Some Qs about non-US democracies

Factual Questions
21

For many years India had only one major party – the Congress party. There have always been many parties, but most of them were either small parties or regional parties that had more influence at the state level than at the national level. In the 1970s, the communist and socialist parties emerged as a major opposition and leftist coalitions have formed the government occasionally. In the 1990s, the B.J.P. finally emerged as a second major party and is currently the head of the government coalition. There are two major coalitions now – the B.J.P.-headed one (which includes the educated and affluent middle class as well as Hindu fundamentalists), and the Congress-headed one (which includes secularists, minorities, and the poor). The leftist coalition, which represents intellectuals, socialists, and secularists, ranks a distant third.

The Congress party has always tended towards personality domination by members of the Nehru-Gandhi family, now represented by Sonia Gandhi, an Italian by birth, who is the widow of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi (assassinated), who was the son of Indira Gandhi (also assassinated), and the grandson of Jawaharlal Nehru. I’ve been told that Sonia Gandhi is the most dangerous person in India. Her rivals in the Congress party have a habit of coming to an unfortunate end.

The B.J.P. is currently headed by the well-respected and moderate Atal Behari Vajpayee. He is quite old now and it is in doubt whether he can last another term. The B.J.P.'s problem is that it has no clear respected, centrist leader to take his place. There is a fear that without Vajpayee, the religious extremists in the coalition may gain ground.

You can get a good idea of party politics and governmental structures at this site.

22

With regard to Canada, it’s interesting to note that until about 14 years ago the two major parties were the Liberal party and the Progressive-Conservative party, which always struck me as an odd appellation. The P.C.s collapsed in the election that made Jean Chretien prime minister and there was no second major national party again until this year when what was left of the P.C.s decided to merge with the Reform party, which had changed its name to the Conservative Alliance. The new party is to be called just the Conservative party, I think.

23

Another point which comes to mind about the British system is that votes are for individuals, not for parties. This means that it is possible for an MP to defect from one party to another, which does occassionally happen, eg here. It is also possible to stand for election as an independent candidate, without a party affiliation - normally without a hope of winning, but the last election saw a doctor elected as an independent, on a campaign to save a local hospital. And when George Galloway was expelled from the Labour party over his vocal opposition to the Iraq war, he became an independent MP.

24

Make that two.

25

I don’t know about you, but neither the State of Ohio nor the Commonwealth of Virginia ever gave me the option of choosing the vice president. I had to go along with whomever was listed with my choice for president.

26

italics mine.

Are you sure you meant to say that? Thus implying that Tony Blair has less political power than Elizabeth II? I’d say it’s the other way around, at least in countries that still have a Monarchy and is regarded as democratic.

27

There are quite a few, but I’ll just stick to Austria, as I know most about it :wink:

In Austria, the president (head of state) is elected directly by the people for a term of 6 years. Each party usually nominates a candidate, but there have been several candidates without party affiliation in the past.

Contrary to what friedo posted, in Austria the president’s role ist mostly limited to ceremonial and diplomatic occasions, he has very few actual powers. He signs the acts passed by the parliament, but I don’t know whether any president has ever refused to sign an act. The really important guy here is the head of government, i.e. the prime minister.
The prime minister and his government (the ministers) are appointed by the president, and here he does wield some power. The most recent example is probably when president Klestil declared he would refuse to appoint the right-wing party leader Jörg Haider prime minister.

Elections to the parliament are held every 4 years, unless early elections are held (which has happened a few times in the past decade). Early elections are necessary if the coalition breaks (i.e. the parties decide they can’t or don’t want to continue with this coalition). We vote for a party, but additionally we can indicate our preference for a candidate of that party.

There are currently four parties in parliament, and Austria additionally has several smaller parties who usually do not make it into parliament because of the required minimum of 4% of the votes.

The head of the strongest party then (upon formal request of the president) traditionally takes up coalition talks with (not always all) the other parties to try and form a majority coalition (including long and tedious negotiations on who will be minister of what). If a party has the absolute majority, it may also form a government on its own. Usually, the head of the strongest party is appointed prime minister, but there have been some exceptions to this rule of thumb: the strongest party may not be able to form a government, whereas the 2nd and 3rd strongest parties can achieve a majority together and agree on a political agenda that allows them to form a government together. The president may also refuse to appoint someone prime minister, but AFAIK, this has only happened in the case of Haider.

There have even been rare cases of minority governments, when no agreement could be reached to form a coalition - this means that one party with less than 50% of the seats (or two parties with less than 50% together) form the government. These, however, are rarely stable. Additionally, while some decisions can be passed with a simple majority, the important ones require a 2/3 majority.

28

The Progressive Conservative party was formed by a merger of the original Conservative party with the Western-based Progressive party (in the 1940’s IIRC). The current Conservative party was formed by a merger of the Western-based Canadian Alliance (former Reform) party with the majority of the Progressive Conservative party (some PC MPs have refused to join the new party). Given the views of many Reform/Alliance members, perhaps we can call the new party the *Regressive * Conservatives?

29

I think friedo meant to say “head of state” in his or her final sentence.

Thanks for the clarification, Princhester. I might contest the appropriateness of the G-G’s action taken in 1974–and whether it could ever occur these days–but I don’t want to clog this thread with Australian constitutional gabble. :slight_smile:

30

I got it backwards. I meant the head of state is usually ceremonial. Obviously, Tony is the one running the show.

31

Doesn’t matter that you were voting for a pair - the point is, that you were voting indirectly for two nationally elected officials, not one, via the medium of voting for a slate of Electors pledged to cast their two ballots for the Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates of their party:

32

Norway has a proportionally representational parliamentary system, with a slight twist: some seats are reserved for what are called “utjevningsmandater”, which I guess would be “equalizing seats”. Say a party gets about 10% of the vote nationwide, fairly evenly distributed throughout the country. (Yes, I know this is unlikely. It’s just an example.) Because of the way the proportional system works, they will get fewer than 10% of the seats in Parliament. To even things out a bit, they will be awarded some seats “at large”, connected with no particular district but representing all their voters. To be eligible for one of these seats a party needs to get a minimum of 4% of the vote nationwide.

There are about eight parties that are important enough to be followed separately in the opinion polls. Partly because of this and partly because the traditionally largest parties haven’t been inspiring their traditional constituencies lately, it’s been ages since we’ve had a regular old majority government. Right now we have a minority coalition.

Unlike many parliamentary systems, Norway has fixed elections. If a government fails between elections, a new government has to be formed using the existing parliament as a basis.

33

Just to expand on what flodnak has stated correctly above. For parliament we vote by county (there are 19). 157 representatives are to be elected in total, and the number of mandates per county is based on population, but thinly populated and remote (from Oslo) counties are give more mandates than their population numbers would give. This means a representative from Finnmark, the county farthest from Oslo and quite thinly populated, is backed by half the number of votes that a representative from Oslo is. (Oslo is a county all by itself.)

To compensate for this there are 8 equalizing mandates (introduced in 1989), distributed proportionally to parties with more than 4% of the total votes nationwide and fewer representatives than this percentage.

The stats:
http://www.ssb.no/english/subjects/00/01/10/stortingsvalg_en/arkiv/tab-2001-11-02-02-en.html