[Election-Methods] Partisan Politics

[Juho]

On Mar 4, 2008, at 23:56 , Fred Gohlke wrote:

> Good Afternoon, Dave
>
> If I gave you the impression I was "... demanding that it (the party
> system) release control", I erred.  I make no such demand, nor do I
> believe one to be practical.

Strong party structure has its problems. Having no parties may be  
impossible. And not having parties or other groupings may also cause  
problems to the voters since they have hard time finding out what  
each individual candidate stands for.

I note these problems of the two extremes since I want to present one  
intermediate approach. That approach is to allow and encourage having  
a more detailed group structure than just few monolithic parties. It  
could be possible e.g. to name different fractions within one major  
party. Some small parties could get together under a common umbrella  
organization. And all the groups could in principle be split into  
smaller groups until they have only two members.

This would lead to a hierarchical structure of parties/ideologies/ 
groupings. It is possible to have a green wing under some right wing  
party, and a right wing section within the green party. It is quite  
easy to calculate proportional representation within such  
hierarchical structure.

The benefits when compared to a partyless system is that now the  
voters can see better who represents what and what such candidates  
there are that are close to my preferences. The representatives also  
show clearly "colour" before the elections and are therefore to some  
extent bound to promoting the kind of policy they said they would  
drive. (It would not be as easy to say different things to each  
audience.)

Just an idea in case you are interested in seeking alternatives to  
strong monolithic parties and total lack of parties.

Juho





		
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