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political independents
Andrew Sullivan linked to a New York Times blurb showing that lots of people (esp. in the southwest) are uncomfortable with party labels these days, and that in a recent nationwide poll, a majority of respondants said they would prefer elections sans party labels. At first blush, this is interesting and maybe important -- but then I think about it and I realize I'm pretty sure that parties, labeled or no, are an emergent property of political landscapes. I have a strong suspicion that the two-party system is so entrenched here that even if we scrapped the current one, even if we abolished labels, an effectively two-party system would emerge as the new stable state within a few election cycles. I think that all that this might be signalling is disillusionment with the two current parties. What do you all think? (Bonus points for answers deeper than "Of course they're disillusioned; [party of choice] sucks!")
no subject
As for two versus more than two, it's basically inevitable that you're going to have at most two substantial candidates for one office (and three for two offices, and so forth) if voters can work out who the front-runners are. This is the whole "wasted vote" notion. Alternative voting schemes (IRV, Condorcet voting, approval voting, etc.) can in theory reduce the "strategic ignoring" of third-and-lower candidates, but the benefits remain largely theoretical since almost nobody does this and it has little demonstrable effect.
Of course, two candidates per election doesn't have to mean two parties per election -- we have an initiative on the ballot here to allow ballot fusion, that is, allow voters to vote for the same candidate under different party labels. This at least would allow voters more freedom in voting for parties than in voting for candidates. Ballot fusion, again, is theoretically interesting, and it has some slightly weird effects where it is used, but has not yet proven an ability to discipline or supplant the two major parties.
A final note is that in many places -- my state, for one -- the general election for most offices is a pointless vestige; the only actual choice occurs in the primaries. I frequently wonder why people don't form sub-parties, with meta-primaries before the party primaries to nominate their sub-parties' candidates for the primaries. I guess that sort of thing used to be taken care of in the stereotyped smoky back-rooms.
no subject
I don't think I need to drag out an elaborate proof that a voter's political power is maximized when the probability is highest that that voter's vote will actually make a difference (that is, swing the election between substantially different outcomes). Thus you have more power in an election that is small (few voters), close (evenly split between two or more leading outcomes), and diverse (having very distinct leading outcomes).
Now, power has to go somewhere. In a big, lopsided, low-stakes election, the political power was all exercised beforehand, by whoever was responsible for setting the terms of the election (picking the outcomes, eg candidates). In practice, this chunk of political power is what demands the existance of parties -- organizations that can capture the political power not wielded by voters.
Thus, there is a direct trade-off: The political power of parties is at the expense of voters, and vice versa. To the extent that elections are national, or lopsided, or between indistinguishable candidates, the parties win and the voter has nothing but an amusing tradition of marking boxes; to the extent that elections are local, even, and diverse, the voters win and the parties are forced to do the grungy work of informing voters, getting them to the polls, etc.
(This is one of the reasons to keep the electoral college, by the way: A state election gives slightly more power to voters than a national election. In general a win-the-most-districts election increases voter power by the square root of the number of districts over a total-popular-vote election. Weighting the districts unevenly introduces a complicated logarithmic term, so the US electoral college only increases average voter power by a factor of two or so if I recally correctly. Do the math yourself if you're bored; I don't have it handy.)
Of course, if the balance of power between voters and parties is going to be a problem, the answer might be to lower the stakes. Winner-take-all democracy with unlimited stakes has a tendency to turn out poorly, because as parties capture more and more of the power, the differences between parties times the government power at stake eventually exceeds the value of public order -- c.f. much of pre-WW2 Europe, but the Weimar Republic in particular. Limitations on the stakes of elections -- devolution of power to localities, constitutional limits on central government authority, term limits in some cases -- can help, but are generally unpopular for public choice reasons.
no subject
I feel like the statement "power has to go somewhere" ought to be justified. How does one calculate the power associated with a given election? How do we know that it's conserved across all possible versions of that election? I still feel like there's something missing here.
I like your argument for the electoral college, though I will note that proponents of fairness in California still won't be happy at how much *more* the system advances the political power of those in Wyoming -- the willingness to shoot yourself in the foot if it prevents your neighbor from getting more than you is a fundamental aspect of human psychology, as far as I can tell.
Another thing about the electoral college, now that I think of it -- doesn't it increase voter power but lower the stakes over which that power operates? You're basically getting a larger share of x/537 of the outcome for the presidency (or whatever) instead of a smaller share of the outcome for the presidency. Is this a good tradeoff? I'm not an expert in this, so forgive me if my questions are dim :).
no subject
This may explain why there are only two significant contenders for any given race, but does not explain why there are only two parties. Compare us to England or Canada, where there are multiple parties with representatives in their Parliament. Each seat may only be competetive between two candidates (I don't know for sure that this is so, but I'll stipulate), but across the country they have three or four parties wielding a not insignificant amount of power.
Why is that not the case here?
no subject
That is how it usually turns out in Britain. The thing is that there are many seats where the competition is between one of the two biggest parties and either the third party, an independent, or occasionally a member of one of the fringe parties that never manage to get more than one seat at any given time.
I'm not sure, but I think the difference is that the British system emphasises local work more, so an MP is both an area's representative in the House of Commons and their lead politician—it's a bit like being both Governor and Senator for a very small state, or perhaps a better analogy would be if a city's mayor were also its Representative—and this increases the emphasis on local issues in a general election. Subjectively at least, I get the feeling that voters in US elections choose a party more than they choose an individual representative, whereas in Britain the individual has a lot more influence on each seat's outcome. That allows independents to run on single local issues ("don't close our general hospital", etc.), fringe parties to get a toehold in constituencies where things have gone badly wrong (the nationalists (http://www.bnp.org.uk/) have occasionally grabbed a seat this way), and the more mainstream third party to hold a decent number of seats.
no subject
This is really fascinating. I love the effect you describe, but am not sure whether I would love the effect if it were here! It would be a very interesting experiment, though. The mayor here, of whom I'm quite fond for local issues, is not someone whose views on national policy I would necessarily trust. (Of course, to extend this to a country as large as ours on the city-by-city scale would be impossible, so perhaps the governor is a better person to consider. Unfortunately our governor is a less interesting case.)