What would a multipartisan America be like?

[BrainGlutton]

In an earlier thread, “Should the U.S. adopt alternative, pro-multipartisan voting systems”? (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=170368), we discussed the pros and cons of the U.S. adopting reforms that would favor a multiparty over a two-party system: proportional representation, instant runoff voting, and ballot fusion or cross-endorsement.

In this thread, I would like to propose a thought experiment: Suppose we DO adopt such reforms, and suppose they cause the Democratic and Republican parties – extremely diverse organizations whose factions have been forced by the winner-take-all system to huddle under a “big tent” – to break up along their natural fault lines into smaller parties. What then? What kind of multiparty system would emerge? And how would it affect public policy formation?

In his seminal pro-PR article, “A Radical Plan to Change American Politics” (Atlantic Monthly, August 1992; http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/congress/lindf.htm)commentator Michael Lind wrote:

It is anyone’s guess what the parties in a House elected by PR would be. . . . Although voters might continue to identify with the two major parties for a time, dissidents would soon learn that third-party votes were not wasted.

The largest party in the House might well be the Republicans. As it is, their party, with its homogeneous and stable group of core voters and centralized, disciplined organization, is far more like a European party than the Democratic Party is. If PR were adopted, the Republicans might lose their right wing to a new conservative party or parties, but the number of right-wing Republican voters is fairly small (as the Patrick Buchanan campaign unintentionally demonstrated, by adding only single-digit figures to large protest votes). The Republicans might compensate for their loss by becoming a more consistently classical-liberal party–pro-business, pro-choice–and attracting fiscally conservative social liberals who now identify with a Democrat like Paul Tsongas. Such a neoliberal Republican Party might hold steady at 35 to 40 percent of the House.

The Democratic Party, an incoherent coalition of smaller proto-parties, lobbies, interest groups, and machines, which are brought together only by the winner-take-all logic of our electoral system, would, however, probably disintegrate. The breakup of the Democratic Party as the result of PR would not mean that the power of today’s Democratic voters would decline. On the contrary, the kind of moderate Democrats represented by the Democratic Leadership Council, freed from the electoral necessity of appeasing ethnic and liberal lobbies, might well prosper. Together with “Reagan Democrats” wooed back from the Republican presidential coalition, moderate Democrats in Congress might form a Populist Party equivalent to Christian Democratic parties in Europe. Slightly right of center on social issues and foreign policy, slightly left of center on middle-class benefits, such a party could be expected to draw substantial support from Northeastern ethnics, middle-and lower-middle-class whites and Hispanics in the South and West, and perhaps socially conservative blacks. It would be heavily Catholic. A Populist Party might be the nearest rival to the Republicans for the status of largest party in the House.

The United States, unlike Europe, probably would not have a strong Social Democratic Party, given the low level of unionization and the lack of a mainstream socialist intellectual tradition here. There might nevertheless be something that called itself the Social Democratic Party, representing unions, farmers, public-sector employees. Heavily black and Hispanic, such a party would favor protectionism and government subsidies to industry.

A small American Green Party would almost certainly arise from the decomposition of the Democrats. Appealing to New Age environmentalists, pacifists, feminists, and gay-rights activists, such a party might have trouble winning five percent of the vote in successive elections. So might other fringe parties that are easy to imagine: the Conservatives, a far right-fundamentalist alliance; the Multicultural Coalition, a coalition of ethnic-separatist parties; and anti-tax Libertarians.

Carrying this speculative exercise one step further, we might assign percentages of House membership to these hypothetical parties. Based on European experience and American political subcultures, the pattern might be as follows: Republicans (40 percent), Populists (30 percent), Social Democrats (15 percent), Greens (5 percent), Conservatives (5 percent), Multiculturalists and Libertarians (5 percent between them).

In my opinion, this is a good start. But the model can be improved. Events of the past 11 years have changed the territory somewhat. For one thing, ever since 9/11/01, foreign and military policy have moved to the center stage. For another, some new third parties or protoparties have emerged.

The “populists” Lind identifies now can be divided into centrist populists and conservatives populists – the latter best represented by Patrick Buchanan and his new America First Party
(http://www.americafirstparty.org/). This could be considered one of the products of the breakup of the Reform Party (http://www.reformparty.org/) – which still maintains a nominal existence, but is pretty much a dead letter since 2000. The Buchananites are not overtly racists, but they are religious conservatives, nativists, and opposed to immigration. They are hostile to the United Nations, and the U.S.'s membership in it. They are for the little guy, and hostile to Wall Street and big business. They are isolationists and oppose military adventures abroad and the whole “War on Terror.” All these characteristics put them in direct opposition to the Republican establishment – pro-big-biz, militarist and interventionist – that is now running the country. I don’t know if the America First movement is “heavily Catholic” at present, but Buchanan is Catholic, which is an important sign by itself – a Catholic would never have been leader of the old 19th-century Populist Party, which represented similar views and attitudes.

There are also some organizations active at present which can be seen as representing the Progressive, as opposed to Populist, strain in American political culture – e.g., Jesse Ventura’s Independence Party (http://www.mnip.org/), another by-product of the Reform Party’s fragmentation. At present it’s limited to Minnesota, but who knows? Progressives (I am NOT using the term here as it is usually used nowadays, to mean leftists or left-liberals) are in the political tradition of “Greater New England” – that is, New England and the Upper Midwest, which was heavily colonized in the 19th century by New Englanders, and by Germans and Scandinavians whose political views were similar. Progressives are “good-government” types, meaning they think government should be a business for professionals, not traditional elites nor political-machine hacks, and that it should be honest, transparent and efficient. They tend to be moral puritans, impatient with the logrolling and backscratching of the ordinary legislative process. They favor “direct democracy” measures, such as the recall, initiative, and referendum. Most existing laws providing for such things (including California’s) date from the heyday of the old Progressive Party in the early 20th century.

On the left, several organizations have emerged that aspire to represent a leftist form of populism. The New Party, formed in 1992, has pretty much gone defunct as a national organization, but it spawned some pretty successful state-level organizations, such as the Working Families Party in New York (http://www.workingfamiliesparty.org/) and Progressive Minnesota (http://www.progressivemn.org/). Bernie Sanders’ Progressive Party of Vermont (http://www.progressiveparty.org/) is not one of the New Party offshoots but its views are very similar. And the Greens (http://www.gp.org/[/url) appear to be a much bigger deal now than they were in 1992. There’s also a new Labor Party (http://www.thelaborparty.org/), and of course the old Socialist Party USA (http://www.sp-usa.org/) (to say nothing of several even smaller and more radical socialist or communist groups). In the right environment, these organizations might affiliate with each other and form what would be effectively a new social-democratic movement in America, larger and more effective than allowed for in Lind’s analysis.

Also on the left (more or less), there’s now the Natural Law Party (http://www.natural-law.org/). I don’t know WHAT to make of the Natural Law Party. I never thought a political movement influenced by TM would ever become highly visible in American politics, but it is. The question is whether it has the potential to get any bigger.

I also think the Libertarian Party (http://www.lp.org/) has more potential than Lind gave it credit for. Lind suggests a rump Republican Party would become more “classically liberal” – pro-business and pro-choice – but this glosses over the fact that being pro-business is NOT the same as being pro-market. Libertarians oppose government regulation of business but they also oppose corporate welfare and bailouts. There will, of course, continue to be at least one (I hope, ONLY one) party that openly represents the interests of established businesses, but I think the Republicans would also lose a lot of voters to the Libertarian Party. Say what you will about the Libertarians, nobody can fault them for consistency. They are anti-government-action in every field, which makes their policies really easy to understand. I think a lot of voters will go Libertarian once they have a real choice.

As for the “multiculturalist” groupings – black nationalists, La Raza, etc. – my guess is that ethnic-group-based parties would be prominent in some local and state governments, but unimportant at the national level.
Anyway, that’s what I think. What do you think?

[BrainGlutton]

Sorry, I botched some of the links. Where the OP says:

And the Greens (And the Greens (http://www.gp.org/[/url) appear to …laborparty.org/),

What I mean to say was: The Greens (http://www.gp.org/) appear to be a much bigger deal now than they were in 1992. And there is also a new Labor Party (http://www.thelaborparty.org/), and of course the old Socialist Party USA, etc.

[Alien]

First off, I would like to say that one very important aspect in multiparty democracies is the cut off limit for representation in the parliament (the House for you). Currently, the cut off limit usually is between 3%-6% in Europe. A high cut off limit would result in less parties in the House. In Europe, a 4% cut off limit means 6-8 parties, a 6% cut off limit 4-6 parties.

Other questions: would the US adopt parliamentarianism or not? Would the president be elected from the House or by direct election as today?

And third question: how to solve the fact that the US is a union of independent states? Would the Senate remain as it is, or merge with the House?
I’m far from qualified from speaking of how US politics would look within a multiparty system, but if I could dare to make a few comments, that would be:

• the Republican party itself would probably establish itself as a moderate conservatives party, as the article you provided suggested
• to the right there would be at least two new parties, a traditional Christian party (anti-abortion etc) and a “hard-liner” party (anti-immigration, anti-criminal, segregation flirting, etc)
• The Democrats would probably advocate Clinton-Gore politics to begin with, and I don’t think it will break up into pieces
• to the left at least two new parties would emerge, a Progressive party doing moderate-right social democratic politics, and the Greens.
• more interestingly, I think the US would, in time, see one or two parties emerge in the center, between the GOP and the Dems. Right now the two big parties are both close to the center, in time I think they would move a little to the right, left respectively, and make room for one or two small dead center parties, as is common within multiparty systems today.

I disagree with the assigned percentages of House membership in the article, I think “the right” all together probably would gain a few percentages in the beginning and get a 55-45 or 60-40 advantage on the left, but I also think that the Republican party would loose large amounts of voters to a Chistian Party. I’m guessing 25-30% to the GOP, 15-20% to the Christians and 5% to the “hardliners”.

On the left I think that the Democrats would become the largest party in the House because other than the Greens there is no clear alternative political path or cause on the left. I think it would take some time to build a Progressive party on the left, while new parties on the right would immediately get a good chunk of the votes. My guess is 35%-5%-10% (10% to the Greens).

Certainly it wouldn’t look like this, simply a leader looking good on television would change a lot for whatever party, but this is my immediate reflection.
But hell, what do I know …

[BrainGlutton]

Posted by Alien:

First off, I would like to say that one very important aspect in multiparty democracies is the cut off limit for representation in the parliament (the House for you). Currently, the cut off limit usually is between 3%-6% in Europe. A high cut off limit would result in less parties in the House. In Europe, a 4% cut off limit means 6-8 parties, a 6% cut off limit 4-6 parties.

An important point. The following is also from Lind’s 1992 article:

One question that immediately comes to mind is, Would a multiparty system exaggerate the power of small, extremist parties in the House? The danger that such parties might hold the key to House leadership would be eliminated by the leadership reforms proposed above. If the position of speaker of the House rotated among the members of a leadership committee elected by cumulative vote, moderate parties would be assured of exercising power in their turn and having substantial weight on the leadership committees, without having to make any compromises with extremists.
The chances that tiny fringe parties would win significant representation would be limited by the division of the country into multimember districts. The danger of extremism could also be guarded against by setting a threshold for participation in the legislature. Germany’s requirement that parties get five percent of the nationwide vote, for example, has been enough to exclude both the neo-Nazi Republicans and the radical-left Greens. Anyone who argues for a higher threshold should explain just which 10 or 20 percent of his fellow citizens are so dangerous that they should be effectively disenfranchised.
It is extremely doubtful that PR could bring black-nationalist or white-supremacist parties to power in the House. Since blacks constitute only 12 percent of the population, and an even smaller proportion of the electorate, most black voters would have to support an extremist party for it to clear a five-percent threshold. It seems unlikely that they would, because more-moderate multiracial parties would more accurately reflect the economic concerns and values of most black voters. Even if a black-nationalist party passed the five-percent hurdle, it could be kept out of the House leadership. To elect one member to a five-member leadership committee, at least 17 percent of the House membership would be necessary. Black radicals would have to form coalitions with non-blacks.
What about white Klansmen and neo-Nazis? Right-wing nationalist parties have made gains in recent European elections, but these are protest votes by moderate voters who seek to change particular policies of centrist parties, not to replace those parties permanently with extremists. In the United States the support for Buchanan’s extreme conservatism, even in the Republican Party, appears to have been in the single digits, and support for David Duke-style racism vanishingly small. This suggests that the only viable far-right parties in a multiparty House would be Pat Robertson-style Christian conservatives, not Aryan Nation skinheads.
Those who claim that PR was responsible for the electoral successes of the National Socialist party in Weimar Germany are mistaken, according to no less an authority than Hermann Goering. Enid Lakeman, a British advocate of PR, writes of Weimar Germany that “if the British electoral system had been in use [the Nazi party] might have been grossly over-represented…Goering said at his trial that under the British system that [1933] election would have given the Nazis every seat in the country, and he cannot have been far wrong.” Hitler would have loved the Anglo-American electoral system.
For some, of course, a system that gives any influence to “extremists” like conservative Christians and social democrats is bad. Even if this intolerant position could be reconciled with a commitment to democracy in America, would PR be worse than the plurality system in this respect? Under our present system small but intensely motivated ideological minorities have the power to force moderate Republicans and moderate Democrats to placate them in order to get the small margin of voters sometimes necessary for election in winner-take-all races. In a multiparty system such intense minorities might gain direct representation in Congress but would lose their ability to dictate centrist-party platforms. To be sure, on particular measures large, centrist parties might need small-party help, but they would not need to ally themselves with small parties in order to win election in the first place. In the shifting coalitions formed to pass different bills, the larger, moderate parties would have the upper hand.
In addition to ideological extremism, today’s two-party American system promotes “extremism of the center.” This results from the need for the two national parties to exaggerate their differences in order to appeal to the crucial minority of white middle-class swing voters. These voters–Wallace-ites and Reagan Democrats–do not identify completely with either national party. Since 1968 they have elected primarily Republican Presidents who share their conservative cultural and foreign-policy values, and Democratic congressmen who protect their middle-class transfers (Social Security, Medicaid, student loans). The penchant of these “populists” for ticket-splitting not only exaggerates the indirect power of this group but also encourages Democrats and Republicans alike to pander to their worst instincts. The Democrats try to appeal to the populist swing vote with giveaways; the Republicans play on racial resentment and call for military strength. If populists had their own party in Congress, their leaders would presumably have to be more responsible and measured in their views than are swing voters whose prejudices and appetites are stoked and exploited by both of today’s national parties. As long as there is ticket-splitting, extremism of this kind will be built into our present system–and will corrupt it. A case can be made, then, that PR is just as likely to reduce the political power of extremist minorities as to enhance it.

If Lind is right, we won’t have to worry about overtly white-supremacist parties (such as the American Nazi Party (url]http://www.americannaziparty.com/[/url), the Knights Party (http://www.kkk.com/), or the Southern Independence Party (http://www.southernindependentparty.com/) winning any representation in Congress. If not – my thinking is, a little representation for such groups, which is all they could hope to win, would not necessarily be a bad thing. If nothing else, it provides a safety valve. If Timothy McVeigh had been able to look to Congress and see David Duke, or two or three people like him, standing up and expounding radical racism on the floor of the House at taxpayers’ expense, year after year, then maybe, just maybe, he would not have felt so frustrated that he had to turn to terrorism and murder as forms of political expression. And remember, there are still some millions of hardcore white racists in America and they are citizens; they have as much right as anyone else to have their views heard in the public forum. That doesn’t mean they’ll actually get their way on anything.

Posted by Alien:

Other questions: would the US adopt parliamentarianism or not? Would the president be elected from the House or by direct election as today?

Whether the U.S. should switch from a presidential or separation-of-powers system to a parliamentary system is a different issue. (You can read some vigorous arguments for a parliamentary system in Daniel Lazare’s The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution is Paralyzing Democracy, Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1996. Michael Lind wrote a rebuttal of many of Lazare’s positions in a 1999 article in New Left Review, “Why There Will Be No Revolution in the U.S.” (http://www.newamericafoundation.org/index.cfm?pg=article&pubID=1013).) My own view is that the absence of a parliamentary system here makes PR more marketable. In countries that combine PR with a parliamentary system, such as Italy and Israel, government is highly unstable because only parliament can “form a government” – what we in the U.S. would call an “administration” – and if there is no majority party in parliament, an outcome PR makes almost impossible, then a government has to be formed by a coalition of several parties, any one of which might decide to pull out at any time, which means the government might fall at any time. Italy has had more than 50 governments since World War II. But if we switch to PR while keeping a separation-of-powers system, this problem does not arise. The president, governor, mayor or whatever is elected separately from the legislative assembly, governs for a specified term, and “forms a government” by making his or her own appointments to the cabinet.

As for how the president is to be elected: The main American PR interest group, the Center for Voting and Democracy (www.fairvote.org) believes that the Electoral College should be abolished, and that the president should be elected by instant-runoff voting (IRV), a system where the voter, instead of simply choosing one of the candidates, gets to rank-order them. E.g., if you like Nader in 2000 you could have made him your first choice on the ballot and Gore your second choice; if Nader did not get a majority of first-choice votes, your vote would still be counted to help elect Gore. That way Nader could have run without taking votes away from Gore, and Buchanan could have run without taking votes away from Bush – to the contrary, the third-party candidates would actually have helped out the most nearly sympathetic major-party candidates, by boosting their voter turnout. On the other hand, IRV also favors third parties, at least to the point of encouraging their participation, if not their victory. CVD believes the IRV system should be used in any election where there is only one office to fill – president, governor, mayor, sheriff, judge – as opposed to a multimember policymaking body, which should be elected by PR.

Posted by Alien:

And third question: how to solve the fact that the US is a union of independent states? Would the Senate remain as it is, or merge with the House?

A touchy problem. The U.S. is not “a union of independent states,” we settled that question in 1865, but I guess it would appear that way to someone from Europe, where most nation-states have unitary, not federal, systems.

But we do have this curious anachronism, the United States Senate, which guarantees equal representation (two senators) to every state, thus grossly inflating the power of voters in underpopulated states. Many American political thinkers insist the Senate has got to go. (There have been threads on the subject on this board – e.g., “Should the United States Senate be Abolished?” (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=181890&highlight=senate).) Unfortunately, as Lazare pointed out in The Frozen Republic, the Constitution, in Article V, states that “no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.” Therefore, abolishing the Senate, or the principle of equal-representation-per-state, would require not only a constitutional amendment approved by three-fourths of the state legislatures, but a unanimous amendment approved by all the state legislatures.

Ignoring this, some writers have speculated on reforming or abolishing the Senate. Lind’s 1992 article on PR for the House of Representatives assumed that “The Senate would continue to be elected the way it is now, and such effect as there would be on it would be indirect.” But in his later book The Next American Nation (Free Press Paperbacks, 1996), Lind argued that the Senate should also be elected by PR – that is, the House of Representatives would be elected by the multi-member district form of PR (merge five or ten congressional districts into one district represented by a multi-member delegation elected by PR), which preserves some link to the candidates’ geographic origins; and the Senate should be elected by the “national party-list” form of PR, under which each party would put forth a slate of candidates, and then get to place some of them in the Senate according to the party’s proportion of the vote. Under this system, senators would not represent their states or regions, they would represent their parties; senators would be chosen because they were leaders with national reputations. I would speculate that under such a system we would see not only the institutional party leaders in the Senate, but the parties’ public ideological spokespersons, that is, columnists and talk-show hosts: George Will, Rush Limbaugh, Jim Hightower, etc.

Posted by Alien:

• to the left at least two new parties would emerge, a Progressive party doing moderate-right social democratic politics, and the Greens.

“Moderate-right social democratic politics”? I think this is an example of the difficulty of translating political labels from Europe to America. You are probably describing what we here would call “moderate-left” or even “far-left.”

[adaher]

One of the beautiful things about our system is that the majority cannot easily just impose it’s will on the minority. The Senate is one of the major obstacles to majority dictatorship and should be valued as a good defense against such.

The US system is first and foremost about individual liberty, not necessarily popular democracy. Having tons of checks and balances makes it difficult for the government to infringe on our liberties.

[BrainGlutton]

Posted by Adaher:

One of the beautiful things about our system is that the majority cannot easily just impose it’s will on the minority. The Senate is one of the major obstacles to majority dictatorship and should be valued as a good defense against such.

What’s that got to do with a PR-based multiparty system? If we have more than two parties in the legislature, no party is likely to be an absolute majority at any time, and a majority vote is still necessary to enact or repeal any legislation. Therefore, nothing actually gets done unless it is worked out as a compromise between several very different political camps. How does that tend towards “majority dictatorship”?

[adaher]

It will tend to make passing laws easier. Sure, you have lots of disparate parties, but on each single issue you can usually get a majority to support something.

For example, let’s say your legislature has 40% Republicans, 40% Democrats, 15% Greens, and 5% Libertarians. A universal health care proposal gets floated, primarily taxing the rich to pay for it. A clear example of plundering the minority for majority gain. If you have one legislature, the Democrats and Greens probably vote for it, so it gets 55% support and it’s a done deal. Smaller states, which tend to be more pro-liberty, have essentially been stripped of power by such an arrangement.

[BrainGlutton]

Posted by Adaher:

For example, let’s say your legislature has 40% Republicans, 40% Democrats, 15% Greens, and 5% Libertarians. A universal health care proposal gets floated, primarily taxing the rich to pay for it. A clear example of plundering the minority for majority gain. If you have one legislature, the Democrats and Greens probably vote for it, so it gets 55% support and it’s a done deal. Smaller states, which tend to be more pro-liberty, have essentially been stripped of power by such an arrangement.

And what’s wrong with that? By your definition, every public service or program funded by a progressive income tax, state or federal, is “A clear example of plundering the minority for majority gain.” I think you’ll find only Libertarians and some pro-business Republicans share that point of view.

Nevertheless, despite the presence of those pro-business Republicans in Congress, the progressive income tax system remains in place, even if it isn’t nearly as progressive as it was in the '70s. But that might change if the Libertarians could get some representation in their own right.

As for small states, “which tend to be more pro-liberty,” being stripped of power – what’s wrong with that, if their power was disproportionate in the first place? And if they are “pro-liberty,” so what? Being “pro-liberty” should not be enough to add more weight to their votes compared to the citizens of other states. Would you take the same position if our smallest states were also our most leftist? Remember, there’s a strong left-liberal tradition in Montana and Minnesota; that’s why the New Party still has surviving branches there. In fact, as Michael Lind has pointed out (in Vietnam: The Necessary War), one consequence of the overrepresentation of small states in the Senate has been to inflate the power of Greater New England/the Upper Midwest, with its liberal and pacifist traditions. Eliminate that and the net effect might be to push the country right, not left.

Let’s not get sidetracked here. Adaher’s concern is about the Senate, in its present form, as a check on the House, and while that is definitely relevant, it is tangential to the subject of this thread. We could, as Lind proposed in his 1992 article, adopt PR for the House while leaving the Senate unchanged. And we don’t want to discuss the merits of having PR or a multipartisan system, that was covered in an earlier thread (see OP). I started this thread as a thought experiment: Assuming we did have PR and it did produce a multipartisan system, exactly what new party groupings would emerge? What share of the vote would each command? And how would they interact with each other?

[Alien]

BrainGlutton:, I would have to say Lind appears very knowledgeable on this subject. To ask the “big” question: Is there any chance at all PR could happen within the next, say, 20 years? Or does the Constitution effectively bar such changes from taking place?

As I said, I’m not that informed about smaller politcal movements in America. But wouldn’t PR also pavn the way for far-right parties, maybe not on federal level, but on state level?

BrainGlutton:
“Moderate-right social democratic politics”? I think this is an example of the difficulty of translating political labels from Europe to America. You are probably describing what we here would call “moderate-left” or even “far-left.”

I agree it’s difficult to translate political labels from Europe to America. Since European social democratic parties often is the largest or second largest party in their country, their political platform is also a broad one. Usually they have two factions, a “left” faction suspicious of multi-national corporations and favoring subsidieses during recessions, and a more market-oriented “right” prepared to let the market take it’s course still retaining a strong welfare state.

[Alien]

adaher:
One of the beautiful things about our system is that the majority cannot easily just impose it’s will on the minority. The Senate is one of the major obstacles to majority dictatorship and should be valued as a good defense against such.
…
For example, let’s say your legislature has 40% Republicans, 40% Democrats, 15% Greens, and 5% Libertarians. A universal health care proposal gets floated, primarily taxing the rich to pay for it. A clear example of plundering the minority for majority gain. If you have one legislature, the Democrats and Greens probably vote for it, so it gets 55% support and it’s a done deal. Smaller states, which tend to be more pro-liberty, have essentially been stripped of power by such an arrangement.

adaher, your posts are making less and less sense by each day. First off, even though US Senators are representing their home states, they are also party members. A 60-40 member advantage in the Sentate, and control of the House and the Presidency, would give one party huge powers to implement their politics without any regard for the minority, especially during times of “unity”. In a multi-party enviroment it’s much more difficult to do this because even a 50% majority would have to made up from 2 or maybe 3 parties, not a single party.

Secondly, “plundering the rich minority” can happen just as easily with a single-party majority within a two-party system, as it could within a multi-party system. But taxes has nothing to do with political systems (at least not democratic ones) , it has to do with a majority wanting to improve public services and deciding that it’s fairer that wealthy people contributes more than the poor. This issue is about whether a government should have any right of disposition over the income of their citizens or not.

[Dogface]

The reason for the US Senate was and still is to prevent large states from devouring small states. Were it not for the Senate, low-population states would right now be glowing in the dark as unrestricted nuclear waste dumps (yes, even less restricted than they are now). Got a billion tons of dioxane? Dump it all in North Dakota. They have so few votes in the new perfect population-only-representation government that we can kick them around forever.

Is the Senate obstructionist? Yes. It was INTENDED to be obstructionist.

As the old myth goes:

The story goes that the two Founders were arguing the issue while drinking coffee. Suddenly, Washington asked Jefferson, “Why did you pour that coffee into your saucer?” “To cool it,” replied Jefferson. “Even so,” said Washington, “we pour legislation into the senatorial saucer to cool it.”

The conversation above probably never happened, but it does well explain what the framers of the Constitution intended the Senate to be. Given my 'druthers, I’d like to see Senatorial elections go back to the old system, appointment by the state legislatures.

As for “moderate-right social democratic policies” in the US mold, think “Social Security, Medicaid,” etc. There is a great deal of social democracy in the USA, it’s just cloaked in different language.

[BrainGlutton]

Posted by Alien:

To ask the “big” question: Is there any chance at all PR could happen within the next, say, 20 years? Or does the Constitution effectively bar such changes from taking place?

Michael Lind, in his 1992 article, addressed that question as follows:

What would it take to install proportional representation for members of the House of Representatives? Nothing more than an act of Congress. No constitutional amendment is necessary. Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution states, “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.” This gives Congress the power to preempt all state electoral laws and to mandate a system of multimember districts with proportional representation for electing members of the House of Representatives.

Of course, that’s just Lind’s interpretation of that clause of the Constitution. I have my doubts as to whether it would be widely accepted until the Supreme Court ruled on it. At present, however, the most important barriers to adopting PR in the U.S. have to do with politics and, even more importantly, publicity. The problem isn’t that the people are against PR, the problem is that most of them have never heard of it, and explaining takes more words than you can fit on a bumper sticker. My hope is that if, just once, PR becomes a widely discussed issue in America, the way term limits were a widely discussed issue in the early '90s, the battle will be half won. Unlike term limits, PR will never go away after it becomes established as a public issue – because all those small and medium-sized parties that stand to benefit from it will not let it go away. I foresee a transideological PR coalition – one in which Ralph Nader and Jim Hightower would find themselves making common cause with Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan and Pat Robertson, for the first and possibly the last time in American history. Strange bedfellows, you know.

Posted by Alien:

But wouldn’t PR also pavn the way for far-right parties, maybe not on federal level, but on state level?

Maybe. I think the Southern Party, and maybe even the Knights Party, would get some representation in some Southern state legislatures – but it would be minority representation, and of course they will have to share the floor with black representatives. It would be interesting to see whether the antigovernment militia movement tries to organize a political party in the Western states where it has a presence; then again, the militiamen all might decide to vote Libertarian. We have Nazis and Falangists (http://www.falange.us/) here too, but I doubt they have sufficient numbers anywhere to get elected to anything. I don’t like the prospect of such people getting elected to public office, but I think their potential for causing harm will be very limited and, as explained above, I think they can at least provide an emotional safety valve for frustrated white supremacists.

[Kantalooppi]

Were it not for the Senate, low-population states would right now be glowing in the dark as unrestricted nuclear waste dumps (yes, even less restricted than they are now). Got a billion tons of dioxane? Dump it all in North Dakota.

Why hasn’t this happened in other countries with unicameral legislatures?

[Alien]

*Originally posted by BrainGlutton *
Of course, that’s just Lind’s interpretation of that clause of the Constitution. I have my doubts as to whether it would be widely accepted until the Supreme Court ruled on it. At present, however, the most important barriers to adopting PR in the U.S. have to do with politics and, even more importantly, publicity. The problem isn’t that the people are against PR, the problem is that most of them have never heard of it, and explaining takes more words than you can fit on a bumper sticker. My hope is that if, just once, PR becomes a widely discussed issue in America, the way term limits were a widely discussed issue in the early '90s, the battle will be half won. Unlike term limits, PR will never go away after it becomes established as a public issue – because all those small and medium-sized parties that stand to benefit from it will not let it go away. I foresee a transideological PR coalition – one in which Ralph Nader and Jim Hightower would find themselves making common cause with Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan and Pat Robertson, for the first and possibly the last time in American history. Strange bedfellows, you know.

Interesting. Maybe one way to go would be to get a PR movement going in a small liberal-leaning state with an active small party scene. A PR election to the state legislature. State’s electoral laws can be changed by the state itself, can’t it? I would think such an “experiment” would gain huge nationwide attention and might pavn the way for similar changes elsewhere.

[Dogface]

*Originally posted by Kantalooppi *
**Why hasn’t this happened in other countries with unicameral legislatures? **

It has–look at the dead areas in Russia.

[vibrotronica]

I don’t think you would need to change the Senate election process at all. Once PR took hold and smaller parties were established, they could just run candidates like the big parties do now. Each state gets two Senators, whether they be Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, or Green.

[BrainGlutton]

Posted by Alien:

Interesting. Maybe one way to go would be to get a PR movement going in a small liberal-leaning state with an active small party scene. A PR election to the state legislature. State’s electoral laws can be changed by the state itself, can’t it? I would think such an “experiment” would gain huge nationwide attention and might pavn the way for similar changes elsewhere.

As a matter of fact, there are active organizations for state-level PR, IRV or both in the following states (all links found on the “Web Links” page of the website of the Center for Voting and Democracy, www.fairvote.org):

California: Californians for Electoral Reform (http://fairvoteca.org/); California Instant Runoff Voting Coalition (http://calirv.org/).

Illinois: Midwest Democracy Center (http://www.midwestdemocracy.org/); Illinois Citizens for Proportional Representation [http://www.prairienet.org/icpr/).

Massachusetts: Fair Vote Massachusetts (http://www.ma.fairvote.org/); Massachusetts Voting Reform (http://massvote.org/); MassIRV (http://www.massirv.org/).

Minnesota: Fairvote Minnesota (http://www.fairvotemn.org/).

New York: NYS-IRV (http://www.nysirv.org/).

Utah: Fairvote Utah (http://www.utah.fairvote.org/).

Washington: Washington Citizens for Proportional Representation (http://fairvote.net/washington/); Coalition for Instant Runoff Voting in Washington (http://irvoting.org/).

[stick_monkey]

Other questions: would the US adopt parliamentarianism or not? Would the president be elected from the House or by direct election as today?

The US President is not elected by direct election today. The electoral college are an appointed group of individuals who vote based on their own states wishes. The office of president is supposed to be that of a temporary benevolent dictator that best represents the wishes of the individual states rather than the will of the majority of the people. This is to protect the less populace states from being outruled by the high population states.

This was especially true during the founding of our government when nearly 2/3 of the population was in New England, and the remaining southern states were half the states and were worried about fair representation. The continued necessity for a system like this was further represented in the last election, which even though my candidate lost was a great example of why it was needed. Gore may have one the popular vote, but if you look at the maps of the state layout Bush one a greater number of states by far and had nearly the entire geographical country in red.

Can you tell I am a big fan of the Electoral College?

I would however like to see ALL elections go to an IRV type voting system, or a proxy voting system. Where either you choose your top 3 candidates, or instead of 1 vote, you get 10 to put wherever you wish. I prefer the proxy over the IRV method as you can better represent the strength of your conviction for a candidate, but that’s just me. I would still prefer to keep the electoral college, or something with a similar function in place, for the presidency, even if we went to a better voting system.

[BrainGlutton]

Focus, dopers, focus! Posters keep chiming in about the value of the Senate as an “obstructionist” entity, or the role of the electoral college in our federal system. These concerns are generally relevant to issues of constitutional reform, but tangential to the topic of this thread. If you want PR, that does not necessarily mean you favor simple majoritarian democracy. If I wanted that kind of democracy I would push for deciding as many public issues as possible by referendum; but I don’t, because the people as a whole are not a structured deliberative body. But that’s yet another discussion.

Let’s stay on the topic: What would be the details of a multipartisan political system in America?

My thesis is that the answer is not just “anybody’s guess.” The details of a multipartisan America are, to some extent, predictable, because the political characteristics of individuals are mostly stable. There are examples of dramatic personal conversions from far-left to far-right, or vice-versa, but such conversions are mostly the province of serious political intellectuals – who will be a small minority in any society. Most people, I think, do not change their political views very much after their mid-20s, no more than they change their fundamental personality characteristics after that age. If they change their political allegiances, it is not because they have changed their views but because they believe the party or grouping to which they previously were loyal no longer represents their views; thus, they join a different party which they find more congenial. In the 1970s and '80s, lots of Southern voters switched from the Democratic to the Republican Party – not because they themselves had changed, but because in the course of the ‘60s the Democratic party had become identified with left-liberalism and the civil rights movement, and the Republican Party – even though it started out as the party of Lincoln and was considered radical in his time – had grown much more conservative, by stages, over the past century. The transformation was so thorough that the South is now the Republican Party’s core base of support, and the North the Democrats’.

The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press has developed a typology (http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?PageID=98) which divides the American body politic into the following ten groups (they revise and refine the model every election cycle or two, but the model retains its basic outlines):

STAUNCH CONSERVATIVES: 10% of adult population, 12% of registered voters. 72% Republican; 24% independent, lean Republican. Pro-business, pro-military, pro-life, anti-gay and anti-social welfare with a strong faith in America. Anti-environmental. Self-defined patriot. Distrustful of government. Little concern for the poor. Unsupportive of the women’s movement. Predominately white (95%), male (65%) and older. Married (70%). Extremely satisfied financially (47% make at least $50,000). Almost two-thirds (63%) are white Protestant.

MODERATE REPUBLICANS: 11% of general population, 12% of registered voters. 76% Republican; 22% independent, lean Republican. Pro-business, pro-military, but also pro-government. Strong environmentalists. Highly religious. Self-defined patriots. Little compassion for poor. More satisfied than Staunch Conservatives with state of the union. White, relatively well educated and very satisfied financially. Largest percent of Catholics across all groups.

POPULIST REPUBLICANS: 9% of general population, 10% of registered voters. 72% Republican, 25% independent, lean Republican. Religious, xenophobic and pro-life. Negative attitudes toward gays and elected officials. Sympathetic toward the poor. Most think corporations have too much power and money. Tend to favor environmental protection. Almost two-thirds are dissatisfied with the state of the nation. Heavily female (60%) and less educated. Fully 42% are white evangelical Protestants.

NEW PROSPERITY INDEPENDENTS: 10% of general population, 11% of registered voters. 69% independent, 21% Republican, 5% Democrat. Pro-business, pro-environment and many are pro-choice. Sympathetic toward immigrants, but not as understanding toward black Americans and the poor. Somewhat critical of government. Tolerant on social issues. Well educated (38% have a college degree), affluent (almost one-fourth earn at least $75,000) and young (70% less than age 50). Slightly more men than women (55% to 45%, respectively). Less religious (only 13% go to church weekly).

DISAFFECTEDS: 9% of general population, 10% of registered voters. 73% independent, 8% Democrat, 6% Republican. Distrustful of government, politicians, and business corporations. Favor third major political party. Also, anti-immigrant and intolerant of homosexuality. Very unsatisfied financially. Less educated (only 8% have a college degree) and lower-income (73% make less than $50,000). More than one-quarter (28%) describe themselves as poor. Half are between the ages of 30-49. Second only to Partisan Poor in number of single moms. One-fifth (20%) work in manufacturing.

LIBERAL DEMOCRATS: 9% of general population, 10% of registered voters. 56% Democrat; 41% independent, lean Democrat. Pro-choice and support civil rights, gay rights, and the environment. Critical of big business. Very low expression of religious faith. Most sympathetic of any group to the poor, African-Americans and immigrants. Highly supportive of the women’s movement. Most highly educated group (50% have a college degree). Least religious of all typology groups. One-third never married.

SOCIALLY CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRATS: 13% of general population, 14% of registered voters. 70% Democrat; 27% independent, lean Democrat. Pro-U.S., yet disenchanted with the government. Intolerant on social issues. Positive attitude toward military. Think big business has too much power and money. Highly religious. Not affluent but satisfied financially. Slightly less educated, older group (27% are women over age 50). Labor union supporters. Higher than average number (62%) are married.

NEW DEMOCRATS: 9% of general population, 10% of registered voters. 75% Democrat; 21% independent, lean Democrat. Favorable view of government. Pro-business, yet think government regulation is necessary. Concerned about environmental issues and think government should take strong measures in this area. Accepting of gays. Somewhat less sympathetic toward the poor, black Americans and immigrants than Liberal Democrats. Many are reasonably well educated and fall into the middle-income bracket. Nearly six-in-ten (58%) are women and 21% are black. Numerous are self-described union supporters.

PARTISAN POOR: 9% of general population, 11% of registered voters. 85% Democrat; 12% independent, lean Democrat. Xenophobic and anti-big business. Disenchanted with government. Think the government should do even more to help the poor. Very religious. Support civil rights and the women’s movement. Have very low incomes (40% make under $20,000), and two-thirds (66%) are female. Nearly four-in-ten are African-American and 14% are Hispanic. Not very well educated. Pro-labor union. Largest group of single mothers.

BYSTANDERS: 11% of general population, 0% of registered voters. 54% independent, 25% Democrat, 10% Republican. These Americans choose not to participate in politics, or are not eligible to do so (noncitizens). Somewhat sympathetic toward poor. Uninterested in what goes on in politics. Rarely vote. Young (49% under 30), less educated and not very religious. Work in manufacturing, construction and restaurant/retail industries.
Does this mean that if we went to PR, one party would emerge representing each of these types (except the Bystanders)? I don’t think so. Politics is never that simple. The above typology describes the PEOPLE, but even in the best-functioning democracy, the people as a whole do not make things happen, they respond to policy alternatives that have been thought up by that minority of the population who constitute the “political nation” – citizens who take some ACTIVE interest in politics and government. Every political party was founded by some members of the political nation who formed its nucleus, and then the rank-and-file voters were drawn to that nucleus. And, at least in the U.S., the divisions within the political nation are much more complicated than those within the whole people. The website Politics1.com has a “Directory of U.S. Political Parties” page (http://www.politics1.com/parties.htm) which lists some 36 “Third Parties” which, at least occasionally, run candidates for public office. I discussed some of these in the OP.

So that’s the material we have to work with in this thread. Based on the above statistics about the people’s views, and our existing landscape of third parties and protoparties and interest groups, what parties or groupings of parties do you think would emerge under a PR system, and what would be their relative strength?

[BrainGlutton]

Hot news! From the CV&D website:

[QOTE]On Friday, August 28, several leading pro-democracy organizations filed “friend of the court” amicus briefs urging the U.S. Supreme Court to strike-down current redistricting practices that have led to extreme partisan gerrymandering and a remarkable rise in noncompetitive congressional elections. The Vieth v. Jubelirer case involving congressional redistricting in Pennsylvania will be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in its 2003-2004 term.

[QUOTE]

You can link to the full text of each brief via http://www.fairvote.org/redistricting/amicusbrief.htm. One advantage of PR is that it does an end-run around all partisan efforts at gerrymandering. Think about it. If we use the multi-member district form – which involves merging 5 or 10 existing congressional districts into one district – then it becomes much, much harder to draw the lines so as to ensure Democratic or Republican dominance in the larger district, and even if you can, the minority views in that district STILL get represented in the districts 5- or 10-member delegation. The “party list” system is not only difficult but impossible for partisan leaders to stack in their favor.