political independents

[eirias]

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!")

Comments

[eirias.livejournal.com]

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.

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.)