Sic. Read that as: The party’s elected officials are bound to follow the party program, a program agreed upon by representatives from local party groups. The members of a local party group elect representatives from their group who are sent to the annual party conference. At this conference the party program is decided and organizational leaders (top figureheads) are elected.
It’s really not my day today 
I’m not convinced that proportionnal representation is as widespread as you seem to think it is. I believe it’s the exception rather than the norm. I might be mistaken, though, but you would need to provide some evidences to convince me.
Is that how it works in your country? In the U.S., the closest equivalent to the “local party groups” would be the county Democratic/Republican Executive Committees – which in most places are pretty much open to anybody who wants to put in the time and attend the meetings are required – but their relationship to the state and national parties is not quite that structured.
Then, how and by whom are the leaders of the parties picked at the state and national level? I mean, you need people to be in charge of the party, even if they’re mere admnistrators, don’t have any significant political influence and don’t get to decide on any political programm.
That’s a good question. And you know, you’ve stumped me – and I consider myself pretty sophisticated about politics. It’s just that party leaders (outside of government) are so unimportant that almost nobody thinks much about how they are chosen. In any case, it varies from state to state. Perhaps this Wikipedia excerpt will help – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_the_United_States#Organization_of_American_Political_Parties:
No cite tonight I’m afraid, I’ll be back later. It’s a been a while since I read about election systems, but I’m pretty sure that amongst democratic nations, there’s the American system and the British system (a few countries), and that the rest of the world basically has a proportional system in multi-member-districts. Presidential elections might be a bit different, France uses a run off system, isn’t that true?
Yes, that’s how it is. The party leadership certainly has a strong influence (some apply more pressure than others), but the local party groups are the backbone of every party. That’s pretty much how it is throughout Western Europe. In my homecountry local party groups are open to anybody who wants to become a member, and the annual party conference is open to media. At the party conference any representative may propose something to be discussed, followed by a vote on the matter.
In Europe, the only countries that don’t use some form of PR or “multiple-winner” system are France, Monaco, the UK, the Czech Republic and Belarus. (Well, and Vatican City, which has no elections, period.) See these tables: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_voting_systems_by_nation
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation#History:
Discussions and embedded links in this old thread, on the last election for the Democratic National Committee chair (Howard Dean ultimately won it), might shed some light on that question: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=296924
It turns out you’re quite right. PR systems are not as widespread as I have been lead to believe. It is the most popular system among free nations, but it’s not far ahead of single-member district systems.
According to the ACE project (by their own words “the first-ever attempt to provide a globally accessible information resource on election administration”) the worlds free nation uses the following election systems (I’ve simplified a bit):
Winner takes all in a multi-member district
Winner takes all in a single-member district
PR systems (Proportional in multi-member district)
List PR/Party list: 54 (15 + 39)
Single Transferable Vote: 4 (2 + 2)
Total: 58
Mixed single-member district/proportional
Single non-transferable vote: 2 (0 + 1)
Mixed Member Proportional: 8 (4 + 4)
Parallel voting: 6 (1 + 5)
Total: 16
== Winner takes all in a multi-member district == (selected quotes)
Bloc voting
As of September 1997, the Palestinian Authority, Bermuda, Fiji, Laos, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Thailand, the Maldives, Kuwait, the Philippines and Mauritius all use Block Vote electoral systems.
== Winner takes all in a single-member district == (selected quotes)
First past the post
To date, pure First Past the Post (FPTP) systems are found in the United Kingdom and those countries historically influenced by Britain. … FPTP is also used by a dozen Caribbean nations; by Belize and formerly Guyana in Latin America; by ten Asian states (including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Malaysia); and by many of the small island nations of the South Pacific. Eighteen African nations, mostly former British colonies, use FPTP systems.
Alternative vote
The Alternative Vote (AV) is a relatively unusual electoral system, today used only in Australia, and, in a modified form, in Nauru. Recently, the system has been muted as the best alternative to FPTP in the United Kingdom.
Runoff/Two-Round Systems
Two-Round Systems are used to elect over thirty national parliaments and are an even more common method for electing presidents. Along with France, many of the other independent nations which use TRS are territorial dependencies of the French Republic, or have been historically influenced in some way by the French. In francophone Sub-Saharan Africa, the Central African Republic, Mali, Togo, Chad, Gabon, Mauritania, and the Congo, and in North Africa, Egypt use the system. Cuba, Haiti, Iran, Kiribati and the Comoros Islands also use Two-Round Systems for their legislative elections, as do the post-Soviet bloc states of Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Moldova, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. Unsurprisingly, in Western Europe, France is joined by Monaco in using TRS. Albania and Lithuania run TRS elections alongside List PR elections as part of their parallel systems, while Hungary uses TRS to decide the results of the majoritarian district electoral component of its Mixed Member Proportional PR system.
== PR systems (Proportional in multi-member district) == (selected quotes)
List PR/Party list
The d’Hondt method is a highest averages method for allocating seats in party-list proportional representation. Argentina, Austria, Bulgaria, Chile, Croatia, Finland, Israel, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Turkey are among the places that use this allocation system, as do elections to the European Parliament in some countries.
The Sainte-Laguë method is closely related to d’Hondt method, although without the latter’s favoritism for larger parties. The Sainte-Laguë method is used in New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Latvia, Kosovo.
Single Transferable Vote
Political scientists have long been advocated the Single Transferable Vote (STV) as one of the most attractive electoral systems. However, its use for national parliamentary elections has been limited to a few cases - Ireland since 1921, Malta since 1947, and once in Estonia in 1990. It is also used in Australia for elections to the Tasmanian House of Assembly, the Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly, and the federal Senate; and in Northern Ireland local elections.
== Mixed single-member district/proportional == (selected quotes)
Single non-transferable vote
Under the Single Non-Transferable Vote (SNTV), each elector has one vote, but there are multiple seats in each district to be filled. Those candidates with the highest vote totals fill these positions. This means that in, for example, a four-member district, one would need just over twenty percent of the vote to ensure election. As of 1997, SNTV is used for parliamentary elections in Jordan and Vanuatu, and for 125 out of 161 seats in the Taiwanese parliament. However, its most well known application was for Japanese lower house elections from 1948 to 1993.
Mixed Member Proportional
Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) systems, as used in Germany, New Zealand, Bolivia, Italy, Mexico, Venezuela, and Hungary, attempt to combine the positive attributes of both majoritarian and Proportional Representation (PR) electoral systems. A proportion of the parliament (roughly half in the cases of Germany, Bolivia, and Venezuela) is elected by plurality-majority methods, usually from single-member districts, while the remainder is constituted by PR lists.
Parallel voting
Parallel (or mixed) systems use both Proportional Representation (PR) lists and “winner-take-all” districts. However, unlike MMP systems, the PR lists do not compensate for any disproportionality within the majoritarian districts. … The Cameroon, Croatia, Guatemala, Guinea, Japan, South Korea, Niger, Russia, the Seychelles, and Somalia use First Past the Post (FPTP) single-member districts alongside a List PR component, while Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Lithuania use the Two-Round System for the single-member district component of their system. Andorra uses the Block Vote to elect half its MPs, while Tunisia and Senegal use the Party Block to elect a number of their deputies.
Geopgraphic distribution, a quote:
Cites:
ACE project’s The Global Distribution of Electoral Systems
(also Electoral Systems Index) for details
Wikipedia’s Table of voting systems by nation
To answer the OP’s question about how politics would be affected in the US with proportional representation, I predict the following:
[ul]
[li] Depending on the choice of proportional system, America will see the rise of several new big parties, probably somewhere between 4-9 will be represented in the House[/li][li] Voter turnout will increase to between 65%-75%[/li][li] The plague of partisan bickering in public debate will decline[/li][li] Judicial activism will be less prevalent[/li][li] Less money wasted (pork)[/li][li] Less money to the military[/li][li] More money to health care and similar programs[/li][/ul]
Just to name a few.
[QUOTE=Alien]
[li] The plague of partisan bickering in public debate will decline[/li][/quote]
Why? I would expect it to remain at the same level – but become a multi-sided rather than two-sided debate.
[QUOTE=Alien]
[li] Judicial activism will be less prevalent[/li][/quote]
Why?
[QUOTE=Alien]
[li] Less money wasted (pork)[/li][li] Less money to the military[/li][li] More money to health care and similar programs[/li][/QUOTE]
Again, why?
Moving from a two-party to a multiparty system would change the dynamics of political decisionmaking in America by adding a wider range of force-vectors to the process – but it would not necessarily shift the center-of-gravity of American politics to the left or the right or any other direction. Yes, a lot of now disaffected Americans would become more involved in the process – but I think you’ll find those around the fringes of the whole political map. I.e., for every frustrated, nonvoting socialist or Green, there’s a frustrated, nonvoting libertarian or white-supremacist or Christian Reconstructionist. In terms of raw voting strength, they’ll more or less cancel each other out.
BTW, all the above issues were covered in much greater depth in this old (and now locked) thread of mine, “A multiparty system is better than a two-party system!” – http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=269169
Are you claiming that there is no difference between governing Nebraska and governing the United States? Maybe if California had just one house there would be some comparison, but not Nebraska (no offense intended to the Cornhuskers, I’d say the same about Mississippi.)
I was just providing one example of a government in the US that had a legislature with only one house that served a purpose. I’m not claiming that there’s no difference in degree in governing one state and governing the entire nation.
The original purpose of the Senate was two-fold:
To provide a more sedate, contemplative body; hence the indirect selection and the six-year term.
To provide the state governments representation in the federal government; hence the original provisions that the state legilaslatures select their senators.
Simple model: Each state selects two senators who serve long terms. The states get stable, thoughtful representation at the federal level.
That is, until a COTUS amendment turned the senators over to the popular elections in state-wide races. So the people get the House and the Senate.
The House was designed to enable proportionate representation, as was the Electoral College.
The Senate balances the interests of the states, regardless of size. Larger states like California, New York and Florida already wield proportional power in the House, and in the Electoral College.
Remove the constant size of state reps in the Senate, and you’ve got a redundant legislative house.
Agreed. But that doesn’t prove it’s a good or necessary purpose, then or now.
If it were adopted here, the political parties would win and people would lose. All the partisanship, the immature ideology-over-problem-solving, would be multiplied by a factor of the number of other parties it created. Since a hellava large amount of our problems are due to no more than political parties putting thier party ideology ahead of real live peoples actual problems and concerns, its a no brainer that we would just have more problems 9as well as the existing ones) and greater logjams to fixing them.
It would also be the adoption of a religous belief as a fundamental structure of govt; the belief that there actually is such a thing as a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. When there are only groups, and not individuals, you may as well bend over and kiss your ass goodbye. Unless of course youre religous, then you can rest easy in self righteous smugness that no matter how much material misery you cause real live human beings, youre personal ideology has won.
What you’re describing does not appear to have happened in New Zealand after it switched from SMD to PR in 1996. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_New_Zealand At least, I’ve heard no news to that effect out of there – does anybody know different? (I focus on New Zealand because, AFAIK, it’s the only example to date of a country in the English-speaking world that has shifted from SMD to PR – except for South Africa, and that was such a unique case that it’s impossible to isolate the political effects of moving to PR from the much broader effects of abolishing apartheid.)
There are countless real-world examples of wholes greater than the sum of their parts – an automobile, for example. Leaving that aside – how does a multiparty system embody that “religious belief” any more or any less than does a two-party system, or a nonpartisan system?
But we have no reason to expect shifting to a PR-based multiparty system would lead to the ascendance of any particular ideology. To the contrary: If Congress is divided into half a dozen parties, none with a majority, then nobody rules the roost. That would free us from what we’ve got now – not a tyranny of the majority, but a tyranny of the plurality, in which the biggest faction is able to leverage its slight edge into hegemonic dominance over policymaking.
He, well, nothing is set in stone. That America would see several new parties is given, IMO. I know that you yourself have discussed it in detail in the past.
As for partisan bickering, in (what’s essentially) a two party democracy political debate is often reduced to simple for/against arguments. Further, the use of stereotypes becomes widespread. A democrat is weak on national security, in favor of taxes and strong on education, while a republican is verce versa. We certainly see this problem in every democracy, and the problem increases as technology allows us to move more information at a faster pace to the voters (more information means less depth). Multi-party democracies means multiple views on issues, something which tends to favor facts over ideology.
There’s a book on my buy list, ‘The Argument Culture: Moving from Debate to Dialogue’ written by Deborah Tannen, which discusses our current mindset: that we’re debating to win over the other side no matter what, instead of debating to put the facts on the table. She also wrote an article (semi-good) for WP some time ago, available here:
A slight hijack maybe, but we’re having a national election in one week. We have two nation-wide public tv channels. Combined they feature 15 debate programs per week, Monday through Friday (none in the weekend, not even on Sunday morning). Each day a different subject is debated. Since it’s election time, most of this programs are populated with party leaders and their prospective Ministers. I would guess that our party leaders meet to debate on national tv five times a week these days. It’s don’t know if it’s this extreme further south in Europe, so FWIW.
As for the complaints about judicial activism I would only expect a slight decrease, in part because judges are appointed by an executive elected in a separate election, and in part because many of the issues today dividing America are regarded as constitutional issues. In a multi-party America I would expect the center to be strengthen in the legislature, which would favor moderate judges over controversial ones. Again a slight hijack, in my homecountry the term ‘judicial activism’ is not mentioned at all in public debate. Sure, people complain about crime and punishment etc, but they blame the politicians, not the judges.
As for where the money is spent, well, it’s no secret that a lot of federal money is sent to swing states so that the senators of these states have something to brag about when s/he’s up for reelection, even though the money could be put into better use somewhere else. It’s the price to pay to maintain a 51+ majority. Not that it’s anything wrong with that, it’s not my tax money. Since this is a hypothetical debate, I would expect that (in a multi-party enviroment) the parties would have to come up with a lot of promises to fix some the problems seen by the voters, particularly concerning health care and education. By experience, the party in power will be held to these promises come next election, and if they failed utterly voters are going to vote for their second favorite party instead. Voters don’t have to say: Oh they didn’t fix this, big surprise, but I guess we have to vote for them again so that the other side wont win’.
However, I agree with you that the center of American politics will not change much. And the things I’ve touched upon above applies equally to both sides (I hope), except maybe for the money argument.