What's the problem with proportional representation?

[innonimatu]

We're increasingly seeing elections with many different groups, and different ideas competing. In some countries the electoral system for the parliaments is (or approaches) proportional representation. Denmark, Holland, etc). Others demand a minimum vote but still assign seats (somewhat) proportionally above that minimum.

My question is, why are there democracies that keep refusing proportional representation? A winner-takes-all system (or a single seat per region, leads to the same) strongly favors the existence of only two parties. So I can see why the incumbents defend it. But when voting preferences change those parties also risk being wiped out (check the PS in France for an example - hopefully). And instead of promoting "stability", when there are many competing forces with around the same backing (check France now, again) this system promotes instability: governments that obtain majorities yet may have only 20% support from voters. What kind of legitimacy will such a government have?

Societies are split over political ideas. Yet people manage to function together. Why wouldn't coalitions manage to work out governments? Many countries manage that. What is your take on this?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

We're increasingly seeing elections with many different groups, and different ideas competing. In some countries the electoral system for the parliaments is (or approaches) proportional representation. Denmark, Holland, etc). Others demand a minimum vote but still assign seats (somewhat) proportionally above that minimum.

My question is, why are there democracies that keep refusing proportional representation? A winner-takes-all system (or a single seat per region, leads to the same) strongly favors the existence of only two parties. So I can see why the incumbents defend it. But when voting preferences change those parties also risk being wiped out (check the PS in France for an example - hopefully). And instead of promoting "stability", when there are many competing forces with around the same backing (check France now, again) this system promotes instability: governments that obtain majorities yet may have only 20% support from voters. What kind of legitimacy will such a government have?

Societies are split over political ideas. Yet people manage to function together. Why wouldn't coalitions manage to work out governments? Many countries manage that. What is your take on this?

That you are absolutely right and that my country is dead wrong.

 

[warpus]

Proportional representation tends to favour smaller parties and does not often produce a majority government. Two disadvantages there. It also makes it so that you vote for the party (I think) but not necessarily a person, so you are not voting for the person you want to represent you in parliment. Which has advantages but mainly disadvantages I think. Plus I think the voting system is more "confusing", so idiot parties lose out.

Don't take this post to mean I endorse either approach. Just spelling out the facts (but correct me if I'm wrong about anything)

 

[Camikaze]

The EU Parliament is an excellent example of proportional representation achieving stability - the two major groups are virtually forced into a grand coalition, and the minor groupings have adequate committee chair/rapporteur representation (save for EFDD). Of course, the downside to that sort of stability is that people seem to think that their vote doesn't matter, because the end result will be the same regardless. A lot of people seem to like the idea that their vote will either help a party win outright or lose outright, and are less comfortable with the idea that their vote will help a party ever so slightly change the balance of committee appointments.

 

[Perfection]

Oddly enough David Deutsch (a theoretical physicist) devotes a chapter to it in The Beginning of Infinity. He argues that unpopular leaders are easier to remove from power in US-style Winner-take-all systems I think his argument is compelling, however I believe the problem of Gerrymandering prevents it from being applicable to US politics (it has allowed Republicans to rig the system in their favor).

If we had a more fair winner-take-all system, I think US politics would be a lot saner. I'm not sure where I stand with proportional representation systems, but I don't think it's the silver bullet folks make it out to be.

 

[Kozmos]

How would that be? In coalition governments all it would take is for one block of many to defect for the government to collapse. It promotes saner politics.

 

[Perfection]

How would that be? In coalition governments all it would take is for one block of many to defect for the government to collapse. It promotes saner politics.

If I recall the argument correctly he states that swing block wields undue influence with limited potential for voters to remove them from power (they can continue to hold office with unpopular minority views because they don't need to get the plurality of the votes), as such voters have less of a veto power on the current authority structure.

 

[Kozmos]

Parties who don't play well with others stop being invited to play and then the government is formed from other blocks. Everyone learns to compromise or they get nothing. A massive improvement over a duopoly in my opinion, but your mileage may vary.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

We're increasingly seeing elections with many different groups, and different ideas competing. In some countries the electoral system for the parliaments is (or approaches) proportional representation. Denmark, Holland, etc). Others demand a minimum vote but still assign seats (somewhat) proportionally above that minimum.

My question is, why are there democracies that keep refusing proportional representation? A winner-takes-all system (or a single seat per region, leads to the same) strongly favors the existence of only two parties. So I can see why the incumbents defend it. But when voting preferences change those parties also risk being wiped out (check the PS in France for an example - hopefully). And instead of promoting "stability", when there are many competing forces with around the same backing (check France now, again) this system promotes instability: governments that obtain majorities yet may have only 20% support from voters. What kind of legitimacy will such a government have?

Societies are split over political ideas. Yet people manage to function together. Why wouldn't coalitions manage to work out governments? Many countries manage that. What is your take on this?

Some of the best Canadian governments have been minority governments (either Liberal or Progressive Conservative - to differentiate them from the CPC), with the New Democratic Party holding the balance of power.

In those cases, if the government strayed too far into power-tripping territory, all the NDP had to do was remind them that they could vote with the other party next time there was a budget bill, and assuming the budget was defeated, a new election would be triggered.

We've got a majority Liberal government now, and they've broken one of their major campaign promises: electoral reform. In 2015, Justin Trudeau stated very emphatically that if the Liberals won, 2015 would be the last election using the FPTP system.

He lied.

If the committee had come back with "Ranked ballots are the best, let's do that!", Trudeau and the Liberals on the committee would have been happy and would probably have made an effort to push it forward. But since that's not what happened, we're not getting electoral reform.

I'd like proportional representation. I've never had any representation of my views from my MP.

Proportional representation tends to favour smaller parties and does not often produce a majority government. Two disadvantages there. It also makes it so that you vote for the party (I think) but not necessarily a person, so you are not voting for the person you want to represent you in parliment. Which has advantages but mainly disadvantages I think. Plus I think the voting system is more "confusing", so idiot parties lose out.

Don't take this post to mean I endorse either approach. Just spelling out the facts (but correct me if I'm wrong about anything)

Unless the MP is a dynamic person who tends to get things done or gets appointed to cabinet, one MP is the same as another, at least if your MP is Reformacon. Who cares which candidate is running, when the party leader tells them not to show up for all-candidates' forums (since it's an unscripted event, there's no way to adequately prep them with their assigned talking points)?

Or did your CPC candidate actually show up in your riding instead of being represented by a potted plant? (not joking about that; it really happened in about 50 ridings, back in 2011; I think ours was a geranium) When it came time for the Q&A, I submitted a written question asking if the Conservative side of the House was going to be converted into an arboretum, given the number of that party's candidates who weren't showing up for the election forums. Of course the geranium was silent on the matter, but the other candidates had a chance to discuss the issue of no-shows and how democracy is flawed when the people who want the job of being MP are too chicken to show up to explain their party's position and to answer questions.

 

[Bootstoots]

We're increasingly seeing elections with many different groups, and different ideas competing. In some countries the electoral system for the parliaments is (or approaches) proportional representation. Denmark, Holland, etc). Others demand a minimum vote but still assign seats (somewhat) proportionally above that minimum.

My question is, why are there democracies that keep refusing proportional representation? A winner-takes-all system (or a single seat per region, leads to the same) strongly favors the existence of only two parties. So I can see why the incumbents defend it. But when voting preferences change those parties also risk being wiped out (check the PS in France for an example - hopefully). And instead of promoting "stability", when there are many competing forces with around the same backing (check France now, again) this system promotes instability: governments that obtain majorities yet may have only 20% support from voters. What kind of legitimacy will such a government have?

Societies are split over political ideas. Yet people manage to function together. Why wouldn't coalitions manage to work out governments? Many countries manage that. What is your take on this?

Honestly, I don't find the results of PR to be that impressive in practice. I support there being some PR seats or maybe a PR chamber in a bicameral system. By itself, though, usually one of the following things happens:

1. A bunch of little parties with wildly divergent ideas get elected, resulting in either:
a) A fragile system with a bunch of short-lived minority governments.
b) A system like Israel's, where extremist parties control the balance of power and compel the ruling party to be more extreme than it otherwise would be.

2. A stable grand coalition forms and is impossible to dislodge, as in the EU Parliament, Germany, and Austria among others. Virtually indistinguishable "center-left" and "center-right" parties ally with each other, and other ideas have little chance of coming up with anything resembling enough seats to challenge them. Even if they did, it would just turn into to problem 1a rather than problem 2. Nobody is seriously worried about the German election this year, because whoever you vote for, Merkel will win. Well, theoretically Schulz might win, in which case he might tweak the dials a little bit but still not change anything of consequence.

With the French presidential election, there was actually a chance that voters might elect someone truly different. People were freaking out about the possibility of a Melenchon-Le Pen runoff, because both people would do things totally differently. In the US election, for all its flaws, there's still a chance of a primary upset and an actually different person ending up in office. It actually happened last year. This time, it happened to bring us a buffoon who doesn't know what he's doing and is making things worse, but much as I detest him, his election actually strengthened my faith that the US is democratic in some real way. Not that I'll defend the EC or gerrymandered seats with FPTP voting or a Senate where some people are ~70 times as represented as other people or really any other aspect of our system, but I've come around to liking presidential systems in general.

 

[Perfection]

Parties who don't play well with others stop being invited to play and then the government is formed from other blocks. Everyone learns to compromise or they get nothing. A massive improvement over a duopoly in my opinion, but your mileage may vary.

Well I'm not too pleased wtih the US government as it stands...

 

[dutchfire]

Honestly, I don't find the results of PR to be that impressive in practice. I support there being some PR seats or maybe a PR chamber in a bicameral system. By itself, though, usually one of the following things happens:

1. A bunch of little parties with wildly divergent ideas get elected, resulting in either:
a) A fragile system with a bunch of short-lived minority governments.
b) A system like Israel's, where extremist parties control the balance of power and compel the ruling party to be more extreme than it otherwise would be.

2. A stable grand coalition forms and is impossible to dislodge, as in the EU Parliament, Germany, and Austria among others. Virtually indistinguishable "center-left" and "center-right" parties ally with each other, and other ideas have little chance of coming up with anything resembling enough seats to challenge them. Even if they did, it would just turn into to problem 1a rather than problem 2. Nobody is seriously worried about the German election this year, because whoever you vote for, Merkel will win. Well, theoretically Schulz might win, in which case he might tweak the dials a little bit but still not change anything of consequence.

Not here
(Depending on where you put the boundary for short-lived governments)

 

[Lexicus]

One of the ideas behind FPTP voting is that a party has to be "responsible" and govern effectively and this prevents the sort of political fragmentation you see sometimes in parliamentary systems where you have a bunch of parties that would rather sit in opposition complaining than govern.

We can all see how well this is working out right now in the USA.

 

[EnglishEdward]

This whole thread is based upon the unstated assumption that representative democracy is best achieved by voting on the basis of exclusive political parties.

However the original basis in the UK is that people vote for their local representative who may or may not be or become a member of a faction, group or political party.

The two primary disadvantages of proportional representation are that it is (i) less practical to vote for an individual and (ii) it either removes the link between the representative
(where there is no local constituency e.g. Israeli MKs) and their constituency or greatly dilutes it (if proportional representation is implemented by regional constituencies e.g. UK MEPs).

These disadvantages combine to increase the power of party machines who for example decide the order of precedence between candidates in the party to be allocated a seat.
Party machines require money to operate so that they are subject to financial capture by vested interests and they also also suffer from conformist group think.

There was a time when I was young when UK ballot papers did not specify the name of the party.

And the matter is often getting worse with people thinking it appropriate to vote not for the individual or even for the party but merely for their preferred candidate leader's nominee.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

With the French presidential election, there was actually a chance that voters might elect someone truly different.

Yes, I also quite like the French combination of proportional parliamentarianism and presidentialism.

 

[Kozmos]

But there are things such as preferential voting and parties do run candidates for regional/provincial/local seats of power. A major city council can contain members of opposing parties who all get a vote on how matters are run. It even lets independents a chance in their local communities so voters can elect someone without necessarily sacrificing votes in what they believe should be done nationally. A bunch of independents who got voted in as mayors even formed their own parties later on.

 

[uppi]

2. A stable grand coalition forms and is impossible to dislodge, as in the EU Parliament, Germany, and Austria among others. Virtually indistinguishable "center-left" and "center-right" parties ally with each other, and other ideas have little chance of coming up with anything resembling enough seats to challenge them. Even if they did, it would just turn into to problem 1a rather than problem 2. Nobody is seriously worried about the German election this year, because whoever you vote for, Merkel will win. Well, theoretically Schulz might win, in which case he might tweak the dials a little bit but still not change anything of consequence.

In a FPTP system, the stable equilibrium will be two parties, one center-left, one center-right (although the absolute position of the center might drift) which will more or less take turns. In the long run, this averages out and will not be very different from a grand coalition. In PR, the smaller parties do not have to challenge the major parties (as they would have to in a FPTP system), they just have to get enough votes to be an attractive party for one of the major parties. If it is possible to make a smaller coalition with a smaller, more closely aligned party, the major party will always go for that.

Until now, the grand coalitions in Germany have not been very frequent (something like 3 out of 18). It looks like it is heading that way again, this year, but the chance of something different is not negligible. It is true that it is going to be hard to dislodge Merkel, but that says more about herself and the ineffectiveness of the left to challenge her than about the system: In a FPTP system, she would likely win by an even larger margin, making the election even less decisive. As it is, there is a small chance of a left-wing majority that could make a significant change in policy. Or in case of a big win for Merkel, she might not need the SPD at all.

Not that I'll defend the EC or gerrymandered seats with FPTP voting or a Senate where some people are ~70 times as represented as other people or really any other aspect of our system, but I've come around to liking presidential systems in general.

I was going to say that you could have a presidential system with PR, but then it occurred to me that it might be a bad idea.

 

[Arwon]

This whole thread is based upon the unstated assumption that representative democracy is best achieved by voting on the basis of exclusive political parties.

However the original basis in the UK is that people vote for their local representative who may or may not be or become a member of a faction, group or political party.

The two primary disadvantages of proportional representation are that it is (i) less practical to vote for an individual and (ii) it either removes the link between the representative
(where there is no local constituency e.g. Israeli MKs) and their constituency or greatly dilutes it (if proportional representation is implemented by regional constituencies e.g. UK MEPs).

These disadvantages combine to increase the power of party machines who for example decide the order of precedence between candidates in the party to be allocated a seat.
Party machines require money to operate so that they are subject to financial capture by vested interests and they also also suffer from conformist group think.

There was a time when I was young when UK ballot papers did not specify the name of the party.

And the matter is often getting worse with people thinking it appropriate to vote not for the individual or even for the party but merely for their preferred candidate leader's nominee.

Single Transferable Vote is a proportional representation method which involves voting for individuals. It includes discerning between individuals within parties, with unpopular MPs regularly ousted by members of the same party. It also maintains local representation.

This is the method used in Ireland and Northern Ireland, Malta, Scottish local elections, the Australian Senate, Tasmanian lower house and the unicameral Australian Capital Territory chamber.

 

[AdrienIer]

Yes, I also quite like the French combination of proportional parliamentarianism and presidentialism.

Our parliament is not elected through proportional representation

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Oh wow you are right. Really would not have guessed that.