We should organize government in ways that lead to larger coalitions, like presidential systems over parliamentary systems.
How’s that square with parliamentary systems doing better than presidential systems across a wide variety of nations and times, in a wide variety of ways? Even across different political scales i.e. city level, national level, public vs private.
I think the author is making a mistake here by conflating parliamentary systems that have single-member constituencies with those that have multi-member constituencies and proportional representation (And obviously there’s also a spectrum in between, with mixed systems where much larger coalitions form in parliamentary systems, depending on the electoral system that’s chosen.)
For instance, the UK’s single-member constituencies can result in governments with large majorities without getting majority support, whilst Israel’s proportional representation creates coalition governments with broad support (among the enfranchised at least).
That may be true, but does it change the bottom line that on the whole, parliaments are more likely to lead to larger coalitions than presidential systems? Like, despite the single-member constituencies, is the UK much worse than the typical presidential system?
Good question! This is something I wanted to get into and explore but haven’t gotten to yet. I think I only saw these posts (there’s also one on the EA forum) only after I wrote this or perhaps as I was writing it, and was surprised to see them saying something different. So sorry if I don’t currently have a good answer, maybe I’ll have one in the future or someone else can answer.
How’s that square with parliamentary systems doing better than presidential systems across a wide variety of nations and times, in a wide variety of ways? Even across different political scales i.e. city level, national level, public vs private.
Here’s an OB post on the topic:
https://www.overcomingbias.com/2020/09/yay-parliaments.html
I think the author is making a mistake here by conflating parliamentary systems that have single-member constituencies with those that have multi-member constituencies and proportional representation (And obviously there’s also a spectrum in between, with mixed systems where much larger coalitions form in parliamentary systems, depending on the electoral system that’s chosen.)
For instance, the UK’s single-member constituencies can result in governments with large majorities without getting majority support, whilst Israel’s proportional representation creates coalition governments with broad support (among the enfranchised at least).
That may be true, but does it change the bottom line that on the whole, parliaments are more likely to lead to larger coalitions than presidential systems? Like, despite the single-member constituencies, is the UK much worse than the typical presidential system?
Good question! This is something I wanted to get into and explore but haven’t gotten to yet. I think I only saw these posts (there’s also one on the EA forum) only after I wrote this or perhaps as I was writing it, and was surprised to see them saying something different. So sorry if I don’t currently have a good answer, maybe I’ll have one in the future or someone else can answer.