From: gdb15@grebe.cl.cam.ac.uk (Guy Barry)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: Rule Britannia
Date: 9 Nov 92 10:36:50 GMT
Reply-To: gdb15@cl.cam.ac.uk (Guy Barry)
Organization: U of Cambridge Computer Lab, UK

In article <1dkro9INN582@fido.asd.sgi.com> livesey@solntze.wpd.sgi.com (Jon Livesey) writes:
>In article <1992Nov8.112817.3421@infodev.cam.ac.uk>, gdb15@grebe.cl.cam.ac.uk writes:
>> 
>> The moral of that appears to be that pure PR isn't a very stable
>> system of government, and that a compromise like the German system is
>> preferable.
>
>Well, that's interesting, isn't it.   You have already
>started to introduce concepts like 'stable' in talking
>about a system whose main advertised virtue is - I believe
>- fairness.

Indeed, it seems there's a trade-off.  At the other extreme, absolute
dictatorship is very stable but I don't think anyone would call it fair.

>I wonder how we know which versions of PR are 'stable
>enough'?   My guess is that we try one out, and see what
>happens, but then of course, we are back to pragmatism.

Well, we've got plenty of examples to look at.  It does seem
that relatively "pure" versions of PR have a tendency to
form unstable governments, whereas those such as the German system
with an artificial cut-off produce more cohesion.  On the other
hand, the German system does have its drawbacks, since you get
some MPs who are not responsible to an electorate.  I still think
STV could work, provided the constituencies had no more than
about six members, since the rounding process would tend to
exclude parties with low levels of support.  But I'm open-minded.
>
>What we are saying then is not that we derive a system that
>exhibits various properties of fairness and representation,
>but that we end up with the system that appears to "work".
>And there's nothing wrong with that, of course, since
>that's pretty much how we got the present system.

No it isn't.  Ours evolved in a fairly haphazard fashion (and you
recently posted a list of Reform Acts, so you must know!).  No one
ever sat down to design a representative system.  For centuries the
Commons wasn't regarded as a democratic body; Even the Great Reform
Act of 1832 didn't introduce democracy as we know it.  Only since then
has the franchise been gradually extended to more and more people
until we've arrived at a system with a passing resemblance to popular
democracy, inasmuch as everyone over 18 gets the vote.  The fact
that some of those votes have much more weight than others gets
swept under the carpet by people who want to defend the present
system.

>Sure thing.   When a party fails to assemble the strength
>to pass a Bill, it must either abandon the Bill, or seek
>support from other parties.

Or even do deals with people inside its own party!  (Michael
Carttiss has got a lot to answer for...)  Incidentally, I
read over the weekend that the Government tried to buy off
the Ulster Unionists over the Maastricht vote by offering
them a Standing Committee on Northern Ireland.  They refused,
because they felt Maastricht to be a more important issue.

>All I am claiming is that PR would increase the number of
>times this happens.   We go from a situation in which, once
>elected, the Administration gets to do most of what it wants
>and then must face the, electors again, to a situation in 
>which the largest party has to get support from other parties
>quite a lot of the time.
>
>As far as I can see, what this mainly does is to make it
>more difficult for the largest party to implement its
>program, and spreads the responsibility for the program that
>is implemented, quite broadly.

You seem to be talking about minority government, not coalition
government.  You seem to assume that the largest party automatically
has the right to implement its programme, irrespective of whether it
enjoys majority support.  A coalition government is by its very nature
a government of more than one party, with people in more than one
party making key decisions, rather than one party making decisions
and then seeking support from others outside.

>> I'm quite sure that if we currently had a Tory-Lib Dem government
>> then Labour and the other parties would be working just as
>> hard to expose them.
>
>Yes and no.   In the case that parties outside the ruling 
>coalition have no ambition to join it, they might be as
>savage as they are now.   But in the case where an oppostion
>party wishes to join the ruling coalition, they might pull
>their punches a little.

I can't see Labour wanting to join a Tory-Lib Dem coalition somehow!

>Seriously, I'm not so much concerned with what they admit,
>as with what we can pin on them.   As voters, we don't have
>to prove cases: it's entirely a matter of our own
>judgement.  Having a single party identified with a program
>means that you at least know whom to blame.   But in the
>case of some of these funny Continental governments, you
>first have to go through a process of figuring out which
>part of the ruling coalition was responsible for which part
>of the program, and only then can you make any sensible
>decisions about whom to vote for next time.

I think the electorate has more intelligence than you give
them credit for.  Even under a one-party system I can
distinguish between the politics of different factions
within the party.  (Sometimes I wish we were allowed to
vote for individual members of the Cabinet!)

>On the other hand, you can get some paradoxical results.
>If there are two parties, and A gets 55% of the vote and B
>gets 45%, then we expect party B to be the opposition.   No
>coalition is required.
>
>But if voting is arranged so that parties get seats in
>proportion to their total popular vote, and three parties
>A, B, and C split the vote 45%, 40%, 15%, then I would
>expect a coalition of A and C.    

Whereas with the present system we just get A without C.
Is that fairer?

>The trouble with PR is, you don't get what you vote for
>either.  Once the polls close, and the negotiations over
>forming the ruling coalition start, who knows what gets
>traded off for what?    How can you tell "what" you are
>voting for if the party you vote for may trade away part of
>the platform it ran on.

But there are trade-offs in politics all the time, as I've
said before.  We're currently witnessing some pretty frantic
horse-trading between the pro-Europe and the anti-Europe
factions of the Tory party.  Unfortunately they didn't
fight the election on separate manifestos.

>That means that 'democracy' consists partly of parties
>responding to feedback from voters.   If parties were rigid
>and unchanging monoliths, representing perfectly
>crystallised policies, then I would agree that the system
>should give a voice to many of them.   But they are plastic
>rather than rigid, so I don't think that the current system
>can really be called undemocratic.  

True up to a point, but you can't tell people who hold a particular
view to sit round and wait until one of the big parties adopts it as
official policy.  You'll wait for ever in some cases.

>Moreover, the current
>system does have this happy knack of producing stable
>governments, which *some* PR systems do not have.

There is nothing about our system which inherently produces stable
governments.  It only does so under fairly rigid conditions: large
evenly balanced blocks of concentrated support for the main parties in
some parts of the country, and enough marginal areas to be able to tip
the balance decisively in favour of one party.  Demographic changes
may upset that pattern.  I don't like having a system that depends for
its success on particular facts about political demography.

I think my chief objection to the current system is that most votes
aren't worth very much.  In a safe seat, the vote of the floating
voter is effectively worthless.  In a marginal, it's only worth
anything if it's cast for one of the two parties that can win the
seat.  This means that for most people who vote on the basis of
weighing up the issues rather than blind party loyalty, there isn't
much incentive to vote.  That's not good for democracy.

--
Guy Barry, University of Cambridge | Phone: +44 (0)223 334757 
Computer Laboratory                | Fax: +44 (0)223 334678
New Museums Site, Pembroke Street  | JANET: Guy.Barry@uk.ac.cam.cl 
Cambridge CB2 3QG, England, UK     | Internet: Guy.Barry@cl.cam.ac.uk