Bayle Shanks's website: notes-politics-parliamentaryVsPresidential

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vidarh 2 days ago [-]

> (which has it's own problems - look at unstable governments in Europe based on oddball alliances).

That's not a problem, that's a feature. It ensures the parties need to learn to cooperate and compromise to get things through when voters are not in firm agreement. As a result you get continuity: It's rare to get the kind of drastic shifts that you get in the US when the balance shifts between the Republicans and Democrats, because it is rare for a single party to get an absolute majority, and so alliances shift with voting patterns, and the negotiated compromises tends to have to reflect a wider range of interests or not get passed.

A lot of places this leads to a tradition of broad compromises to ensure lasting reforms that won't just get undone by the next government.

So while the specific governments may not sit as tightly, I'd argue it tends to lead to a lot more stability in government direction.

mamon 2 days ago [-]

There's also an issue with that system: it gives a ruling party an easy excuse for not keeping their promises to their voters. You can always say: "We tried, but we didn't have a majority and our allied party was against that".I can't count how many times I heard that being said in my country.

Also, there's another bad consequence: In two party system when you lose the elections you really loose: other party takes the whole prize, and for you there's really nothing to do for the next four years. In multi party system even if you finish the elections on 2nd or 3rd place you may still end up joining the ruling coalition of parties, just maybe with somewhat weaker position.

Basically European system shifts focus of political parties from making deals with their voters to making deals with other parties.

dragonwriter 2 days ago [-]

> There's also an issue with that system: it gives a ruling party an easy excuse for not keeping their promises to their voters.

The US two-parties-that-are-obviously-fractious-coalitions plus separation of powers system provides far more of those for any elected leader (because it's not a parliamentary system and lacks real mechanisms for party discipline, even a party with control of both political branches and the judiciary isn't analogous to a parliamentary-system ruling party with an outright, non-coalition majority, and isn't held accountable the way those can be.

Keeping separation of powers and adopting a more proportional system for the House of Reps, even straight party list (which would require Constitutional change), or state level party list or STV with or without some level of districting (which may or may not require Constitutional change) would not meaningfully add to the excuses for failure to deliver on promises.

In fact, systems with greater proportionality in legislative elections produce higher satisfaction with government, which should be unsurprising: electing a government that's views actually align with those of the population results in government policy more aligned with public preferences. Which, after all, is the whole premise of representative democracy.

willyt 2 days ago [+1]

dragonwriter 2 days ago [-]

> We could change voting systems to introduce more viable parties (which has it's own problems - look at unstable governments in Europe based on oddball alliances).

Those systems aren't really unstable, they just formalize things that go on behind the scenes in the US system where the major parties are actually internally diverse coalition with competitive factions.

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