There are maybe 100+ other steps to policy as important as voting system design. In rough chronological order I started listing some of them below (I got bored part way through and stopped at what looks like 40 points).
I have aimed to have all of these issues at a roughly similar order of magnitude of importance. The scale of these issues will depend on country to country and the tractability of trying to change these issues will vary with time and depend on individual to individual.
Overall I would say that voting reform is not obviously more or less important than the other 100+ things that could be on this list (although I guess it is often likely to somewhere in the top 50% of issues). There is a lot more uncertainty about what the best voting mechanisms look like than many of the other issues on the list. It is also an issue that may be hard to change compared to some of the others.
Either way voting reform is a tiny part of an incredibly long process, a process with some huge areas for improvements in other parts.
SETTING BOUNDARIES
constitution and human rights and setting remits of political powers to change fundamental structures of country
devolution and setting remits of central political powers verses local political bodies
term limits
CHOOSING POLITICIANS
electoral commission body setting or adjusting borders of voting areas / constituencies
initial policy research by potential candidates (often with very limited resources)
manifesto writing (this is hugely important to set the agenda and hard to change once )
public / parties choosing candidates (often a lot of internal party squabbling behind the scenes)
campaign fundraising (maybe undue influences)
campaigning and information spreading (maybe issues with false information)
tackling voter apathy / engagement
Voting mechanism
coalition forming (often very untransparent)
government/leader assigns topic areas to ministers / seniors (very political, evidence that understanding a topic is inversely proportional to how long a minister will work on that topic)
CIVIL SERVICE STAFFING
hiring staff into government (hiring processes, lack of expertise, diversity issues)
how staff in government are managed (values, team building, rewards, progression, diversity)
how staff in government are trained (feedback mechanisms, training)
ACCOUNTABILITY
splitting out areas where political leadership is needed and areas where technocratic leadership is needed
designing clear mechanisms of accountability to topics so that politicians and civil servants are aware of what their responsibilities are and can be held to account for their actions (this is super important)
ensuring political representation so each individual has direct access to a politician who is accountable for their concerns
putting in place systems that allow changes to the system if an accountability mechanisms is not working
ensuring accountability for unknown unknown issues that may arise
how poor performance of political and civil staff is addressed (poor performance procedures, whistleblowing)
how corruption is rooted out and addressed (yes there is corruption in developed countries)
mechanisms to allow parties / populations to kick out bad leaders if needed
Ensuring mechanisms for cross party dialogue and that partisan-ism of politics does not lead to distortions of truth
AGENDA SETTING AND INITIAL RESEARCH
carrying out research to understand what the policy problems are (often unclear how to do this)
understanding what the population wants (public often ignored, need good procedures for information gathering, public consultation, etc)
POLICY DEVELOPMENT
Development of policy options to address problems
Mechanisms for Cost Benefit Analysis and Impact Assessments to decide best policy options
access to expertise advice and best practice (lack of communication between academia and policy)
measuring impact of a policy proposal once in place (ensuring that mechanisms to measure impact are initiated at the very start of the policy implementation)
actually using information on
how politicians are allowed to change their mind given new evidence (updating is often seen as weakness)
mechanisms to ensure issues that are not politically immediately necessary are tackled (lack of long term thinking)
LEGISLATIVE PROCESS
POLICY IMPLEMENTATION
POLICY REVIEW
PUBLIC COMMUNICATION
RISK MANAGEMENT
GENERAL
flexibility to deal with shocks of every step of the above process (often lacking)
transparency of every step of the above process (often lacking)
What are these other questions about optimal institution design, which you consider more important than voting systems?
There are maybe 100+ other steps to policy as important as voting system design. In rough chronological order I started listing some of them below (I got bored part way through and stopped at what looks like 40 points).
I have aimed to have all of these issues at a roughly similar order of magnitude of importance. The scale of these issues will depend on country to country and the tractability of trying to change these issues will vary with time and depend on individual to individual.
Overall I would say that voting reform is not obviously more or less important than the other 100+ things that could be on this list (although I guess it is often likely to somewhere in the top 50% of issues). There is a lot more uncertainty about what the best voting mechanisms look like than many of the other issues on the list. It is also an issue that may be hard to change compared to some of the others.
Either way voting reform is a tiny part of an incredibly long process, a process with some huge areas for improvements in other parts.
SETTING BOUNDARIES
constitution and human rights and setting remits of political powers to change fundamental structures of country
devolution and setting remits of central political powers verses local political bodies
term limits
CHOOSING POLITICIANS
electoral commission body setting or adjusting borders of voting areas / constituencies
initial policy research by potential candidates (often with very limited resources)
manifesto writing (this is hugely important to set the agenda and hard to change once )
public / parties choosing candidates (often a lot of internal party squabbling behind the scenes)
campaign fundraising (maybe undue influences)
campaigning and information spreading (maybe issues with false information)
tackling voter apathy / engagement
Voting mechanism
coalition forming (often very untransparent)
government/leader assigns topic areas to ministers / seniors (very political, evidence that understanding a topic is inversely proportional to how long a minister will work on that topic)
CIVIL SERVICE STAFFING
hiring staff into government (hiring processes, lack of expertise, diversity issues)
how staff in government are managed (values, team building, rewards, progression, diversity)
how staff in government are trained (feedback mechanisms, training)
ACCOUNTABILITY
splitting out areas where political leadership is needed and areas where technocratic leadership is needed
designing clear mechanisms of accountability to topics so that politicians and civil servants are aware of what their responsibilities are and can be held to account for their actions (this is super important)
ensuring political representation so each individual has direct access to a politician who is accountable for their concerns
putting in place systems that allow changes to the system if an accountability mechanisms is not working
ensuring accountability for unknown unknown issues that may arise
how poor performance of political and civil staff is addressed (poor performance procedures, whistleblowing)
how corruption is rooted out and addressed (yes there is corruption in developed countries)
mechanisms to allow parties / populations to kick out bad leaders if needed
Ensuring mechanisms for cross party dialogue and that partisan-ism of politics does not lead to distortions of truth
AGENDA SETTING AND INITIAL RESEARCH
carrying out research to understand what the policy problems are (often unclear how to do this)
understanding what the population wants (public often ignored, need good procedures for information gathering, public consultation, etc)
POLICY DEVELOPMENT
Development of policy options to address problems
Mechanisms for Cost Benefit Analysis and Impact Assessments to decide best policy options
access to expertise advice and best practice (lack of communication between academia and policy)
measuring impact of a policy proposal once in place (ensuring that mechanisms to measure impact are initiated at the very start of the policy implementation)
actually using information on
how politicians are allowed to change their mind given new evidence (updating is often seen as weakness)
mechanisms to ensure issues that are not politically immediately necessary are tackled (lack of long term thinking)
LEGISLATIVE PROCESS
POLICY IMPLEMENTATION
POLICY REVIEW
PUBLIC COMMUNICATION
RISK MANAGEMENT
GENERAL
flexibility to deal with shocks of every step of the above process (often lacking)
transparency of every step of the above process (often lacking)