One more comparison to the Finnish system. On Nov 20, 2007, at 11:21 , Kevin Venzke wrote: > --- Diego Santos <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> a écrit : >> According Brazilian law, parties of same coalition are counted as a >> single >> party. After elections, is not rare these parties to separate to >> opposite >> political sides. > > Well, if the parties find it advantageous to stand together on the > same > party list, I guess they will just form bigger (and more meaningless) > "parties" if you make a law that says multiple parties can't run on > the > same party list.
Also in Finland the parties may form "unholy alliances" between parties that have quite different ideological standpoints just for tactical reasons to grab the last seats to this coalition. The candidates are clearly listed as candidates of the parties of the coalition (no confusion here to the voters), just the calculation formula now counts these parties as if they were one. Forming any kind of parties is not easy. Parties can take part in the elections (roughly) if they have managed to get their candidates elected in the last or the previous election. Otherwise they need to collect a long list of names of supporters to get the permission to take part. The party structure is quite stable. The method sets in various ways limits to how small a party can be and still survive in the process (no artificial limits though on the number of votes a party must get, just the problems that I already mentioned on small parties having much harder time in the small districts than in the big ones, and thereby being forced to try the coalitions which then give a bit random results for the last seats). It is possible for parties to split, form new groupings and individual candidates to change affiliation of to form single member groupings during the term of the parliament in Finland. This is not very common and typically leads to problems in the next elections, although some candidates (typically quite visible) have managed to establish "new life" in a new party. I didn't yet understand what exactly the problems in Brazil were and how they are perceived. Small differences in the rules and practices may sometimes have a big impact. I think voters often are also quite different in different countries and at different times - they may e.g. be very quick in moving from one party to another or they may be loyal to one party no matter what the party does (Finland is on this side, sometimes maybe even too much). Juho ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
