[EM] Possibly more stable consensus government

[Raph Frank]

On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 9:16 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm
> However, if you need supermajority support for decisions, then you have to
> have something to put in place when the supermajority support isn't there.

One option is to select 2 PMs.  That is what they do in Northern Ireland.

The cabinet is decided by the d'Hondt method (so proportional) and
there is 1 PM (actually first minister) from each community.

 So, the vote would work something like

 - vote for PM (including cabinet) combination
 -- if a candidate gets 60%, he is appointed PM, finish

 - Round 2
 -- Anyone with more than 1/3 of the vote gets nominated as joint PM
 -- Keep voting until 2 get 1/3 or more
 -- If that fails, then if 1 gets 1/3, he can take office, as half a PM
 (maybe have previous PM as other one)
 -- Each PM appoints half of the office
 --- The PM who got the most votes has to option to go first or second
 --- Each picks a department alternatively
 -- Department of finance might be different

You could have more departments than cabinet positions.  Each PM gets
to appoint half the seats to anyone he likes, and then can assign any
departments he picked any way he likes.

The more departments, the more even the balance of power between the 2 PMs.

You could also split them based on the relative support of the 2 PMs,
but that would mean constant adjustment as support goes up an down.

Each PM would require 1/3 support to stay in office (voting for both
would count as 1/2 a vote each)

It might also be required that both submit  their cabinet member
choices and if either can't get 1/3 support, they are considered to
have lost confidence.

> So a supermajority requirement upon forming the government and a minority
> for a vote of no confidence would be a recipe for instability (and probably
> rule by the bureaucracy).

I was thinking 50% to form after an election and 60% to vote no confidence.

Another option is that if no government is formed by 60%, the old one
stays in power and a new election is automatically triggered within 30
days.

After that election, if nobody has 60%, then 50% is sufficient, but
maybe if that happens the term is reduced by 50%.

No matter how the government is picked, 60% would be required to
replace it with a different one.

> And if it no
> longer has consensus backing, why not just use a majority system?

It would be more stable.

> I think Simmons had some ideas about this in a voting method context -
> basically, that the method would default to a lottery if the participants
> couldn't agree among themselves, and then every party would have an
> incentive to reach consensus because the lottery is ultimately unbiased, if
> providing poor results. But that might be a little too radical for
> parliamentary politics :-)

Right that is an option.

For example,

1/3: new election
2/3: Each legislator nominates a candidate and then a random
legislator is picked and his choice wins[*]

 [*] could use something like IRV to eliminate very small options (say < 20%)

> Well, I'd like the imagined system to represent more than a majority. The
> betrayal incentives you mention would make it more responsive to change, but
> at the cost of representing less.

I guess it depends on the rules for motions of no confidence.

If the government has to maintain 60%, then you can't betray, but it
is potentially less stable.

> I think parliamentary rules tend to be that the party or coalition that
> wants to form a government submits a proposal with the composition of the
> entire government, and then it passes by majority support - and that
> negotiations happen outside of the assembly among members of the prospective
> coalition beforehand. I'm not sure about this, though.

That is effectively what happens.

In Ireland, it is 2 stage though.  The PM (Taoiseach), is nominated by
majority vote.

Once appointed by the President, he proposes a cabinet to the Dail and
needs a majority vote to get them approved.

> Right, that's a good point. Party discipline tends to be very strong here,
> so I didn't think of that.
The problem with requiring 60% to take down the government, means you
have to swing 20% of the house to cause a collapse.  That is a shift
of power to the executive.