Two Party political systems

[leira]

I think of this topic nearly every time American politics is discussed here, because I think it's involved in a great deal of the problems in American politics. I don't think I've seen a discussion really dedicated to it here though.

The two party system is something I've never been able to wrap my head around. How did it get established, and why is it still here? Why does the media seem so invested in keeping it this way? Is it even real democracy?

I don't have answers for any of that. My last question is probably even pretty contraversial, but bare with me for a moment. Let's say you decide that you don't like Obama's policy on warrantless wiretapping. What do you do? Do you vote republican? They are the ones who established the policies in the first place. Basically, once one party gets away with something, the other party will get away with it too because there's no threat of a third party showing up and successfully campaigning against it.

In a two party system, it really seems to me there is little consequence to governmental action. No matter how badly the Republican party pisses the American public off, they know that there's plenty of people that will keep voting for them anyways, just to keep the democrats out. This will lead them to winning again within a few elections. The same is true of the Democrats, of course.

That's not how it works in Canada. In the 1993 federal election, Canadian politics got shook up. The Progressive Conservative party had been in charge in Canada for about 8 years, and during the last couple years of their reign, they had seriously pissed off Canada. So, Canadian conservatives voted for the new guy, the Reform Party. That election destroyed the Progressive Conservative party, and made the Reform party into a legitimite force in Canadian politics. The Progressive Conservatives only won 2 seats in that election, and they never recovered. They had been a strong force in Canadian politics for close to 150 years. Then they pissed Canadians off, and they were done in a single election.

Why doesn't this happen in the US? It's mindboggling to me that the Republicans left office with a 22% approval rating, yet scored over 40% of the popular vote. Granted, there wasn't a good conservative 3rd party candidate, but why wasn't there one? Personally, I give alot of the blame to the American media. I recall back when Nader was making his big presidential push. The media constantly told voters that if they voted Nader, they might as well be voting Republican, because those votes should have been going to the Democrats if they wanted to prevent the Republicans from winning. The American media, for whatever reason, has dedicated itself to maintaining the two party status quo. At best, voting for a third party is treated as "throwing your vote away", as though your vote is somehow wasted if you didn't vote for the winning team.

This post is fairly long, so I guess I should draw it to a close. There seems to a growing amount of conservatives disatisfied with the Republican party. What will they do about it? What will it take to get them to vote for somebody else?

[Jidoe]

I realize the neighbour's grass is always greener, but we have about 10 or more different parties in our parliament, which means that no party is strong enough on its own, or even with another "allied" party to form a coalition. What it creates is a lot of pressure on the prime minister/president to keep satisfying those party whom he had to bring into his coalition.

That is just a huge waste of public money and as a result (among other things), the government changes here about every two years instead of four as it should stand.

[khaltek]

The system we have here, two strong parties (Labour and the Tories) a third party to be reckoned with (the lib dems) and some minor parties works pretty well.

To be honest, I'm actually against the political party system, and believe that how we do things here (the whip system) is a lot less democratic than having everyone as an independent.

There's massive changes coming to our political system, due to the sheer enormity of the expenses scandal, so I hope things will be nicely shaken up.

[leira]

Originally posted by khaltek
The system we have here, two strong parties (Labour and the Tories) a third party to be reckoned with (the lib dems) and some minor parties works pretty well.

Yeah, this is what it's like in Canada as well. We've got Liberals and Conservatives strong, with the NDP as a lesser third party that does well enough that it can't be safely ignored, along with various minor parties. Optimally, I think there should be a second conservative party around the strength of the NDP as well. The Conservative party tries to serve both fiscal conservatives and social conservatives, and I think Canadian conservatives would be better off being able to vote for one or the other.

But, the 1993 election proved that it's quite possible for a new party to become a major force within a couple of election cycles. I don't think it should happen often(as Jidoe's 10 party woes seem pretty crappy), but I really like that it's possible. Once voters feel like a party no longer represents what they want, it opens the door for somebody new to come in and take all those voters for themselves. That gives consequences to the actions of political parties, and means they have to actually give a shit about what voters think instead of paying lip service to it.

[Rosuav]

Originally posted by khaltek
To be honest, I'm actually against the political party system, and believe that how we do things here (the whip system) is a lot less democratic than having everyone as an independent.

There's massive changes coming to our political system, due to the sheer enormity of the expenses scandal, so I hope things will be nicely shaken up.

The cynic in me says it's unlikely for the system to change that much, but hey. My cynic has been wrong enough times recently, maybe it'll be wrong again.

The abolition of the party system featured in one of the Yes Prime Minister episodes. If you haven't seen those brilliant political commentaries, you should... they're good British comedy AND they're highly accurate. The fact is, though, that the party system has quite a few odd benefits that mean that nobody wants to be the one to abolish it:

* Voters get to, in effect, vote for a Prime Minister instead of voting for a candidate

* Candidates get elected simply because they're under the X banner, even though they didn't really have enough to offer on their own

* Prime Ministers can lean on their members to vote for/against certain bills regardless of their own thoughts, which means the PM can pretty much count on X votes for and Y votes against (because he knows the opposition will all be against it)

One of the hidden benefits of a two-party system is that if once you can get both parties to promise the same thing, it's pretty certain to happen. I know that doesn't sound very common, but we had a prime example here a couple of years ago. Our metropolitan ticketing system originally had three fare zones, but Zone 3 was only in the southeast extremities. (Also, it was noted that people were often driving to the Zone 2 boundary and catching the train there.) The Liberal Party promised that they would abolish Zone 3 and just make it all Zone 2, which was popular with the people who lived/travelled across that border, but apparently not popular enough as they didn't win. Then four years later, it came up again... and the Labour Party took it up as well. Result: After the election, it did happen. Didn't matter who won.

(For the curious - I found some details of that particular issue. http://www.robx1.net/victkt/metcard/html/zone3.htm has everything.)

If every candidate had to make his own promises, then campaign promises would all be local matters - you couldn't have Party X promising to fund roads across the state, and Party Y pledging a billion dollars to improve old folks' homes. All they could promise would be to seek this or that. Actually... that would give them a level of protection that they'd probably appreciate - they can promise to seek something, get elected, and then that something doesn't happen. Although that happens already, and people still vote for the same bunch of crooks, so I guess it's not such a big thing after all.

[khaltek]

You make some good points, but these:

* Candidates get elected simply because they're under the X banner, even though they didn't really have enough to offer on their own

* Prime Ministers can lean on their members to vote for/against certain bills regardless of their own thoughts, which means the PM can pretty much count on X votes for and Y votes against (because he knows the opposition will all be against it)

I definitely consider those detrimental and undemocratic, to be honest.

[Jyn]

Originally posted by leira
Is it even real democracy?

The U.S. is not, nor has it ever been, a democracy. The word 'democracy' is nowhere in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. The country was founded as a republic. You might be able to get away with calling it a 'democratic republic,' but that would just be redundant and, again, give the (incorrect) impression that the U.S. operates as a democracy.

"Is our system working as intended?" would be a more appropriate question.

[Rosuav]

Originally posted by khaltek
You make some good points, but these:



I definitely consider those detrimental and undemocratic, to be honest.

I never said they were beneficial to the public - only that they're beneficial to the subject of the sentence. It's nice for a candidate to be able to be elected more easily, and it's nice for a PM to, in effect, run the country on his own, instead of being just another vote in the parliament. I'd say that the first one, the benefit to the voters, is also bad for the country and for the concept of democracy.

But... what IS democracy? Literally, leadership by the people. Of course that's impractical for something the population of a country, so we have representative democracy. But even if we assume that every MP represents the same number of people (which won't work... maybe if each MP's vote counted according to the number of people who voted for him, but that has its problems too), parliament is still not democratic. And it will never be. Look at any society committee - there must always be a chairman or president, it's never truly democratic.

The fact is that when human beings are involved, equality is a myth. There will always be something to disrupt it. If nothing else, people's personalities differ, and one person will dominate simply by virtue of talking more glibly, or thinking faster, or being able to phrase proposals in a more convincing manner.

The nearest thing to true democracy is the very expensive operation of a referendum. Every single citizen gets gets to vote on a specific item of legislation. Completely impractical, and even then imperfect.

What we currently have is rule by two parties. Abolishing parties would give us - what? Would it really be better? And... would it devolve right back to the two-party system anyway?

[khaltek]

The nearest thing to true democracy is the very expensive operation of a referendum. Every single citizen gets gets to vote on a specific item of legislation. Completely impractical, and even then imperfect.

What we currently have is rule by two parties. Abolishing parties would give us - what? Would it really be better? And... would it devolve right back to the two-party system anyway?

Well, nearer to democracy is for one to elect a representative who represents one's views and not those of any kind of party.

There's certainly no need to abolish parties, but there's a need for people to recognise that their wants and needs may be better served by an independent who works towards what they said they would, rather than being bound by the whip system.

[Rosuav]

Originally posted by khaltek
Well, nearer to democracy is for one to elect a representative who represents one's views and not those of any kind of party.

There's certainly no need to abolish parties, but there's a need for people to recognise that their wants and needs may be better served by an independent who works towards what they said they would, rather than being bound by the whip system.

Parliament has what, a couple hundred members? England's population is 60 million. Each MP has to represent, therefore, at least 100,000 people. Is it possible for 100,000 people to agree on one representative for their views? And since MPs represent on the basis of geography, chances are that you'll find Fred Nurk over in another electorate would be the perfect person to represent you, but you can't vote for him, and he ends up not getting elected. (I'm not knocking the electorate system here, by the way; it's as good as any. There's no way to select perfectly.)

The only real way for it to work is for parliamentarians to listen to their people. In practical terms, though, that means listening to political lobbyists, which will unduly empower those that are highly vocal, or have the time and energy to keep pushing issues through all the time, or whatever. However, if a politician would take serious note of a voter's appeal, especially a petition with X signatures, then it'd improve matters a lot. Unfortunately, politics is a line of work for people with big egos, and people who think they're better than everyone else. So it's not likely to be improved. Oh well.

Edit: I just wiki'd the Parliament of Great Britain, and apparently there's 646 MPs, not counting the unelected Peers. So my figures above aren't too far off, but it's actually more like 94,000 average representation.