For some definition of "work". It's really just a different set of tradeoffs.
Continental Europe (the UK uses FPTP) is characterised by countries that have governments that are frequently deadlocked or missing in action, because proportional representation results in lots of parties getting into power with none having a majority. Therefore they spend lots of time building coalitions that can agree on very little except preserving the status quo.
These coalitions often result in absurd political configurations, like alliances between parties that are supposedly of the left and right, resulting in an inability to create policy. You also see bizarre compromises that can cause extreme or weird policies to appear that hardly anyone would have voted for, due to the need to bring on board smaller parties to make the coalitions work.
A few examples: in the Netherlands, the ruling coalition has a working majority of 1. It contains many tiny parties and took months to create, because they were determined to ensure that the politician who runs the second largest party in Parliament (Geert Wilders, who is anti-EU) would be entirely frozen out of power.
Germany is ruled by a coalition of two parties that both lost votes in the last election, and whose leaders hate each other. They both believe repeating the same coalition again will severely damage both parties, as it's a coalition of both the left and right meaning ... again ... essentially the coalition has no coherent policies that anyone campaigned on. However they did it anyway to freeze out the second largest party, AfD, again because AfD is anti-EU and that is seen as so bad almost anything is worth it to avoid having to compromise with them. Before the current coalition formed, Merkel tried to create the "Jamaica coalition" ... a truly laughable attempt to break the basic laws of politics by uniting the far left Green party with a libertarian party. Not surprisingly the quasi-communists and Ayn Randians couldn't agree on anything and that attempt failed, but it goes to show how strange proportional representation can get.
Italy has just voted in a coalition of two parties, again, a left and right wing party who have, as a result, economically incoherent policies. The "right wing" party wants devolution of power within Italy and more regional self rule, the 5-Star movement wants the opposite, with more subsidies for southern Italy.
Basically PR gives you messy governments that frequently collapse or deadlock. This may or may not be a better arrangement than FPTP which tends to yield strong governments with clear policies, which frequently see-saw between polar opposites as left and right parties take turns in power.
That's exactly what I see in the US right now. The country has no ability to address issues anymore, be it health care, immigration, infrastructure, housing or education. there is a lot of hot air and screaming and yelling but they can't find compromises and act on them anymore. See Obamacare. Instead of working together and accommodate each others wishes first one party went into full strike and now it has been effectively abandoned at the detriment of most (non-rich) citizens.
I think the problem there is that they have to form a coalition. (I think this is because the coalition elects the leader of government, but I'm not certain of that.)
But what if the parties didn't have to form a coalition? What if they, as individual legislators, just voted on bills? Then you'd have to write a bill that could peel away some votes from some members of some parties other than your own. For a bill to pass, it would have to be a good enough bill that you could sell it to people outside your party. That's not such a bad thing...
Unless all the parties maintain strict party discipline. I think that increasing party discipline is one of the problems that is making Congress so dysfunctional. But hopefully, if you had more than two parties in Congress, not all of them would have strict party discipline.
> uniting the far left Green party with a libertarian party. Not surprisingly the quasi-communists and Ayn Randians couldn't agree on anything and that attempt failed, but it goes to show how strange proportional representation can get
Those characterizations have very little to do with the actual positions of those parties, so it's no wonder it seems comical to you.
>Not surprisingly the quasi-communists and Ayn Randians couldn't agree on anything and that attempt failed, but it goes to show how strange proportional representation can get.
That's a bit of a misinterpretation. One of the leading figures in the FDP party broke up the jamaica band when everyone was about to get together and form the coalition. (Naturally his party was pissed about this but because he won an election for them they just rolled over and went with that).
While the german government can sort of deadlock it's not a situation like in the US where everything shuts down. The government continues to function, although with minimized power, until the new parliament is formed. They can't put out any major new laws but they're not completely dead-in-the-water.
>Germany is ruled by a coalition of two parties that both lost votes in the last election, and whose leaders hate each other.
It's more complicated than that. The SPD-CDU/CSU coalition (which is three party not two depending on how you look at it) is getting a reputation with the voters, under this coalition Merkel has been chancellor for a long time now. They two sides (other than CDU/SPD resenting the CSU for sitting in the backseat of federal politics and screaming incoherent right-wing garbage (I'm bavarian, I know what I'm talking about here)) don't hate eachother but to my knowledge it's a mutual understanding that they cannot continue this coalition any further.
>because proportional representation results in lots of parties getting into power with none having a majority.
Note that Germany has a 5% clause for this; you need 5% of the votes to get into parliament, otherwise you have no say.
This is mainly a result of the previous government turning into the third reich after several parties deadlocked the parliament for real.
repolfx|7 years ago
Continental Europe (the UK uses FPTP) is characterised by countries that have governments that are frequently deadlocked or missing in action, because proportional representation results in lots of parties getting into power with none having a majority. Therefore they spend lots of time building coalitions that can agree on very little except preserving the status quo.
These coalitions often result in absurd political configurations, like alliances between parties that are supposedly of the left and right, resulting in an inability to create policy. You also see bizarre compromises that can cause extreme or weird policies to appear that hardly anyone would have voted for, due to the need to bring on board smaller parties to make the coalitions work.
A few examples: in the Netherlands, the ruling coalition has a working majority of 1. It contains many tiny parties and took months to create, because they were determined to ensure that the politician who runs the second largest party in Parliament (Geert Wilders, who is anti-EU) would be entirely frozen out of power.
Germany is ruled by a coalition of two parties that both lost votes in the last election, and whose leaders hate each other. They both believe repeating the same coalition again will severely damage both parties, as it's a coalition of both the left and right meaning ... again ... essentially the coalition has no coherent policies that anyone campaigned on. However they did it anyway to freeze out the second largest party, AfD, again because AfD is anti-EU and that is seen as so bad almost anything is worth it to avoid having to compromise with them. Before the current coalition formed, Merkel tried to create the "Jamaica coalition" ... a truly laughable attempt to break the basic laws of politics by uniting the far left Green party with a libertarian party. Not surprisingly the quasi-communists and Ayn Randians couldn't agree on anything and that attempt failed, but it goes to show how strange proportional representation can get.
Italy has just voted in a coalition of two parties, again, a left and right wing party who have, as a result, economically incoherent policies. The "right wing" party wants devolution of power within Italy and more regional self rule, the 5-Star movement wants the opposite, with more subsidies for southern Italy.
Basically PR gives you messy governments that frequently collapse or deadlock. This may or may not be a better arrangement than FPTP which tends to yield strong governments with clear policies, which frequently see-saw between polar opposites as left and right parties take turns in power.
maxxxxx|7 years ago
That's exactly what I see in the US right now. The country has no ability to address issues anymore, be it health care, immigration, infrastructure, housing or education. there is a lot of hot air and screaming and yelling but they can't find compromises and act on them anymore. See Obamacare. Instead of working together and accommodate each others wishes first one party went into full strike and now it has been effectively abandoned at the detriment of most (non-rich) citizens.
AnimalMuppet|7 years ago
But what if the parties didn't have to form a coalition? What if they, as individual legislators, just voted on bills? Then you'd have to write a bill that could peel away some votes from some members of some parties other than your own. For a bill to pass, it would have to be a good enough bill that you could sell it to people outside your party. That's not such a bad thing...
Unless all the parties maintain strict party discipline. I think that increasing party discipline is one of the problems that is making Congress so dysfunctional. But hopefully, if you had more than two parties in Congress, not all of them would have strict party discipline.
detaro|7 years ago
Those characterizations have very little to do with the actual positions of those parties, so it's no wonder it seems comical to you.
tscs37|7 years ago
That's a bit of a misinterpretation. One of the leading figures in the FDP party broke up the jamaica band when everyone was about to get together and form the coalition. (Naturally his party was pissed about this but because he won an election for them they just rolled over and went with that).
While the german government can sort of deadlock it's not a situation like in the US where everything shuts down. The government continues to function, although with minimized power, until the new parliament is formed. They can't put out any major new laws but they're not completely dead-in-the-water.
>Germany is ruled by a coalition of two parties that both lost votes in the last election, and whose leaders hate each other.
It's more complicated than that. The SPD-CDU/CSU coalition (which is three party not two depending on how you look at it) is getting a reputation with the voters, under this coalition Merkel has been chancellor for a long time now. They two sides (other than CDU/SPD resenting the CSU for sitting in the backseat of federal politics and screaming incoherent right-wing garbage (I'm bavarian, I know what I'm talking about here)) don't hate eachother but to my knowledge it's a mutual understanding that they cannot continue this coalition any further.
>because proportional representation results in lots of parties getting into power with none having a majority.
Note that Germany has a 5% clause for this; you need 5% of the votes to get into parliament, otherwise you have no say.
This is mainly a result of the previous government turning into the third reich after several parties deadlocked the parliament for real.
yc-kraln|7 years ago
Citation needed