[Election-Methods] Partisan Politics

[Juho Laatu]

--- Fred Gohlke <fredgohlke at verizon.net> wrote:

> It took 200-odd years for what De
> Tocqueville called The 
> Great Experiment to reach its current state of
> disrepair.  It will 
> probably take as long before we learn to implement a
> more democratic 
> form of government.  Most of that time will be spent
> examining ideas.

Few comments on the ability of old and large systems
to fix their internal problems.

You may be a bit pessimistic when assuming that it
would take 200 years to change. I think changes will
materialize when the time is right and the opinions
and proposals have matured. But it is very difficult
to make the changes happen now or in any planned
schedule.

You may be a bit optimistic when you assume that the
system would strive to seek some more democratic model
to adopt. I think the history shows that organizations
(especially large ones) tend to corrupt in time. One
could thus as weel expect corruption to grow.

According to this theory the chnages would come in the
form of some sort of revolutions. Whether one calls
these steps the death of the old system and the birth
of the new one or as a change of the old system is a
matter of taste.

In USA there have been maybe two major changes. The
first one was the birth of the nation some 200 years
ago. That can be called a revolution and a birth of a
new system. The second one was the civil war. That
introduced some clear changes to how the country was
managed. Also that event could be called a revolution,
but now we are talking about just changing or
continuation of the old system (at least from the
northern point of view).

There have been also some other improvements like
evolving towards equal rights to all. Maybe also such
events could be called small revolutions.

>From this perspective, maybe also the next changes in
the democratic system would require strong campaigns
by the citizen (and a small revolution). There should
maybe be one simple theme around which people could
gather (in the spirit of "I have a dream").

When changing the rules on how political leaders will
be elected one must also take into account that the
current establishment always has clear reasons to
oppose any changes. That is because the current system
elected them and gave them power and any changes in
that system (that obviously worked well for them (and
for the country too, as they see it)) would probably
make their position weaker.

To summarize this. Maybe the change will come when
clear and simplifying reasonig is found and the
citizens have some basic reason (dissatisfaction) to
change the current system. That could happen any time,
but could also take a long time.

At the very moment there is some considerable
dissatisfaction on how the system works. But that
could be easily forgotten again after the next
elections. It is too difficult to try to guess what
will happen. But it is easier to say which change
patterns might have the potential to materialize.

Juho






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