Markus Schulze wrote:
The Swedish Method guarantees that the possibility to dissolve
the parliament cannot be misused to "corriger la fortune."
Therefore, probably, the Swedish parliament (Riksdagen) has never in
history been dissolved before the end of its regular mandate period.
In parliamentary systems, the opposite tends to occur- the mass parties of
the left and right (who have the blessing, like it or not, of the smaller
more extremist parties) seek the support of small centrist groups. The
most obvious case of this is in Germany, where the Centre-Left is in
Dear Blake,
you wrote (22 Aug 1999):
Election dates should be fixed and outside the control of the
legislature. Often it is suggested that the legislature or cabinet
needs to be able to call an early election to resolve an impasse in
the legislature. My response is that such a rule has the
It is not possible to discuss the effects of elections and
legislative/executive organisation without some analysis of the realities
of political behaviour- after all, there's no such thing as the perfect
electoral system etc. for all situations, so we need to choose election
methods etc. with
Hi Markus,
The words "never in history" in my last mail were indeed somewhat
confusing.
On 23 Aug 99, at 22:53, Markus Schulze wrote:
There have been extraordinary elections in Sweden
in 1887, in 1914, in 1958, and in 1970.
Stimmt (probably), but I was merely thinking of Sweden under the
On stable PR and coalition goverments,
recent discussion:
Isn't the problem created by the way in which
coalitions are created, and this true also of systems
like the US Congress?
The major near-center parties
tend to exclude the other nearest competitor,
form coalitions with the more extreme
