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I think what they didn't fully grasp was how partisanship directly arrives from the voting method. Sure, there was factionalism, but the forcing into two opposi
by robbrown451 7y ago
I think what they didn't fully grasp was how partisanship directly arrives from the voting method. Sure, there was factionalism, but the forcing into two opposing (and almost always equally balanced) parties as a mathematical equilibrium sort of thing probably wasn't in their lexicon.
For instance Duverger's Law, which didn't even get a name until the 1950s or so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law
I will check out that book, thanks.
- CharlesColeman 7y ago> and almost always equally balanced Doesn't that also follow from the voting method? A faction will make the political compromises it needs to reliably get past 50% in order to active power, but won't go much past that because it would be an unnecessary political sacrifice.
- robbrown451 7y agoYes exactly. That's the equilibrium under plurality.
- smacktoward 7y agoOriginally there weren't all that many places in the Constitutional system where a popular vote actually mattered, though. Senators were elected by state legislatures until 1913, for instance, not by popular vote. And the President was elected by the Electoral College, which in its original conception was supposed to have been a kind of grand assembly of the landed aristocracy, much in the same way the Constitutional Convention had been. In line with this conception, Electors were originally (and technically, still are) completely free to vote for whichever candidate they liked, without reference to who won their state's popular vote. And the Electoral College votes by state rather than by a raw count of the votes of the electors, adding a further layer of indirection.