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Lee Drutman talks a lot about this in his book, "Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop." [0] Short version: there used to be much less "party discipline" in US poli

Lee Drutman talks a lot about this in his book, "Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop." [0] Short version: there used to be much less "party discipline" in US politics. There were lots of sub-factions within the two big parties that would vote differently, depending on the issue. So, it was common for bills to pass with (say) 50% of Democrats voting for them, and 60% of Republicans. In the 90's (according to Drutman), the parties started being much more "coherent" -- like, all Democrats would favor a bill, and all Republicans would oppose it. This makes it much harder to pass legislation. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Two-Party-Doom-Loop-Multiparty-ebook/dp/B081JYFG79/ https://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Two-Party-Doom-Loop-Multipar...

hash872 5y ago
I read it, I thought it was pretty handwavey. Anyways, doesn't explain how Canada, Britain, South Korea & Taiwan all manage FPTP successfully as stable democracies
- godelski 5y ago
  > doesn't explain how Canada, Britain, South Korea & Taiwan all manage FPTP successfully as stable democracies There's a lot of other factors in there besides the method of voting. People often compare the US to other countries over voting but ignore that the systems are substantially different. For example, the UK parliament (and many parliaments) has proportional representation. This is something we don't see in the US congress. And it is important to distinguish that presidential elections are vastly different than congressional/parliamentary elections. Then again, maybe this is part of the problem, that US is hyper focused on the presidential elections but nowhere near similarly engaged in the congressional ones.
  - hash872 5y ago
    The UK does not have proportional representation, that's not correct. FPTP & PR are opposites- you have to choose one system or the other. I agree that presidential systems are probably suboptimal, but it is worth noting that South Korea has a president in addition to FPTP, single rep districts, etc. Again my point- if you're a stable culture, you can make any system work!
    - ClayShentrup 5y ago
      On Korea: The National Assembly has 300 members elected for a four-year term, 253 in single-seat constituencies and 47 members by proportional representation.
      - hash872 5y ago
        Yes, and I believe Taiwan has started doing something similar. That's still under 16% of all seats, and- they just started doing this in the last couple of years. They were 100% similar to the US system until very recently
- ClayShentrup 5y ago
  Yeah I don't think Lee is a super deep thinker and he gets a lot of basic things wrong. I corrected some of his obvious errors in this piece. https://thefulcrum.us/amp/actually-approval-voting-beats-rcv-a-rebuttal-2644658826 https://thefulcrum.us/amp/actually-approval-voting-beats-rcv... As a general rule, it is true that plurality voting absolutely sucks. The vast majority of highly rated democracies use something different. The UK and US are ranked 16th and 25th respectively. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index Taiwan and South Korea both use a significant amount of proportional representation. But Drutman's biggest fallacy is thinking that you have to have proportional representation. Simple approval voting would plausibly have as big or greater impact.
  - hash872 5y ago
    You missed Canada at #5. And Taiwan (#11) & SK allocating around 15% of their seats to PR- recently, as in the last three years- I would not call a 'significant amount' of PR

hash872 5y ago

I read it, I thought it was pretty handwavey. Anyways, doesn't explain how Canada, Britain, South Korea & Taiwan all manage FPTP successfully as stable democracies

godelski 5y ago
> doesn't explain how Canada, Britain, South Korea & Taiwan all manage FPTP successfully as stable democracies There's a lot of other factors in there besides the method of voting. People often compare the US to other countries over voting but ignore that the systems are substantially different. For example, the UK parliament (and many parliaments) has proportional representation. This is something we don't see in the US congress. And it is important to distinguish that presidential elections are vastly different than congressional/parliamentary elections. Then again, maybe this is part of the problem, that US is hyper focused on the presidential elections but nowhere near similarly engaged in the congressional ones.
- hash872 5y ago
  The UK does not have proportional representation, that's not correct. FPTP & PR are opposites- you have to choose one system or the other. I agree that presidential systems are probably suboptimal, but it is worth noting that South Korea has a president in addition to FPTP, single rep districts, etc. Again my point- if you're a stable culture, you can make any system work!
  - ClayShentrup 5y ago
    On Korea: The National Assembly has 300 members elected for a four-year term, 253 in single-seat constituencies and 47 members by proportional representation.
    - hash872 5y ago
      Yes, and I believe Taiwan has started doing something similar. That's still under 16% of all seats, and- they just started doing this in the last couple of years. They were 100% similar to the US system until very recently
ClayShentrup 5y ago
Yeah I don't think Lee is a super deep thinker and he gets a lot of basic things wrong. I corrected some of his obvious errors in this piece. https://thefulcrum.us/amp/actually-approval-voting-beats-rcv-a-rebuttal-2644658826 https://thefulcrum.us/amp/actually-approval-voting-beats-rcv... As a general rule, it is true that plurality voting absolutely sucks. The vast majority of highly rated democracies use something different. The UK and US are ranked 16th and 25th respectively. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index Taiwan and South Korea both use a significant amount of proportional representation. But Drutman's biggest fallacy is thinking that you have to have proportional representation. Simple approval voting would plausibly have as big or greater impact.
- hash872 5y ago
  You missed Canada at #5. And Taiwan (#11) & SK allocating around 15% of their seats to PR- recently, as in the last three years- I would not call a 'significant amount' of PR