The merits of democratic reforms mostly rest on the implicit trade-offs in democratic values and governance considerations associated with them. Compared to the gradually evolving general consensus over such core democratic principles as an inclusive electoral franchise, disagreements over specific democratic forms are more often resolved in context-specific ways that are not always stable over time or linear in their historical path.

Consider the long-standing debate over the merits of proportional representation (PR) versus single member, simple plurality (SMSP). Proportional rules, of which there are many varieties, tend to reflect the electorate’s interests and characteristics more descriptively, and on average they encourage more political parties. The consequence is that political parties in PR systems usually have to coalesce to form governments. However, because alliances between political parties tend to be less stable than those within any one party, the value of more accurate representation comes at the expense of somewhat lessened government stability. By comparison, SMSP systems tend to shut out small parties and incorporate allied groups and interests into big-tent parties. This makes governance more stable, but represents the electorate less descriptively. In the abstract and absent the inevitable political calculations people bring to the table, the choice between these two types of rules for determining an electoral winner is at least implicitly about a trade-off between a democratic value (i.e., a finer degree of representation) and a governance considerations (i.e., more stability on average).