Two party system=bad?

Great Debates
1

Does having a two-party controlled system inherantly lead to bad Government? The current government always reminds me of a Two-high-school-town". The old cliche of “losing every other game this season isn’t important as long as we beat East” seems to be far acurate of a description for the current climate between Reps and Dems. This was obviously talked about a lot during the last election with Nader, and three elections ago with Perot. I think it is clear that most people feel very alienated from the government, because there isn’t a viable candidate who fits their beliefs very closely. The lesser of two evils options has gone from a sarcastic joke, to being the reality of many peoples voting. I’m hopeing this is far enough after the election that the idea will be discussed, rather than the specifics of the Nadar situation which always got ugly when this was brought up during the election.

First of all is extra parties really the benefit it seems to be? Do the people with Governmental with many viable parties like it, or are there hidden problems? I do realize that it does give extra credibility to extremist morons when they can actually claim a seat. Like the fact that The Nazis where able to hang around for years with seats in the Weimar Republic made it easier for Hitler to appear respectable at first.

Second what is the best way to move the USA in that direction. The obvious problem was made clear by the Perot and Nadar situations. In both of cases the supporters had to deal with the fact that the guy they liked least was going to benefit the most from each vote. Have people been burned enough that most everyone will return to party voting just to avoid getting the ‘bad guy’. Or have we turned a corner and will more and more people vote for the guy they really want, screw the consequences? Should we try to pass election reform to aid the growth of extra parties, or just nature take it’s course, and if people want extra parties to gain power they will?

2

On reread I noticed I kind of blurred Congress and the Presidency together, which I didn’t really want to do. The Perot situation was kind of unexpected in that he was able to gather a substancial number of votes without really having any third-party predidence in recent government. It seems reasonable that there would have to be a significant percentage of Extra-parties in Congress long before any of them would have a chance to gain the Presidency, but the fact that Perot was able to gather such a large number of votes out of the blue indicated that we want choices, now how do we go about getting them?

3

Yes

4

Simple.

Tell everyone you know to call and write their Congress-persons and insist on Proportional Representation.

It’ll never happen, of course, because that would take power away from the Two-Headed Beast (GOPocrats).

5

Yes, there are problems :

unstability (the majority changes as soon as some temporary alliance come to an end over some major issue),

unnatural alliance to obtain the majority (the alliance between the left and the religious parties in Israel comes to mind),

exaggerated influence of very minor parties (a handful of votes can make the difference in the assembly, so a little party can make “deals” with major ones)

lack of legibility : eventually, nobody knows what party support what and why they are allied with whom

However, these issues are less important in a presidential system where the executive won’t be replaced each time two parties disagree about the safety regulations for teaspoon.
I would add that in multi-party system, the representant tend to be less free in their choices during votes, and a strong “party discipline” tend to appear, with all representants of the same party voting exactly along the same lines (along the line : you’ve been elected on our platform, with our money, so vote with us or join/create another party)
Also, people tend to be elected much less on the basis of their personnality/opinions, and much more on the basis of their party’s political position. So, this system give much less power to the individual and much more to the party’s machinery.

This issue is easy to adress. The election is divided in two “rounds”. During the first one, all candidates participate. Only the two candidates with the most votes participate in the second round. So, Nadar’s supporters could vote for him on the first round, and if it turns out that actually Bush and Gore get the most votes, they can vote for Gore during the second.

Even in such case, there’s a still a risk that the two candidates you dislike the most make it for the second round. For instance, supposing you’re a liberal and there are 6 parties, 3 roughly liberals (A,B,C) and three roughly conservative (X,Y,Z). The results of the first round are :

A: 17%
B: 14%
C: 19%
X: 2%
Y : 23%
Z : 25%

Only the two conservative candidates Y and Z will participate in the second round, and you’re screwed. But the risk is greatly reduced.
If several delegates (assembly) must be elected, you can apply the same system (if each delegate is separatly elected in a different zone), or you can choose a proportionnal system (35% of votes = 35% of delegates). But in the latter case, people vote for parties, and no more for individuals.

6

And sorry if the two round election system is already used in the US (for the representants?). Since the OP was worried by the Nadar/perot issue, I assumed he wasn’t familiar with this procedure (which seems to adress the issue) and therefore it wasn’t used in the US. That’s why I explained it in detail.

7

I think political parties in general are a bad idea and work contrary to democratic ideals.

8

qwerty: WIth you on that one, but how the hell do we get rid of them?

9

I see what you are saying on the other points, but I don’t understand how this one could be. I would think exactly the opposite would occur.

In response to the OP, I would argue that soft money contributions are just as bad, if not worse, (and contribute to) the two-party system.

Some people feel misrepresented by getting some watered-down lackeys in office. These people should be feeling unrepresented, though.

Soft money contributions speak louder than your vote or mine.
Take away the soft money. This will weaken the two-party system (and finally give everyone the opportunity to have their beliefs represented properly in Washington.

10

** clairobscur **

Preference voting, is another way that can promote minor party candidates. You end up electing the candidate the least people dislike, who is not necessary the candidate most people voted for.

The dual round voting protocol favours the political side that is less fragmented. Consequently you often see deals between like parties to not stand candidates against each other … the “you can have Iowa if you let us have Nebraska” type agreement.

Of course, no voting method is perfect and magor parties are always better positioned to exploit the pros and cons of system in use.

11

The main problem with more-than-2-parties system is that each party is in danger of failing to achieve an electoral majority. If this happens (if no candidate achieves 50%+ of the electoral votes) than Congress is allowed to decide the winner. This gives an unnatural, and undesireable IMHO level of power to Congress.

In order for more than 2 parties to be viable, the Electoral College system would also have to change radically. Otherwise, the third candidate simple splits the vote of the candidate he is most similar to, thus awarding the presidency to the candidate least desireable to the majority of voters. Perot handed the election to Clinton, Nader returned the favor to Bush.

Barring EC reform, 2 parties are most practical. If you look at history, various now-defunct parties have come and gone (Whigs, Tories, etc.) yet the 2 party system has endured.

12

I agree with those here who prefer the two-party system. Generally, anyway.

Politics is all about compromise and it is much easier to get two groups to compromise than it is to get three, or four, etc etc.

Also, I never fail to take the chance to mention Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem[sup]*[/sup] which, to avoid the excessive verbiage that comes with it, states that there can be no voting method which simultaneously upholds and represents all the stuff we want it to (he actually gave four conditions).

i would like to note that the more parties involved the less likely any will gain majority support-- even a relative majority-- as others here have also mentioned.

Face it: voting sucks. I’m moving to a bananna republic!! :stuck_out_tongue:

*[sub]For some reason, I have also heard of it as “Arrow’s Possibility Theorem” which makes no sense given what the theorem is about. ~~erl[/sub]

13

Er, that should be 5 conditions.

14

Most any multi-party system I’ve seen is essentially a two-party system (left v. right) with factions. Germany, Israel, France, Spain, Italy, you name it, all of them. You get left- or right- wing parties in effectively permanent alliances. You call them “blocs”, we call them “parties”. You call they small groupings making up the blocs “parties”, we call them “factions” or “caucuses”. Same difference.

Sua