[EM] voter strategy & 2-party domination under IRV voting

[James Gilmour]

Juho Laatu Sent: Sunday, August 14, 2005 2:50 PM
> Since then I have learned to respect also the good sides of 
> two-party systems like stable governments and ability to drive clear 
> policies.

These are interesting and important points that electoral reformers should not ignore.  Public opinion polls in the UK
have shown that UK electors do want "stable government" and "strong government", ie government that "can get things
done".  (In the same surveys, electors will also express support for results that would better reflect the parties'
shares of the votes, but that potential conflict is not usually explored in opinion polls.)  Maybe similar views have
been expressed by electors in surveys in other countries.   "Strong government" is one argument advanced by the two
major UK parties for maintaining the "two-party system" and for keeping the FPTP voting system that (extremely unfairly)
has usually produced a clear one-party majority government.

But what does "strong government" really mean?  In the UK from 1945, we had a succession of "strong governments", ie
one-party majority governments that pushed through very partisan legislation and changed policy on almost every aspect
of public life: public/private ownership of major industries, pensions, health, education, social policy.  But the
changes in the voters' wishes at successive general elections were exaggerated by the defective voting system so that we
had alternating single-party, majority "strong" governments, each of which reversed the policies of its "strong"
predecessor and set policy in the opposite direction.   This period of continual alternation of policy was almost
certainly very damaging to the UK.  The 18 years of Conservative rule from 1979 (mostly under Margaret Thatcher) and the
three successive election wins for Labour under Tony Blair from 1997 are in sharp contrast to the instability of the
first 35 years of the 60 year post-war period.

So were the 1945-1979 governments "strong"?  They were able to push through their policies, but only for short periods.
Perhaps "strong government" would be better defined to mean government that can advance durable policies that survive
through successive administrations with only comparatively small changes in response to the wishes of the voters as
expressed in the (usually small) changes in the voting patterns.

 
> In the EM mailing list there also seems to be a lot of interest in 
> systems that are "party-free", like STV. In addition to all these I'm 
> interested in developing also the party based voting methods further.

I know that STV-PR works perfectly well without parties and that some electoral reformers promote STV-PR because they
believe it will further their political aim to "smash the political parties", but STV should not be classed as a
"party-free" system.  There are very strong political parties everywhere that STV-PR is used for public legislative
elections.  In some countries using STV-PR, the voters are extremely partisan and there is almost no cross-party voting.
In others, cross-party voting is used very greatly by the voters to express their wishes to the full.  What is unique
about STV-PR is the power it gives to the voters, if they want to use it.
James Gilmour