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> There are many flavours of representative democracy. It depend what is being represented. In the British system that’s constituencies. In proportional systems

by cyphar 4y ago

> There are many flavours of representative democracy. It depend what is being represented. In the British system that’s constituencies. In proportional systems, that’s political parties. Neither are particularly more or less inherently legitimate IMHO. I would consider 10% of a country voting for a party as first preference but less than 0.7% of parliament seats (by which I mean a single seat) being allocated to them (as was the case in Australia until the last election where it's still around 2% representation) to be unrepresentative by any reasonable definition of the word. Whether you feel that the voting system in your country needs to be purely representative in order to be legitimate is a philosophical question and whether you feel that an unrepresentative system is legitimate is a separate discussion. Whether you think parties should be entrenched or not (I'm not particularly fond of the idea), it is literally not representing the public votes. This is because Australia has winner-takes-all electorates and. You can have electorate systems that don't have one-seat electorates. Winner-takes-all electorates lead to this problem. > I think would clearly ludicrous to argue that the British people do not consent to their system of government. I would think it to be naive to argue that every election is a referendum on the fundamental system of government in the country where no party is running on such a platform and there are many factors making it essentially untenable to even attempt to have a third party push the issue. I suspect few British people would say their government is illegitimate but I also suspect very few would say "I have a continuing and active choice in the fundamental way political power is structured in my country, above voting for individual political parties."

simonh 4y ago
That’s only unrepresentative if you privilege parties over constituencies. There’s an argument for that but it’s not a given. I detest party lists though, it’s a terrible idea to suborn elected representatives to a party bureaucracy. Elected representatives should be ultimately answerable to the electorate. I don’t think it’s fair to phrase it that way, I’m terms of choice. Democracy doesn’t give individuals a choice in how they are governed, it grants them a vote. That’s not the same thing. Also I don’t think it’s reasonable to have the structure of political power up fir continuous change. There should be mechanisms fir change, sure, but in most cases that should be over fairly long time frames with plenty of brakes in the process. The reason is that changing power structures is extremely dangerous. Once you fall into a peer structure that’s vulnerable to abuse by a clique or even worse an individual, you can easily get trapped in it permanently. In a constantly changing system up for frequent revision it seems like that would eventually be inevitable.
- cyphar 4y ago
  > That’s only unrepresentative if you privilege parties over constituencies. There’s an argument for that but it’s not a given. How would multi-seat electorates privilege parties over constituencies? It would literally mean more representation of different views in on electorate.
throwaway894345 4y ago
> I would consider 10% of a country voting for a party as first preference but less than 0.7% of parliament seats (by which I mean a single seat) being allocated to them (as was the case in Australia until the last election where it's still around 2% representation) to be unrepresentative by any reasonable definition of the word. Is this is a consistent outcome or an anomaly?
- cyphar 4y ago
  It is a consistent outcome, the recent election is an anomaly. The explanation for why this is the case is a bit complicated but the crux is that only one candidate can win in each seat and while we have preferential voting, the preferences only matter in each race -- and if you aren't in the top two on first preferences then you won't win that seat (nor any other seat where that is the case). It would be easily possible for them to have 0% representation, it just so happens that the Greens party leader's electorate is incredibly pro-Green and so he gets ~47% of the first preference vote, which is unusually high and makes him win the seat easily. Our upper house is far more representative because each state and territory has multiple seats and thus you can get a more representative outcome.

by cyphar 4y ago

simonh 4y ago

That’s only unrepresentative if you privilege parties over constituencies. There’s an argument for that but it’s not a given. I detest party lists though, it’s a terrible idea to suborn elected representatives to a party bureaucracy. Elected representatives should be ultimately answerable to the electorate. I don’t think it’s fair to phrase it that way, I’m terms of choice. Democracy doesn’t give individuals a choice in how they are governed, it grants them a vote. That’s not the same thing. Also I don’t think it’s reasonable to have the structure of political power up fir continuous change. There should be mechanisms fir change, sure, but in most cases that should be over fairly long time frames with plenty of brakes in the process. The reason is that changing power structures is extremely dangerous. Once you fall into a peer structure that’s vulnerable to abuse by a clique or even worse an individual, you can easily get trapped in it permanently. In a constantly changing system up for frequent revision it seems like that would eventually be inevitable.

cyphar 4y ago
> That’s only unrepresentative if you privilege parties over constituencies. There’s an argument for that but it’s not a given. How would multi-seat electorates privilege parties over constituencies? It would literally mean more representation of different views in on electorate.

throwaway894345 4y ago

> I would consider 10% of a country voting for a party as first preference but less than 0.7% of parliament seats (by which I mean a single seat) being allocated to them (as was the case in Australia until the last election where it's still around 2% representation) to be unrepresentative by any reasonable definition of the word. Is this is a consistent outcome or an anomaly?

cyphar 4y ago
It is a consistent outcome, the recent election is an anomaly. The explanation for why this is the case is a bit complicated but the crux is that only one candidate can win in each seat and while we have preferential voting, the preferences only matter in each race -- and if you aren't in the top two on first preferences then you won't win that seat (nor any other seat where that is the case). It would be easily possible for them to have 0% representation, it just so happens that the Greens party leader's electorate is incredibly pro-Green and so he gets ~47% of the first preference vote, which is unusually high and makes him win the seat easily. Our upper house is far more representative because each state and territory has multiple seats and thus you can get a more representative outcome.