italy is equally striking. The Scelba Electoral law
of 1953 was passed by the dominant Christian Democratic Party and its
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lesser affiliates who commanded a prospective vote of about 50%.
With a powerful combination of Communists and Nenni Socialists on the left
likely to achieve some 35% and with a monarchist and irresponsible neo-Fascist
on the right, the prospect for stable government was poor indeed. To cope
with this, the new law incorporated a premium vote, which provided that any
party or linked group winning more than 50% of the popular vote, got
a bonus of 15% in the distribution of seats. In the election the Demo-
christian alliance fell only 57,000 votes of achieving an absolute majority,
with the result that proportional representation applied in its pure form.
One:-lesson was learned by the dominant party. The law was in effect
a "trick" law, or as the left promptly labeled it, a "swindle" law (Legge
truffa). Recognition of this fact undoubtedly outraged many center voters,
who decided to register a protest against it, either to the right or to
the left. If the Christian Democrats had been content to let well enough
alone, and to take their chance with pure proportional representation,
they and their affiliates might have emerged with a small popular majority,
small, perhaps, but at least sufficient to govern.
That this lesson has been absorbed, is made clear by the new law
which has been adopted for the upcoming administrative elections (May 1956).
This is basically a PR law, with a major modification to be sure
(modified majority system in Communes over 10,000, pure PR for those
under 10,000). It reflects the perhaps belated recognition by the
Christian Democrats that it cannot hope to stave off Communist and leftist
pressures by electoral manipulation.
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A-slightly less flagrant example of premium voting was adopted
in the Greek elections of February 1956. The law was clearly intended
to favor the party of Premier Karamanlis. It also sought to discourage
minor parties by a requirement that each party must win 15% of the national
vote. to be eligible for parliamentary representation. In the case of
coalitions, 25% of the vote was required. It was thought that these
percentages would discourage the opposition from flirting with the Communist
controlled EDA party. The results: Karamanlis achieved 119% of the
popular vote and 55% of the seats; the opposition with 11-6%O of the vote
got 45% of the seats. By their successful alliance with the opposition
the Communists were able to win 18 seats, with perhaps another 26
responsive to their influence. Thus, while Karamanlis was able to achieve
a s:Light betterment of his majority by electoral manipulation, the price
was the rather substantial intrusion of the Communists into the parliamentary
scene. There is every reason to believe that unless, as seems unlikely,
the conservative elements in power take vigorous measure to alleviate
poverty, Communism in Greece may come to exercise something like the
attraction that it has in Italy.
B. The other category of electoral manipulation directed against
Communists is the provision of a minimum popular vote requirement. Obviously
such a minimum can hardly be applied above a fairly modest level. Hence
it is effective only in countries where Communism is not a powerful force.
The classic example is Germany which has a mixed proportional+and majority
system (50-50). A party to be represented must poll 5% of the popular
vote and elect at least one candidate outright (this has been increased
to 3). This effectively excluded the Communist along with other splinter
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parties, and results in something approaching the British parliamentary
situation (two iiajor, but somewhat unbalanced parties (CDU and SPD)
with a sizeable third party (FDP) playing an important role in the
governmental balance.
Naturally the Communists are not happy with this situation, especially
when they are confronted with the prospect of being declared illegal.
Another country in which measures are being taken to eliminate even
an insignificant Communist minority party is Austria. With the balance
of a Conservative (People's) and a.Socialist Party almost uniquely even,
and with vital economic issues at stake (oil) both sides are determined
to minimize the disrupting effect that even a tiny Communist representation
might exercise in the Austrian parliament. There are gimmicks in the
Austrian electoral law. Although it has not adopted the percentage
minimum device, Austria does have the same requirement/as Germany, viz. that
a party must win at least one seat in direct balloting, before it can
benefit from proportional representation in the national distribution.
It is possible by concentrating on a single urban industrial constituency,
such as Wiener Neustadt, the Communists would be able to get the necessary
single direct election which would enable them to hold the four seats
they now occupy. It is possible that they could make use of absentee
ballots which are regularly issued to railroad personnel, truck drivers,
etc. By fraudulently collecting alarge number of these and casting
them all in the chosen constituency, added to the strength they already
have, they might be able to achieve a plurality. The Austrian government
is not unmindful of this danger, and will doubtless scrutinize carefully
any moves along the lines mentioned above.
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Conclusion
The generalizations which may be of value to us as participants
in the world struggle against Communism may be summed up as follows:
A. International Communism, despite the note of relaxation in the
20th Party Congress pronouncements, is still determined to destroy
parliamentary democracy. It has adopted a particularly dangerous tactic
in wooing the democratic socialist and neutralist parties. They appear
to be well on guard, but the pressures will increase, perhaps overwhelmingly.
B. European governments will undoubtedly resist this new and more
flexible Communist offensive. However, attempts to do so through
electoral manipulations are dangerous. It is easy to confuse the broad
democratic interest with the narrower interest of the dominant party.
Unity among the left and right center elements is precarious, and the
extremists of the right and left are standing by for any operning. Though
the 123.tter may be bitterly opposed to each other on most basic issues,
they are united on one - determination to eliminate parliamentary democracy.
On this they can, under certain circumstances, make disastrous common cause.
C. Communism cannot be permanently suppressed by electoral
manipulation alone. In certain cases, the effort may be positively
disadvantageous, casting doubt on the democratic morality of the state
itself, and investing the Communist party with an aura of martyrdom.
D. Communism can only be effectively combated when the will of the
nation is fully marshaled in the cause. The economic and social grievances
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from which Communist parties gain the bulk of their votes (for the
most part not Moscow-oriented Communist at all) must be cured by
parliamentary action, if the democratic form of society is to be
preserved. In the last analysis, the issue is not only political but
moral and spiritual as well.
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