I think the true evil here is the two party system, where people have no outlet to express and advance anything more nuanced than us vs them mentality. But I don’t think that will change any time soon, if ever...
Australia has ranked choice and we also have a 2-party system for all intents and purposes. I don't think ranked choice is the answer, but the voting system (mixed-member proportional) used in New Zealand and Germany seems to be doing a much better job of getting a good variety of voices in their respective legislatures.
That is certainly true, and the downsides of a two-party system are not small. On the other hand, multi-party systems have a tendency to build less stable governments, which was one of the reasons for the downfall of the Weimacher Republik and the rise of the NSDAP.
With the addition of more parties to the German political spectrum, building coalitions has been harder in recent years, forcing essentially the two most central mainstream parties, CDU/CSU and SPD, to build a "great coalition". The problem of this is that people not happy with the results necessarily have to vote more extreme, and we did see a lot of protest votes, swinging from the very-left Die Linke to the ultra-right Afd, for example.
Observing the political process in the US, it seems that the primaries leave the final candidates always somewhat worse for wear, maybe more so on the Democrat side than on the Republican side (Infighting seems to be a worldwide phenomenon more prevalent on the left). By necessity, most winning candidates must then do a dance from the more extreme positions they expressed to win the primaries to the center. This is almost by construction, as the voters in the primaries will almost always be more extreme than the voters in the presidential election, even if reduced to those which would consider to vote for the party in the first place.
> On the other hand, multi-party systems have a tendency to build less stable governments,
That's the popular myth, based largely on a combination of conflation of parliamentary and multiparty systems (the two have no essential connection) and the fact that parliamentary systems tend to use different language around a government/administration than presidential systems do.
Measured by either cabinet or head of government turnover rates, multiparty parliamentary systems among established democracies are more stable than the US.
> which was one of the reasons for the downfall of the Weimacher Republik and the rise of the NSDAP.
Two party systems have at least as much problem (really, more) forming moderate-to-opposing extreme coalitions against extremists from one side, which is how extremists of the Right have progressively hijacked a major party in the US, with nothing like the level of externally-imposed stress that produced the NSDAP in Germany. [0] At least in a multiparty system, forming a coalition across tribal identity boundaries formed by party labels is expected.
The idea of a grand coalition _seems_ odd, because I think we’re all accustomed to our major political parties fighting rather than cooperating, but if they can work together isn’t that a rejection of extremism on both sides and an embrace of centrism, which, perhaps, is what the German majority actually want? I know very little about German politics so I’m just asking the question here - but I’m genuinely curious, what’s the downside?
For short term, I think these coalitions can work. But there are two problems: First, in a normal big party/small party coalition, the small party typically has a very specific agenda. For example the Green party with environment protection. So it's easy to make a combined program: The program of the big party + that special thing. With two "we do everything" parties, where each party wants to appear as "having made their mark", it's much harder to combine to a big program. And because everybody wants to leave their mark, there is a lot of fighting, so that in the next election, you can rule alone or with a small party, so you'll have more power.
Second: There will always be people not happy with the government. Maybe because they really got handed the short stick, or because they just tend to pick the short stick. That is true even if they are better off than before, just if other people are more better off, people will not be happy. These people want to vote for an opposition. Who should they vote for? They can only go to an extreme party.
> There will always be people not happy with the government.
> Who should they vote for? They can only go to an extreme party.
That is what extremists want you to believe. But the belief that both big parties are corrupt exists in the USA as well, and it helped Trump. The fact of the matter is, if you are unhappy with what a grand coalition does, you can still vote for the party that you agree more with to have it gain more power next time around. Only if you believe that cooperation and compromise themself are bad things, you have to vote extreme.
That is easy to observe in German politics. Yes, some people vote for the party they agree with more, but many do not. This has nothing to do with "the party is corrupt", but with "the party doesn't do what I want them to do".
> That is certainly true, and the downsides of a two-party system are not small. On the other hand, multi-party systems have a tendency to build less stable governments, which was one of the reasons for the downfall of the Weimacher Republik and the rise of the NSDAP.
I'm no longer convinced that this is a good argument, given that a two-party system just gave rise to the Trump party over the past four years - and it was 'rejected' by a mere ~60,000 votes in a country of 350 million.
Americans for some reason have fixated on FPTP as the cause of the two-party system and hope RCV/IRV will extract them from it.
The basis of a two-party system is actually single-member electorates. Because each seat can only have one representative and the economics of campaigning and organising make it hard for a third party to make appreciable inroads.
Australia's Parliament demonstrates the differences: the House of Representatives is composed of single-member electorates and is dominated by the two major political organisations (and this is for the good, as the government is formed in the House and a two-party system almost guarantees that a government can be formed and sustained easily after each election). The Senate, by contrast, is composed of multi-member electorates, one for each state, elected on a proportional basis. While the major parties typically have the largest share between them, the nature of a proportional multi-member electorate is that it creates more room for minor parties to obtain one or two seats.
Thanks for the thoughtful response. I agree that there are other structural challenges in the way of making additional parties really viable. My theory is that changing from FPTP would sort of break the ice and allow other parties to gain momentum, normalize the idea of other parties not being totally fringe, and maybe pave the way for some other enabling changes once it’s no longer strategically a terrible idea to vote for the candidates you prefer but almost certainly won’t win. It’s not the only change that would help, to be sure.
Agreed, plurality voting has to go. St. Louis just adopted approval voting [1] which is even better than ranked choice voting (no need to rank and avoids the non-monotonic problem of RCV). So things are looking up!
Because people are failing to vote strategically. In Canada the 3 party system even more heavily favors the right (Conservatives), as our center-left parties (NDP, Liberal) are very similar and split the vote. In strategic elections this narrows considerably.
We also have a parliamentary system, where these parties can make coalitions and essentially pool votes, which softens (but doesn't eliminate) the need for strategic voting.
Canada has 5 parties. Bloc, lib, con, ndp and green not to mention another protest right party. A few years ago the cons were split into two parties.
Rarely outside of BC does lib-ndp vote split work in the con favour and often works the other way for the lib in Quebec with the bloc.
The ndp and lib seem like they are progressive and the idea that one should vote for the other to block the cons misses the differences. And your vote is worth a few dollars so vote for what you want... because funding matters.
Neither Canada or the UK have a separate executive chamber that they vote for. The PM and his cabinet is 'just' a set of MPs that their own party delegated executive responsibility to.
POTUS, on the other hand, is personally entrusted with substantial levels of power.
It's very dubious as to whether the UK per se can be said to have "more than two viable parties".
The constituent countries each have a nationalist bloc that will often be successful in local government but not really at the UK level unless whoever is running the UK as a whole is antagonistic to the nationalist position. This results in silliness like Wrexham (which is technically over the border into Wales but nobody there speaks the Welsh language) being required to have Welsh-speaking bureaucrats and signs in Welsh even though the most likely language you'd hear there besides English is... Polish. Why do this? A few million quid on symbolic gestures defuses Welsh nationalism, cheap at twice the price.
But those nationalists won't work together and have almost nothing to say about the UK's larger politics. The closest is probably either the Scottish Nationals objecting to the consequences of Brexit (since Scotland didn't vote for it, and it destroys at least one of the claimed benefits of voting against independence for Scotland in its previous referrendum) or the DUP (a Northern Irish party which opposes Irish independence and is closely affiliated with the Conservative Party) offering a Confidence & Supply deal to keep the Tories in power.
Beyond that, there's the Liberal Democrats, but they aren't very big, and the only time Brits gave enough Lib Dem MPs the nod, they were obliged to throw their lot in with the Tories†, who aren't stupid and used this to ensure most of the blame for the resulting Tory policies landed on Lib Dem MPs who promptly lost in droves. They are nowhere close to being a "viable party" in the sense of able to govern, though they do have majorities in some local governments.
And then what, one Green MP? I mean, she's competent, her policies make sense, all credit to her, but on her own she is not a "viable party" in that sense. Her constituents (Brighton) are going to vote for her because they trend hippier than most of the UK (also gayer, but I don't think the Green Party is especially pro-LGBTQ), because she's good at her job and incumbents are always harder to defeat but that doesn't result in a Green UK government, just one MP.
So no, really there are two viable parties, the Conservative and Unionist Party (Conservatives, "Tories") or the Labour Party. I think they're both a bit screwed because they both subscribe to beliefs about the importance of Work and I believe we're at the end of the era in which the capability of humans to do Work is necessary or perhaps even relevant to prosperity.
† The existence of numerous smaller groups some of which I did not mention means that the Liberal Democrats could not have formed a working coalition with Labour, because that coalition would lack the votes to beat a "No Confidence" motion from Tories and other rival parties, forcing fresh elections. With the Conservatives they had more than enough, so the only alternative to a Tory coalition was fresh elections. In hindsight that would have been the correct choice perhaps, but wisdom at the time was that the one thing voters hated more than the other party was elections, so never force fresh elections unless you're confident you can win them.
This assumes party identification and party goals are arbitrary.
That might be true in some cases (at least if “arbitrary” includes accidents of biography and consequent trust), but I suspect there are more supporters of both parties who actually identify with the explicit platform goals or projected values than there are people who are only against the other party.
I will go further here: the idea that there is a mass of people out there waiting to support a third party that would somehow better represent Americans is entirely without merit. How can you tell? Simple. Watch primaries. Any spoiler effect should be weak there. You can feel free to cast your ballot for whoever you like most without worrying that the candidate from the party you like the least will win without you supporting your second least.
But in spite of that freedom... we still see third party primary participation that’s multiple orders of magnitude down from primary participation focused on the big two.
I think the most straightforward explanation for this is that a vanishing fraction of Americans are ever likely to support more than two parties.
> This assumes party identification and party goals are arbitrary.
No, it just assumes (which is true) that people care about different aspects of the party platform. All over the developed world, people on both sides of the aisle want to reduce immigration. Left-leaning parties in Denmark and New Zealand (the beloved Jacinda Ardern) campaigned and won on platforms calling for reduced immigration. Mainstream center-left politicians like Macron have shifted to calling for increased integration.
In the U.S., that left has radicalized that debate. Democrats have dismissed all such concerns are racist. The moderate candidate Democrats ran didn't push back on any of that or acknowledge there was a legitimate debate to be had over immigration levels. And nearly everyone who ran in the Democratic primary embraced far-left positions such as decriminalizing illegal immigration and universal healthcare for undocumented immigrants--positions only 1-2 EU countries have embraced. (Due to a lack of any pushback on those positions from Biden, it was easier to get those primary positions to stick to him.) Biden wouldn't even take the completely mainstream Democratic position of condemning illegal immigration and calling for secure borders, which Obama embraced.
At that point, what do you do? A party isn't a single person or policy position; its an entire ideology (and the Democratic Party has become increasingly ideological).
You're underestimating the total number of people who just associate themselves with a party arbitrarily and vote down the party line IMO - but even ignoring that I disagree that people wouldn't vote for third parties if they were truly viable alternatives. A LOT of people in the Republican party in fact are repulsed by Trump; and there is also an obvious distinction in the Democratic party between AOC/Bernie-style progressive factions, and centrists and moderates in the party like what Biden represents. The super-crowded Democratic primaries made that pretty clear.
I think the big problem with the system as it stands is that people rightfully understand that if they vote for a third party candidate, that candidate is a) guaranteed to lose, b) guaranteed to be unable to enact any change in government without having a literal majority in the senate, and c) guaranteed to steal votes from a candidate who you may not love but is the lesser of two evils (plenty of libertarians do not agree with Biden much at all, but would rather have him than Trump/vice versa, and then vote down the party lines to avoid disaster).
Third party votes are often cast as a waste of a vote - and I don't blame people for thinking that way, because the system encourages it.
I will go further here: the idea that there is a mass of people out there waiting to support a third party that would somehow better represent Americans is entirely without merit
A huge number of Americans are socially conservative and economically liberal and there is currently no party that really supports that point of view.
All systems lead to two party systems. Even countries with multiparty system, turn into two major parties with dozens of fringe parties. These fringe parties do nothing more than splitting votes, forming coalition when one of the major party didn’t win majority typically creating unstable governments.
The current New Zealand government is the first in 26 years of MMP where a party gained a majority alone. The previous was made up of 3 very different minority parties. In every other election, the largest has sought the support of smaller parties to govern. I can’t speak for other countries, but MMP has not lead to instability here.
Score Voting where candidates are given a score 0-99 transcends bicameralism when averages are taken, similar to scores in the Olympics. And it is the superset of all voting methods.
If you believe that someone voting for whom they believe in is splitting the vote, then you don't believe in democracy right? You are thinking like a marketing strategist it sounds like.
> I think the true evil here is the two party system, where people have no outlet to express and advance anything more nuanced than us vs them mentality. But I don’t think that will change any time soon, if ever...
I don't think that's necessarily because of the two party system. I think it's more a result of a period of extreme partisanship/polarization reflected through a two party system.
As recently as a few decades ago, you still had significant numbers of conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans in office, and I feel that helped a lot with bipartisanship. Maybe it was a mistake to get rid of stuff like congressional earmarks, which maybe took pressure off officeholders to be so ideologically strident and combative.
For a significant portion of that time, quite possibly. In the lead up to the Civil War, there were many debates about ending slavery through the 1820’s and 30’s. There were even mini wars over the issue in the 1850’s, and then the actual event beginning in the 1860’s. This was then followed by a new subjugation of free people in the South beginning in 1875 and the Jim Crow period. During this post Civil War period is the ongoing Wars with Native Americans to expand the land of the US (though this was supported by both parties mostly). Then women’s suffrage coming to a head 1920’s (along with huge issues related to the ban on alcohol at the same time). Also during this period is a huge debate going on between banks and farmers during the Great Depression. Then following WWII the beginning of demands for equal rights in the South to get rid of Jim Crow, gaining major steam in the 50’s and 60’s, and then being joined with Women’s liberation.
And then we come to the huge divide that starts more recently during the Bush administration and the demand for LGBTQ equal rights (brewing strongly since the ‘70s) and more recently a revisiting of policing and criminal justice which brings us to today. There are periods where the divide seems to ebb and flow. Probably 10-20 year spans, and then a recognition by the greater community that things remain unfair for various groups.
It’s hard to say, but let’s say more than 50% of American history is a divide of some sort on various issues. Is it due to two parties? Or do the parties coalesce around the issues that are brewing at the most extreme boiling points? Or worse, do the two parties use various issues as wedges to create divide where one might not otherwise exist? (All of this is from my own memory and study, so I’m sure there are major things I’ve glossed over or missed not being an expert in the area)
