Aussies?

[Beskar]

District voting is more democratically accountable than Popular PR. Whilst FPTP has its flaws, systems adopted in Aussie-land and Scotland have STV, which takes the best elements of FPTP and PR.

I called it District voting for emphasis on the location, opposed to simply the population of the country.

[Kralizec]

Perhaps a bicameral legislative body with one body elected using each approach?

Why? No, really: what advantage does artificially increasing the political power of a few most powerful factions give you? Presumably there is legislative veto power involved, so now you are adding artificial incentives for obstructionism to combat a politically disfunctional situation. How is this going to help matters?

Obstructionism is usually the point of bicameral legislatures. Checks and balances, and all that.

One justification for district representatives is that the parties will have to take into account the specific interests of a given district in order to win. In addition, the number of people in a district can vary; so that sparsely populated regions are not always ignored in favour of more densely populated ones. States like Alaska would be completely irrelevant if it didn't have two senators like everyone else and the bare minimum of 3 votes in the electoral college.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Obstructionism is usually the point of bicameral legislatures. Checks and balances, and all that.

One justification for district representatives is that the parties will have to take into account the specific interests of a given district in order to win. In addition, the number of people in a district can vary; so that sparsely populated regions are not always ignored in favour of more densely populated ones. States like Alaska would be completely irrelevant if it didn't have two senators like everyone else and the bare minimum of 3 votes in the electoral college.

PR is predicated on a limited role for local government with the national government being the primary focus of government power. As far as I know, no other nation-state accords quite so much legislative and executive power to their "states" which tend to function more as administrative districts than as independent polities.

[Kralizec]

PR is predicated on a limited role for local government with the national government being the primary focus of government power. As far as I know, no other nation-state accords quite so much legislative and executive power to their "states" which tend to function more as administrative districts than as independent polities.

Well, Germany's equivalent of the Senate is actually composed of representatives of their Länder ("states") as opposed to being populary elected. The federal budget is obviously larger than that of the US (relatively speaking), but many federal policies depend on the cooperation of the Länder. All things considered the German federal government is probably more "powerful" than that of the US, but fed / state relations seems to be less hostile overall.

Incidentally, Germany's lower house is elected by some weird hybrid between PR and FPTP.

[drone]

Well, Germany's equivalent of the Senate is actually composed of representatives of their Länder ("states") as opposed to being populary elected.

Must be nice.

[Raz]

I don't think we're discussing Australia anymore, but we do have a bicameral system in place as well. The Upper House is elected through PR and the Lower House through STV. Your vote is never really 'wasted' (unless you draw those genitals on the paper) but we've still ended up with a "you MUST be either Left or Right" situation. While there are other parties that can sometimes hold crucial seats, it typically boils down to just two parties dueling it out.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Obstructionism is usually the point of bicameral legislatures. Checks and balances, and all that.

No, checks and balances is not and should not be about obstructionism but proper vetting and validation instead. Effectively handing out control to the top X largest parties by design is not going to help that.

One justification for district representatives is that the parties will have to take into account the specific interests of a given district in order to win. In addition, the number of people in a district can vary; so that sparsely populated regions are not always ignored in favour of more densely populated ones. States like Alaska would be completely irrelevant if it didn't have two senators like everyone else and the bare minimum of 3 votes in the electoral college.

Yep, though that doesn't seem to work that well in practice. Alaska is still pretty much irrelevant compared to Ohio or Florida and, uh, apart from the big business types the various Alaskan interests (mainly environmental concerns) are still routinely ignored swept aside anyways.

[Husar]

Must be nice.

Finally someone recognizes the superiority of our system.

Apparently there are flaws, but Wiki describes it as follows:

Voting the Bundestag is complicated; especially the importance of the second vote is sometimes underestimated. However, the voting system combines many of the advantages of both the plurality and the proportional voting system. Time has proven that this voting system mainly allows for a proportional distribution of seats, stable governments, change of governments, the possibility of new parties joining the parliament, and in comparison to the Reichstag, the precursor parliament of the Bundestag in the Weimar Republic, it allows for a parliament capable of acting. Presently, the big parties are not considering any introduction of the majority voting system like they did at the beginning of the first great coalition in 1966.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elector...tem_of_Germany

[HoreTore]

Jon Elster notes in his book "Retribution and Reparation in the Transition to Democracy" how the German system was largely manufactured so as to be acceptable to the US, not to suit the needs of Germany, though. So it seems you can thank the US for your superior system, Husar!

Unfortunately I can't reproduce his argument, since my book was stolen in Barcelona...

[drone]

Finally someone recognizes the superiority of our system.

You just dug it out of our trash bin.

Edit-> We would like it back if you are done with it...

[Kralizec]

No, checks and balances is not and should not be about obstructionism but proper vetting and validation instead. Effectively handing out control to the top X largest parties by design is not going to help that.

Obstruction is a negative way of phrasing that which we're talking about. If the lower house passes a piece of legislation and the upper house thinks it's a piece of trash and votes it away, then there will always be people who see it as obstructionism.

Montesquieu wrote that the Ottoman Empire and most of the Italian states of the day didn't separate the judiciary from the other government functions, but that the former was intensely despotic while the others generally weren't. In the former, power was concentrated around the monarch, while in the latter power was spread out among many and that this gets in the way when you want to oppress everyone.

Yep, though that doesn't seem to work that well in practice. Alaska is still pretty much irrelevant compared to Ohio or Florida and, uh, apart from the big business types the various Alaskan interests (mainly environmental concerns) are still routinely ignored swept aside anyways.

Ohio and Florida are traditional swing states. Of course people are going to ignore Alaska when they know that they'll keep voting for republicans even if hell freezes over (come to think of it, maybe that's a good description of Alaska)

Jon Elster notes in his book "Retribution and Reparation in the Transition to Democracy" how the German system was largely manufactured so as to be acceptable to the US, not to suit the needs of Germany, though. So it seems you can thank the US for your superior system, Husar!

Unfortunately I can't reproduce his argument, since my book was stolen in Barcelona...

It's true that the US pressed for a federal state with clear divisions of authority where the cabinets ("administrations", for you yanks) didn't fall down every other week, because that proved to be messy in the 1920'ies. In modern Germany "motions of no confidence" are extremely rare because for such a motion to be valid it also has to appoint a new chancellor. However Germany has had a long tradition of (con)federarlism prior to the Nazis and presumably would have realized the need for stable governments anyway. In any case it seems to have served Germany's needs pretty well.

Can't source all of that because I first learned of it in university from a book about constitutional law, and I don't know where it is. Maybe it got stolen in Barcelona, too.

[Husar]

Jon Elster notes in his book "Retribution and Reparation in the Transition to Democracy" how the German system was largely manufactured so as to be acceptable to the US, not to suit the needs of Germany, though. So it seems you can thank the US for your superior system, Husar!

Unfortunately I can't reproduce his argument, since my book was stolen in Barcelona...

I have been aware for years that our Constitution was crafted by a commission consisting of Germans and Americans who wanted to have a huge influence after beating us in a bloody war. It's just funny that we ended up with a better system than they have.

You just dug it out of our trash bin.

Edit-> We would like it back if you are done with it...

But Maryland only recently ratified the 17th Amendment as part of an April fools joke it seems.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Obstruction is a negative way of phrasing that which we're talking about. If the lower house passes a piece of legislation and the upper house thinks it's a piece of trash and votes it away, then there will always be people who see it as obstructionism.

There's voting away a piece of legislation and then there's a government shutdown just because. More to the point Seamus was concerned that in PR system too much time and energy would be spent on reaching a politically viable solutions that needn't be spent in a FPTP system. So, he suggested using a two-tier system of FPTP & PR or something similar. To which my questions was: how would that help matters? If you are already in such deep trouble with PR that even ad-hoc alliances fail to produce workable solutions, the FPTP component is not going to objectively help matters but the way it tends to skew distribution of seats could (and probably would) be used to subvert the intended use of that chamber.

I fail to see what the Ottoman Empire has to do with that issue.

[Papewaio]

PR is predicated on a limited role for local government with the national government being the primary focus of government power. As far as I know, no other nation-state accords quite so much legislative and executive power to their "states" which tend to function more as administrative districts than as independent polities.

Australian states have a fairly large say in what happens ie public schools, hospitals, police, mineral rights, mineral tariffs, water, land rights (stamp duty) etc
Federal Government looks after the majority of tax gathering and redistributes them based on need (more like political need) and things like defense and private school system.

[Kralizec]

I fail to see what the Ottoman Empire has to do with that issue.

It was a general observation. In addition to dividing government power in different branches, it's important to divide power within a branch as well to curb possible abuse.

There's voting away a piece of legislation and then there's a government shutdown just because. More to the point Seamus was concerned that in PR system too much time and energy would be spent on reaching a politically viable solutions that needn't be spent in a FPTP system. So, he suggested using a two-tier system of FPTP & PR or something similar. To which my questions was: how would that help matters? If you are already in such deep trouble with PR that even ad-hoc alliances fail to produce workable solutions, the FPTP component is not going to objectively help matters but the way it tends to skew distribution of seats could (and probably would) be used to subvert the intended use of that chamber.

Having two chambers is the simplest way of making sure that new legislation is carefully deliberated has broad support. Which isn't to say it's the best way, necessarily. But when you have two chambers, having them elected by the same mechanism completely defeats the purpose.

I think that Seamus' argument that PR encourages factionalism is a bit exaggerated. In countries where the political system encourages a small number of political blocks there's political intrigue as well, but the battleground simply shifts to internal party politics. The USA is a good example, as is Japan. The UK might count as an exception, but even there we can see examples of when a party has absolute control of parliament yet is divided internally.

An electoral system will only function well if it's accompanied by a political culture that works well with it. I suspect that the institutional setup of the Weimar republic, perhaps with a few minor tweaks, would have worked adequately in other circumstances. Under the old German Empire the Reichstag had relatively little power, therefore didn't carry much responsibilty and therefore the represented parties relished in mud slinging. Which didn't yield very good results when their support was needed for stable governments under the Weimar republic. Arguably the same applies to the various incarnations of the French state, with different causes.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Australian here.

There are two major sides to this. One is that it forces people who have no interest in politics or running of the nation to choose who should run the country. It does however ensure that the 'will' of the nation is actually enforced, as we get around 85% (I think?) voter turnout. I don't think its a bad thing necessarily, I'd say more people pay attention to politics with compulsory voting then otherwise even with the first issue.

So I think its fine.

How can it ensure that the will of the nation is enforced? That would only be the case if the people voting for a party understood and agreed with the politics of the party they were voting for. If they don't, or are only showing up to avoid a fine, then all you have is the illusion of the government having the mandate of the people, so that they can claim to act righteously.

I think if you want truly qualified people you end up in a technocracy or something similar.

1. I have argued repeatedly on this forum that too many voters ARE uninformed, or at least under-informed. I have said that publicly and have said that in my classes, encouraging any and all to become informed and to vote their conscience.

I think the idea of voters being uninformed or not qualified is a red herring. Virtually no one is qualified. Journalists, scientists, academics, experts quoted on tv, routinely make blatant errors. Actually understanding all the issues in each election is basically beyond us, generally even the specialists have trouble fully grasping their area.

What we need is for the voters to be less partisan, to condemn blatant partisanship, to understand why stupid ideologies are wrong, and to demand that the candidates debate in an honest way rather than rely on slogans and rhetoric. Unfortunately the most intelligent and educated people are often the most partisan and ideological, most willing to dismiss demands for honest debate.

[Montmorency]

Virtually no one is qualified. Journalists, scientists, academics, experts quoted on tv, routinely make blatant errors.

The horrible truth is, no one is qualified for anything under the sun.

And yet we're not all nihilistic, and the show goes on...

[Sasaki Kojiro]

The horrible truth is, no one is qualified for anything under the sun.

And yet we're not all nihilistic, and the show goes on...

You could have some sort of absolute standards for doctors, like "they should never make a misdiagnosis", and then say that no one is qualified to be a doctor. That would be true. But by the standards we set for doctors, they are generally qualified.

By the standards we set for voters and journalists, they are not, and never will be. So it is still significant to say that they are not, and it isn't nihilistic.

[Montmorency]

By the standards we set for voters and journalists

But that's the thing - whatever standards we do set, they pass with flying colors. Don't conflate your personal standards with the societal or even occupational standards currently in place.

[Papewaio]

If you understand a politician you will understand that they will change with the wind. So you might understand their policies but given time the priority of these policies change.

Do not blame the predictions of the voter based on an ever changing politician.