On 06/27/2012 07:10 PM, Jameson Quinn wrote:
I am enjoying this discussion and I thank Fred for starting it. However,
I have only a little to add:
1. Under plurality, parties are a necessary evil; primaries weed the
field and prevent vote-splitting. Of course, plurality itself is an
entirely unnecessary evil, mostly because it makes parties necessary.
2. Even without plurality, there would probably still be named,
structured groupings. Unstructured anarchy may be desirable, but it's
not very stable. That's not to say that there's no way to make the power
dynamics inside the party less pernicious, though.
3. As I envision PAL representation, the PR system I designed, parties
would simply be a label that any candidate could self-apply. To keep out
"wolves in sheeps clothing", any candidate would have the power to say,
among the other candidates who share their chosen party label, which
ones they do not consider to be allies. I think those dynamics – free to
"join", no guarantee you won't be shunned by the people who already have
"joined", but the binary shun-or-not choice should help prevent cliques
of gradated power – would be relatively healthy.
I'm not sure why the To of this message was set to my address, but while
we're adding our ideas to it, here are mine:
- Aristotle says that elections impart upon a system an element of
aristocracy. In this, I'm inclined to agree, because elections involve
the selection of a choice (or choices) from those that are known to the
people doing the voting. Thus, if a minority has the power to be more
visible, representatives will tend to be chosen from that minority.
- Whether this is a good or bad thing depends upon whether you think
aristocracy can work. In this sense, "aristocracy" means rule by the
best, i.e. by a minority that is selected because they're in some way
better than the rest at achieving the common good. The pathological form
of aristocracy is oligarchy, where there's still a minority, but it's
not chosen because it's better. If aristocracy degenerates too far or
too quickly into oligarchy, that would negate the gains you'd expect to
see from picking someone who's "better" rather than just by chance alone.
- I think that, in practice, the collection of rules that make up the
electoral system has a significant influence on both the nature of
politics in that country as well as on the quality of the
representatives. It's not too difficult to see that if you take it to
extremes: for example, if you'd devise a system where only parties given
permission to operate by already-permitted parties would be allowed to
exist, you'd get political monopoly in short order.
- Thus, it's not too hard for me to think there might be sets of rules
that would make parties minor parts of politics. Those would not work by
simply outlawing parties, totalitarian style. Instead, the rules would
arrange the dynamics so that there's little benefit to organizing in
parties.
- For instance, a system based entirely on random selection would
probably not have very powerful parties, as the parties would have no
way of getting "their" candidates into the assembly. Of course, such a
system would not have the aristocratic aspect either. Hybrid systems
could still make parties less relevant: I've mentioned a "sortition
followed by election within the group" idea before, where a significant
sample is picked from the population and they elect representatives from
their number. Again, parties could not be sure any of "their" candidates
would be selected at random in the first round. While that method tries
to keep some of the selection for best, it disrupts the continuity that
parties need and the effect of "marketing" ahead of time.
- Gohlke has also suggested a method he thinks would diminish the power
of parties, wherein people meet in small groups (of three, but could be
extended) and elect a subset (one of them according to his idea), and
these then repeat the process until the number of representatives is
reduced to the number you'd want. Parties could still exist as
organizations that help people be better at the process, but party
members can't secure a position by appealing to masses; rather (at least
this is the idea), they must be able to defend/compromise in a thorough
discussion of their ideas that the small-group setting supports.
----
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
