No it doesn’t. You can use a system like that used in the Dáil Éireann in Ireland and the Senate in Australia: multi-member constituencies, and a single transferable vote. Ironically, such a system actually weakens political parties, while the British first-past-the-post system strengthens them. (That’s why the two major parties in the U.K. strongly want to stay with the present system.)
Surely the whole matter of proportionality depends on the notion of political parties? I don’t see how you can have PR without officially-recognised parties. Otherwise, it’s proportional to what? You might just as well argue that the results are not proportional with respect to the colour of candidates’ eyes.
To play Devil’s Advocate, FPTP has given us stable government, with only the odd interlude, for centuries. Just because we’re in difficulty now doesn’t mean that we should throw that away.
I agree, I was just trying to keep it simple. Saying Labour is the “party of the working class and the unions” wasn’t completely fair either, but they’re snapshot, stereotypical ways of summarizing the parties to someone who’s on British Politics 101.
I don’t think that’s fair, or true for the most part. The Left’s instinct is to redistribute and reduce inequality, which is more than compatible with people prospering and getting richer. The whole point of the “New Labour” project was to foster economic growth and help businesses to prosper, but to pull the entire country up as part of that economic growth, not leave the working classes behind.
My problem with the Left, which is David Cameron’s problem as well, is that their instinct is to solve problems by expanding the State and then throwing money at it, or legislating against it, which doesn’t always work. If there’s poverty, their instinct is to give out more tax credits. That may be a worthy thing to do but it’s a painkiller, not a genuine solution, and overall it means the Left tends to expand the State too much and spend too much money, as New Labour has done. The problem with the Right conversely is that they tend towards the cruel: the Hammersmith and Fulham council in this story for instance, since they took in 2006, has cut spending for the homeless, the disabled and the poor, while simultaneously implementing regressive tax cuts. And David Cameron personally endorsed the Council’s work as an example of his vision. I voted Conservative because I believe David Cameron when he says that’s not the modern Conservative ideology, but that is the kind of bad old right-wing Toryism that I’m afraid of.
The STV system with multi-member constituencies means that the respresenation is proportional to what ever is important to the voters, In practice, that means it’s proportional to their choice of political parties, because that’s what’s most important to most voters.
But you need to read an explanation of the system: the Wikipedia article is a good start.
There’s one major thing that hasn’t been touch upon. I’ll get to it in the second last sentence.
In both Canada and the UK, bills get rammed through and things get done when you have a majority government, which is having more than half the reps sitting in parliament. That’s why we both have decent UHC in Canada and the UK.
In minority parliamentary government situations the governing party depends on cooperation with a third party, which requires negotiation, something which Americans are quite familiar with and you know the bullshit that goes on with little superfluous amendments to gain support for an American bill to pass. Seems like you need a whopping 60% majority to make things happen.
The kicker is however in both Canada and the UK, when the minority government fails to win a majority vote in parliament for a budget or a non confidence motion we end up having another election right away. The whole fucking government collapses.
I dread what you guys in the States are up for if you ever get a serious third party.
The ideal, for any government, is to command enough MPs to consistently outvote all the other parties in the House theoretically combined against you. A defeat, on any flagship Bill, is a disaster - they must win, and win convincingly, too. Getting the Bill through by 1 vote, on the promise of pork-barrel to the waiverers, just doesn’t happen here; it’s almost as bad as losing. You really want/need to be in a position to force through any Bill you like, regardless.
An equivalent would be President Obama failing to get his healthcare proposals through Congress - or having them modified so significantly that they didn’t resemble the original Bill at all. He would resign - or dare to resign if he didn’t get his way. And the Congress would know that their jobs would all cease and they would have to get themselves elected again, if they throw out the Bill.
When I said “the Left”, I didn’t mean New Labour, obviously.
But maybe I spend too much time reading the comments on the Guardian website. Those people are insane, and seem to equate Tories with Satanists. The idea that you can vote Tory and at the same time care about anybody except yourself seems inconceivable to them.
Incidentally, I was wrong about this: the Conservatives have now caved and offered the Lib Dems a referendum on the Alternative Vote system, which, while it still isn’t anywhere near Proportional Representation, is further than I thought they’d be willing to go. I’m not sure it’s a very good move either: it seems like it’ll just make these ‘hung parliament’ situations much more likely, without formalizing the idea of coalition government like the rest of Europe, who all have PR. It sounds to me like it would better to go one way or the other, not go for a halfway fudge. But there you go.
Well, Australia has had an alternative vote system with one-member constituencies for a long time, and it has had a very stable two-party system in the lower house for at least 60 years. Minor parties generally get to hold the balance of power in the upper house (the Senate), which has a PR system.
No it hasn’t. The Australian House of Representatives has been ruled by coalitions for most of its history (1949-1972, 1980-83, 1998-2004) Each of those times, the Liberals had to form a government with the Nationalists.
The word “proportional” implies a linear or at least functional relationship between amounts, such as the number of people who voted for a party, and the number of seats in a parliament. I don’t see how a thing can be proportional to something as nebulous as “whatever is important to voters”. It is meaningless to talk of proportionality in those terms.
That may be strictly, nitpickingly true, but it’s hardly the same situation. The Liberals and the Nationals are in coalition all the time, in office or out of it. It’s more like having one party with a distinct powerful faction controlling part of it than really two distinct parties.
It’s more than a nitpick.
Yes, the Liberal and Country or later National Party (please, not Nationalists, or even the One Nationalists) **did form **governments, but they **didn’t need **to be a coalition. For substantial periods within those terms the Liberals had an absolute majority in their own right, including throughout the Howard era (1998-2004)
Disregard.
Aha, that’s the part that I hadn’t managed to fit into place. I suppose I’m used to most significant bills being an uphill grind, and if no one can agree, then so be it. I imagine that if Congress could demand a new election every time they found themselves gridlocked,things would be a bit different.
As Giles points out Alternative Voting, preference voting or IRV will not necessarily break the two party dominance. The concept, presuming it’s thought desirable essentially requires multi-member, proportional representation.
For a third party to win a single member constituency under IRV, they need to outpoll at least one of the majors and collect their preferences. This gives them a better chance than FPTP, but it’s still not given. In 1998 Pauline Hanson won 38% of the primary vote in Ipswich and still lost the seat on preferences.
Throughout Australian Federal election, the candidates most likely to win and hold seats outside the Lib/Nat/Lab parties were independent, predominantly regionally based, candidates with strong personal followings.
In 2007 the 150 Federal seats went 83 Lab, 55 Lib, 10 Nat and 2 independents. In 2004 the Lib/Nat/Lab deck chairs were shuffled a bit and there were 3 independents
In the 1998 elections, there were 148 seats, meaning that an absolute majority was 74 seats. The Liberals got 64, Labour got 67, the National Party got 16, and other parties got one seat. In the 2001 elections, there were 150 seats, meaning that an absolute majority was 75 seats. The Liberals got 69, Labour got 65, the National Party got 13, and other parties got 3 seats. No party had an absolute majority either between 1998-2004 or the other two time periods I mentioned.
I stand corrected. Insufficient googling.
As a feeble aside to recover some dignity, throughout the Howard year, if the Nats were not in coalition, the Libs would have won convinvingly nearly every three cornered contest and the Nats would now be a micro-party.