If you allow people to vote for parties, and give congress representatives in proportion to the number of votes, you still end up with parties, but you can have many more of them, so they don’t have to be as powerful. I know there are countries that do this, but I don’t know which ones. Can someone from such a country tell about this?
We (Czech Republic) have usually four to six parties, the two strongest getting between 20% and 40% of votes. As it seems, the weaker parties are chosen mainly by voters dissatisfied by the strong parties and the political system in general. Consequently the rhetoric of the small parties focuses on “change” and “morality”; after they prove to be incapable of making any substantial change and no more moral than the average, they fall out of favour. Each term the voters select a new party which claims to finally bring the change. The practice in the parliament is probably no different from what you know, perhaps with some added extortion and power balancing within the coalition government. What beneficial effects did you expect?
You still have four to six proponents of what the change should be. In the US, you have two. Half the population thinks we should close the borders, give tax cuts to the rich, illegalize abortion, ignore unions, etc., and the other half thinks we should open the borders, give tax cuts to the poor, legalize abortion, listen to unions, etc. This doesn’t produce very many people who want to close the borders, give tax cuts to the poor, illegalize abortion, and listen to trade unions, for example.
Also, if the weaker parties keep getting replaced, the replacements are likely different, so people have to have their own opinion to figure out which new one to go with.
You have primaries, we don’t. When the parties are weak and small, they cannot afford primaries open to public, since their opponents would choose candidates who oppose the party’s policies. Therefore the primaries are open only to party members and you can’t be a member of more than one party (the parties exclude the possibility in their statutes). Even if you are a party member, the primaries are extremely indirect and opaque: e.g. in the Social Democratic Party (one of the big two) the process is basically as such:
The members of each Local Organisation (the basic unit, usually less than few dozen people) choose among themselves a member of a District Executive Committee.
The District Executive Committee elects members of a Regional Executive Committee.
The Regional Executive Committee composes a candidate list for the administrative region they represent. The candidates should be chosen from the set nominated by the Local Organisations, but the Regional Committee and also the Central Executive Committee has the right to add their own (that happens sometimes, although not as a rule).
The Local Organisation elects few delegates from among themselves to take part in the District Conference.
The delegates of the District Conference elect delegates of a Regional Conference.
The Regional Conference votes about the candidate list and may reject it, if it happens, then they may vote for single candidates on the list and change their ordering. In principle, more candidates may be rejected altogether and then the Regional Executive Committee has to compose a new list. (Normally the delegates accept any list they are given, for they don’t want to spend hours by the subsequent procedures.)
The candidates don’t make clear to party members what policy they want to pursue, since there is no point in it.
Also, the weaker parties rarely insist on realisation of their own programmes. Once they make it into the coalition government (and whether they do depends mostly on personal relations between the politicians rather than the similarities of party programmes), they start to engage in power games whose main goal is to implant certain people into the state bureaucracy. The weak parties rarely even have a clear distinct programme. Their campaigns usually stress such banalities as “fighting corruption”, “new style”, “responsibility”.
We (Czech Republic) have usually four to six parties, the two strongest getting between 20% and 40% of votes. As it seems, the weaker parties are chosen mainly by voters dissatisfied by the strong parties and the political system in general. Consequently the rhetoric of the small parties focuses on “change” and “morality”; after they prove to be incapable of making any substantial change and no more moral than the average, they fall out of favour. Each term the voters select a new party which claims to finally bring the change. The practice in the parliament is probably no different from what you know, perhaps with some added extortion and power balancing within the coalition government. What beneficial effects did you expect?
You still have four to six proponents of what the change should be. In the US, you have two. Half the population thinks we should close the borders, give tax cuts to the rich, illegalize abortion, ignore unions, etc., and the other half thinks we should open the borders, give tax cuts to the poor, legalize abortion, listen to unions, etc. This doesn’t produce very many people who want to close the borders, give tax cuts to the poor, illegalize abortion, and listen to trade unions, for example.
Also, if the weaker parties keep getting replaced, the replacements are likely different, so people have to have their own opinion to figure out which new one to go with.
You have primaries, we don’t. When the parties are weak and small, they cannot afford primaries open to public, since their opponents would choose candidates who oppose the party’s policies. Therefore the primaries are open only to party members and you can’t be a member of more than one party (the parties exclude the possibility in their statutes). Even if you are a party member, the primaries are extremely indirect and opaque: e.g. in the Social Democratic Party (one of the big two) the process is basically as such:
The members of each Local Organisation (the basic unit, usually less than few dozen people) choose among themselves a member of a District Executive Committee.
The District Executive Committee elects members of a Regional Executive Committee.
The Regional Executive Committee composes a candidate list for the administrative region they represent. The candidates should be chosen from the set nominated by the Local Organisations, but the Regional Committee and also the Central Executive Committee has the right to add their own (that happens sometimes, although not as a rule).
The Local Organisation elects few delegates from among themselves to take part in the District Conference.
The delegates of the District Conference elect delegates of a Regional Conference.
The Regional Conference votes about the candidate list and may reject it, if it happens, then they may vote for single candidates on the list and change their ordering. In principle, more candidates may be rejected altogether and then the Regional Executive Committee has to compose a new list. (Normally the delegates accept any list they are given, for they don’t want to spend hours by the subsequent procedures.)
The candidates don’t make clear to party members what policy they want to pursue, since there is no point in it.
Also, the weaker parties rarely insist on realisation of their own programmes. Once they make it into the coalition government (and whether they do depends mostly on personal relations between the politicians rather than the similarities of party programmes), they start to engage in power games whose main goal is to implant certain people into the state bureaucracy. The weak parties rarely even have a clear distinct programme. Their campaigns usually stress such banalities as “fighting corruption”, “new style”, “responsibility”.