Yes we have all recently witnessed how well the American system works, government shutdowns, wrong party wins house, massive policy issues wrong decisions are made due to electoral system. If USA is your example of FPTP give me Italy or Israel.
We Need Proportional Representation in Canadian elections
- Thread starter Lovehobby
- Start date
I've already made to clear what I think of the US system as I'm totally in favour of more than two parties and definitely not in favour of election every two years. It was simply an example of hat happens when you're constantly in election mode.Yes we have all recently witnessed how well the American system works, government shutdowns, wrong party wins house, massive policy issues wrong decisions are made due to electoral system. If USA is your example of FPTP give me Italy or Israel.
Now back to thinking that Italy is a fine example of good government with it's grand coalitions and strong of elections almost every year.
There are what 80 countries that use PR. Italy is one of them. What about Germany?
http://economics.about.com/cs/issues/a/proportionalrep.htm
From a 1991 article following the 1988-1990 coalition, the only time there has ever been a Likud-Labor coalition.
"Labor leader, Shimon Peres, had faced nearly as stormy a reception from members of his own party as had his coalition partner, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir of Likud. . . . In the elections, Likud won only one more seat than Labor and neither had a parliamentary majority on its own. This lasted for but two years when Labour pulled out of the coalition and Likud stitched together coalition with minor right of center parties.
In Italy when was there ever a coalition government between the Christian Democrats and the Italian Communist Party?
Look at the length of Italian governments http://www.cosmopolis.ch/english/cosmo6/italy.htm
"Labor leader, Shimon Peres, had faced nearly as stormy a reception from members of his own party as had his coalition partner, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir of Likud. . . . In the elections, Likud won only one more seat than Labor and neither had a parliamentary majority on its own. This lasted for but two years when Labour pulled out of the coalition and Likud stitched together coalition with minor right of center parties.
In Italy when was there ever a coalition government between the Christian Democrats and the Italian Communist Party?
Look at the length of Italian governments http://www.cosmopolis.ch/english/cosmo6/italy.htm
In other words do away with the U.S. Constitution and change the voting rules - who are you the next V.I. Lenin or Adolf Hitler?
SO WHAT! You're the one telling us all how wonderful proportional representation is. Certainly real world examples should be of great importance to you.
Further you just told us that Grand Coalition governments are a dime a dozen.
blackrock did not believe they happen much and small fringe parties have too much power. I pointed out that there are ways to deal with this and grand coalitions (coalitions of mod left and mod right) are the way to deal with difficult fringe parties.
and as mention earlier, way back in post #4, some of those countries are not the best examples of Democracies, Iraq and Russia nor are they even similar to Canada on a number of levels.
You've now gone full circle, repeating weak points you mentioned already, and apparently shown to be running out of new points to shore up your opinion. Someone might describe you as circling the bowl.
Not what I said at all. The fringe parties can have too much power relative to their vote support. In Israel only 3 parties out of 30+ had double digit support. The last 17 didn't even get >1% of the vote. Those 17 are definitely fringe parties.
Apparently you don't remember what has been posted. . . Again grand coalitions are NOT common.
More and more common. Germany right now. BTW they dont need to be conmon. They are the solution to difficult small parties.
I can only think of two, Germany and Italy( we all know how well that worked out). Any others LH?
What are you talking about? Both systems were established post war with allied approval.
... and this has what to do with you initial point, which is PR is the way to go as it done, in one way or another, by 80 different ? Talk about moving the goal posts.
The first question we must answer is what the purpose is of our elected reperesentatives: is it to accomplish some goals, or is it to drone on forever about something in order for everyone to feel that they were "heard" and ultimately accomplish nothing?
Many on the left want government to be all about respecting our "feelings". Many on the right want government to be about "collective actions" like national defence, public works, etc. Depending on where you sit tends to influence one's views on how many Parties should be successfully elected to Parliament.
The next quesion we must answer is how much influence we want over our legislators: in particular, do we want them to present an agenda (platform) before the election, or to only work on their platform after the election, when they're negotiating for power with other parties? Supporters of PR claim the latter is more democratic, though for the life of me I fail to understand their position in any rational sense.
Many on the left want government to be all about respecting our "feelings". Many on the right want government to be about "collective actions" like national defence, public works, etc. Depending on where you sit tends to influence one's views on how many Parties should be successfully elected to Parliament.
The next quesion we must answer is how much influence we want over our legislators: in particular, do we want them to present an agenda (platform) before the election, or to only work on their platform after the election, when they're negotiating for power with other parties? Supporters of PR claim the latter is more democratic, though for the life of me I fail to understand their position in any rational sense.
Do you have a source for these numbers, I am not arguing I would honestly like to see a source. The number for the liberals seem way too high. Of the 32 elected liberal MPs only 2 had a majority in there ridings and 2 actually won with less than a third of the vote.
Proportional representation is undemocratic, and based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what democracy is.
The best way to measure how democratic a country is, is to measure how much support its policies have among the public. The approval rating.
This directly measures whether voters think the government is representing their interests, and is a better measure than any feature of the electoral system itself, like seats, or vote share.
The myth propagated by PR ninnies is that somehow the number of seats held by each party is a good measure of how well the government represents the public.
There are several problems with that.
First, PR causes parties to focus on a narrow niche constituency, rather than being inclusive. This results in less effort to bridge gaps and generate broad consensus. People are better represented by a broad consensus than they are by narrow issue parties. Call it holistic politics.
Second, PR systems reduce the connection between an elected official and the public. You no longer have a person representing you. You have a party, with no clear individual watching out for your interests. In mixed systems, the power of your local representative is watered down.
Third, FPTP systems magnify voter intention. Small shifts in voting result in big shifts in the seats won. This makes the public more important, raising the importance of voter opinion in the political system versus lobbyists.
For all these reasons FPTP is more likely to produce a moderate government that appeals to the largest number of voters, far more appeal than the number of voters who voted for it.
The best way to measure how democratic a country is, is to measure how much support its policies have among the public. The approval rating.
This directly measures whether voters think the government is representing their interests, and is a better measure than any feature of the electoral system itself, like seats, or vote share.
The myth propagated by PR ninnies is that somehow the number of seats held by each party is a good measure of how well the government represents the public.
There are several problems with that.
First, PR causes parties to focus on a narrow niche constituency, rather than being inclusive. This results in less effort to bridge gaps and generate broad consensus. People are better represented by a broad consensus than they are by narrow issue parties. Call it holistic politics.
Second, PR systems reduce the connection between an elected official and the public. You no longer have a person representing you. You have a party, with no clear individual watching out for your interests. In mixed systems, the power of your local representative is watered down.
Third, FPTP systems magnify voter intention. Small shifts in voting result in big shifts in the seats won. This makes the public more important, raising the importance of voter opinion in the political system versus lobbyists.
For all these reasons FPTP is more likely to produce a moderate government that appeals to the largest number of voters, far more appeal than the number of voters who voted for it.
