[EM] Reply and thanks to Krisfoter re: my paper "Exit from PR"

Fri Jan 13 05:44:59 PST 2017

On 01/05/2017 04:56 AM, Jack Santucci wrote:
> Kristofer,
> 
> Thanks for looking at my paper. I appreciate the feedback. Here are some
> replies in-line. My final question and in-line reply is the most important.
> 
>> failure to find the Condorcet Winner played in repeals. Jack Santucci
> 
>     > argues convincingly that repeals generally are the result of changing
>     > party power constellations:
>     >
>     > http://www.jacksantucci.com/docs/papers/repeal_dec2016.pdf
>     <http://www.jacksantucci.com/docs/papers/repeal_dec2016.pdf>
> 
>     I gave it a quick read (I didn't look through the details of the data
>     points), and it seems like Jack is suggesting that a PR system is
>     unstable if/when the second largest party can't influence legislation,
> 
> 
> You nailed it. I'm glad this came across.
>  
> 
>     I live in Norway, and although it is parliamentary, there are no snap
>     elections. Legislative terms are fixed, and thus the electoral dynamics
>     should be within the scope of the paper, but the description doesn't
>     seem to match my experience.
> 
>     The largest party here is the Labor party, and the second largest is the
>     Conservative party (see e.g.
>     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_parliamentary_election,_2013
>     <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_parliamentary_election,_2013>
>     ).
>     It's very uncommon for both of these parties to be in power at any given
>     time. What tends to happen is either:
> 
>     - One of the two parties form a coalition towards the center and rule as
>     a majority bloc, or
> 
>     - a minority government forms and has to seek support on a case-by-case
>     basis.
> 
> 
> Regarding Norway, can you think of a legislative term in which a third
> or lesser largest party was formally on one side (government or
> opposition), yet voted from time to time with the other?

Recently, the Norwegian government decided to go ahead with a plan to
shift radio from frequency modulation to digital radio (by, if I recall
correctly, no longer issuing spectrum permission certificates for FM).

The executive consists of members of two parties: the Conservative party
and the Progress party, the latter being a populist economically
right-wing party. The last election (in 2013) gave the following results
for the three largest parties by number of votes:

Labor Party: 874769 votes, 55 seats (32.5% of legislature)
Conservative Party: 760232 votes, 48 seats (28.4%)
Progress Party: 463560 votes, 29 seats (17.2%)

So Progress is the third party here and would, as part of the
government, be expected to vote with the government. However, in this
particular issue (pushing radio to digital broadcasting), the
Conservative Party was in favor, but Progress voted against, probably to
mark their populist position, as the radio shift was not all that
popular among the people. See e.g.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/05/norway-become-first-nation-switch-fm-radio-shift-digital/

The decision had very little practical effect, as the majority of the
parliament was in favor of the plan. But this gives one case where
parties might vote against their alignment (government/opposition): when
the party in question feels it's more important to show their position
than to go along with how the other parties of their alignment are voting.

In some situations, the point might be to signal adherence to the
party's values when the party knows that it's cheap to do so, i.e. that
there's no chance the party can change the outcome, so the party won't
rile up the coalition by doing so. In other situations, the party might
simply be ideologically bound irrespective of what degree of power the
party holds. For instance, the Christian Democratic Party can generally
be expected to vote against more permissive laws on abortion no matter
whether that party is in government or opposition, and no matter what
the rest of the legislature would mean.

In the case of Progress, as with most of these "dissenting party"
situations, the dissenting opinion is in the minority, so these are all
examples where the lesser party lacks influence. However, the Progress
case doesn't fully fit, because Progress has influence in the sense that
it is part of the government and colors the government's general policy.

The current government is somewhere in between majority and minority. It
is technically speaking a minority government, as the parties that hold
government positions don't have a majority in the legislature, but on
the other hand, other parties have given the government their support
without participation in the government/cabinet. To quote Wikipedia,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_parliamentary_election,_2013:

"Among the smaller parties, the centrist Liberal Party and Christian
Democrats emerged holding the balance of power. Both had campaigned for
a change in government. On 30 September the two parties announced that
they would support a minority coalition of the Conservative and Progress
parties, but they would not participate in the cabinet themselves."

> Your minority government example above seems closest to the scenarios in
> my paper. Has the case-by-case support-seeking ever involved different
> parties depending on the case?

That's my general impression, although I don't have any concrete data
available at the moment.

The impression I have is that there are generally three situations the
minority government can find itself in for any particular piece of
legislation:

- It's a centrist government and support is so balanced that it can
choose to go left or go right (in essence holding the balance of power),
- Opinion space is multidimensional and the government aligns itself
with the majority direction according to the important axis of the case
at hand (e.g. decentralization vs centralization on an agrarian policy
matter, left vs right on an economic matter),
- It's in an actual minority on a particular case but manages to change
the support by negotiation or logrolling.

>     So there has to be some additional assumption that holds for American
>     congressional/presidential politics but not parliamentary ones with
>     fixed terms; or that holds for STV-type PR but not party list PR. Or
>     perhaps the argument mainly holds for a transition period between
>     two-party and multiparty rule?
> 
> 
> I see that the Norwegian Storting chooses the executive. Does the
> government have exclusive power to introduce legislation? And can you
> recall instances in which governments have fallen, then led to new
> governing coalitions?

Private member bills are allowed, but they very rarely pass, even
in a minority government situation. However, that doesn't mean the
government has effective control. Instead, the government becomes pretty
good at anticipating what the parliament would pass, or taking failed PM
bills as indication of where the parliament is going. The ECPR paper
goes into some detail about this - see page 10.

Governments have fallen and led to new governing coalitions. For instance:

(Quoting from Wikipedia,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einar_Gerhardsen#Domestic_and_Foreign_Policy_from_1945)

"In November 1962 an accident in which 21 miners died occurred in the
Kings Bay coal mine on Spitsbergen in the Svalbard archipelago. In the
aftermath, the Gerhardsen government was accused of not complying with
laws enacted by parliament. In the summer of 1963 a vote of no
confidence passed with the support of the Socialist People's Party and a
centre-right minority coalition government was formed, under John Lyng.
Although this new government lasted only three weeks, until the
Socialist People's Party realigned itself with Labour, it formed the
basis for an opposition victory under the leadership of Per Borten at
the 1965 elections. "

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kjell_Magne_Bondevik#As_Prime_Minister)

"Bondevik's first cabinet was defeated by a motion of no confidence in
March 2000 as a result of a dispute over the construction of gas-fired
power stations[10] and was replaced by a Labour Party government led by
Jens Stoltenberg until their defeat in the 2001 parliamentary election.
Bondevik then formed his second cabinet, consisting of the Christian
Democratic Party, the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party, which
took office on 19 October 2001."

The Gerhardsen government was a majority government, while the Bondevik
government was a minority centrist government.

> 
> Thanks so much,
> Jack
> 
> 
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