--- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], "J. van Baardwijk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>
>A chance to win seats in Congress and the Senate for their own party.
OK, if we had parties that represented particular views of people, we would
have a number of much smaller parties. I presume the US would no longer
have a President in such a system, or if it did, he would be elected by the
House of Representatives because no one could get 271 electoral votes. So we
have a house and senate with 10 different parties in it. That means that
every different bill will involve tremendous horse trading between the
parties. I would argue that each splinter party would represent a special
interest. In the US, we would have the Moral Majority party and the
Libertarian party as the natural heirs of the Republican party. We would
have the black American party, the Hispanic party, the Labor Party, the
Green Party and the Social Democratic party, or some equivalent for liberal
whites,
Now, it is also possible that there would only be a couple of third parties,
and that they would only have importance when there are close votes.
>
>
>That's highly unlikely. Such a thing can only happen if support for >all
>their proposals is the price for forming a coalition with that >party.
>However, if a party wants to form a coalition with a smaller >party, it
>will not do so if the price is too high (like having to >support some
>extremely radical proposals). It is therefore highly >unlikely that a
>small group will ever be able to dictate its will to >the rest of the
>population.
I have given experimental evidence for this, which you dismiss. More on
that particular evidence later. But, if there are parties that just happen
to form coalitions naturally, then I don't see the advantage over having
liberal to moderate democrats being elected regularly and conservative to
moderate Republicans being elected regularly. The only thing it can do is
require consideration of ideas opposed by 80 or 90 percent of the people.
Why else should a party on one extreme or the other need to have an elected
representative that is opposed by the vast majority of the people? With
proportional representation, we can have congressmen and senators that
represent viewpoints that are abhorrent to almost all of the people. Arab
communists in the Knesset come to mind here.
> >
>>Yet, the Shas party has been able to get very strict religious laws
>> >>passed as the price for joining one coalition or the other. About >>5%
>>of the population, IIRC, is able to dictate to 95%. Is this >>democratic?
>No, this is not democratic, but a single case is not proof that >small
>groups of people have the power to dictate their will to the >rest of the
>people. This particular case only shows that the party >or parties the Shas
>formed a coalition with were quite desperate -- >otherwise they wouldn't
>have agreed to support those religious >proposals.
Ah, this has been going on for at least 20 years. Both parties compete to
win their votes in a close election. I think this party has had influence
for 50 years, but that might be long. It�s not a one shot deal.
>Not really. Forming a coalition does not mean that all parties >involved
>fully support everything on each other's agendas. Rather, >they are
>agreements to work together on certain issues. For >instance, Social
>Democrats may vote with the Greens on raising >Ecology Taxes for heavy
>industries, but vote differently on the >issue of raising minimum wages.
You miss US politics completely, here. The Greens and the Social Democrats
are _all together_ less than 10% of the population. To get a real feel, you
need to think of the Moral Majority Party.
>IOW, the only time a small party can get a proposal accepted is when >a
>larger party agrees with them and *together* they form a majority.
Right, so they are meaningless unless there is a close election, and then
they have power all out of porportion to their number.
>
>
> >It sounds good when it's the 5% you want. But, lets say the religious
> >right wins 20% of the vote and will join any coalition that will ensure
> >that neo-evangelical Christianity is taught in the public schools.
>
>Such an idea would be considered extreme, so few (if any) larger >parties
>would be willing to form a coalition with the religious >right if
>supporting that proposal would be the price.
ROTFLMAO. You need to come to Texas to see. Such an idea, couched in
different terms, is actually fairly popular here. A significant percentage
of people want to have prayer in the public schools. They want to bring
morality back to the US, and think that the US should be a Christian nation
again...as if it ever was one. That group of people is much larger than the
Greens in the US. My realistic guess is 20%.
You have to remember that they are being kept in check by pragmatism. If
they push their candidates really hard, they will turn off the middle of the
road people. With proportional voting, that wouldn't be as likely to be a
worry, because the horse trading is done before, not after the elections. I
could reasonable see a deal between the labor, the black, the Hispanic and
the Moral Majority parties to pass a bill that had this, and something for
the other three parties.
Finally, one of the problems with a system that encourages multiple small
parties is that it would enhance one-issue parties and one-issue votes. It
would undermine the sense of commonality that occurs when people forge
alliances before the elections. It would break down the sense of "we're all
in this together."
This is, perhaps more important for the U.S. than other countries because we
are a conceptual nation.
Dan'm Traeki Ring of Crystallized Knowledge.
Known for calculating, but not known for shutting up
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