At 11:03 4-11-00 -0500, John Giorgis wrote:
> >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 think the confusion here is created by your use of the world "all."
>Nobody is suggesting that minority parties in parliamentary systems get to
>impose all of their will on a population. What I am saying, however, is
>that in such a system, these minority extremist parties are able to extract
>some price for joining a coalition government.
Why exactly do you assume that a minority party is also an *extremist*
party? European parliaments are filled with relatively small parties that
aren't extremist (although we do have some of those as well -- mostly
fascist parties).
BTW, in parliamentary democracies a single party rarely (if ever) gets
50%+1 of all the seats. In other words: usually, every party in a European
parliament is technically a minority party. This actually is one of the
benefits of having multiple parties: it not only gives every reasonably
sized group in society a vote, it only prevents the larger parties from
becoming to powerful on their own.
>That price is usually one
>policy or another that would usually have no chance of passage otherwise.
Can you provide evidence for this, apart from the Shas case?
As I have stated before, coalitions are formed to get a majority vote on
issues that both parties think are important. I am not familiar with any
cases (except the Shas) where a larger party had to support their coalition
partner on an issue they really didn't want to support, as the price for
forming that coalition.
>If a Party had 20% of the vote, it will be very tempting for someone to cut
>a deal for a coalition government with them. LIke you said, Shas got power
>because it was desperate.
No, I said the *coalition parties* of the Shas must have been desperate.
>If you have three parties earning seats, 40% to
>the Dems, 40% to the GOP, and 20% to the Christian Right, the Christian
>Right suddenly holds all the power in Congress. Does the Christian Right
>form a coalition with the Democrats on the basis of social justice? Or
>the GOP based on moral issues and abortion? Their choice tilts the
>balance of Congress.
Assume that in both scenarios (two-party system and parliamentary system)
the supporters of the Christian Right (CR) will vote for the CR, even
though they know they will not be granted seats in Congress under the first
scenario.
If the GOP and the CR vote the same on some moral issue, it will get a 60%
majority. However, if the CR are denied their 20% of the seats, the same
issue would only get 40%, even though a majority (60%) of the population
would be in favor. This means that a two-party system may cause exactly
that what you fear: a minority that imposes its will on the majority.
Jeroen
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