[EM] "Adversary Politics"

[Richard Lung]

Prof. Finer, in Adversary Politics and Electoral Reform, blamed the fptp system on the Westminster Punch and Judy show. If so, it has as harmful effect on international relations.
As someone said, the Ukraine is a problem of the Wests own making. Today on GB News, a top NATO official characterised the Russian leader as like Hitler in the 1930s.  
He is treated as an adversary. A more sympathetic comparison might be the Cuban missile crisis, with NATO like the Russians seeking to introduce weapons on their capitalist rivals doorstep.
Peace requires power-sharing where a nation like the Ukraine is partly pro-Russian and partly pro-Western. Peace cannot happen where the election is a struggle for a single leader, a president, either pro-Russian or pro-Western, winner-takes all.

The US executive election of one person, who appoints a Cabinet, depends on special interest sponsors, like the nuclear fission industry. The president would be more independent for the public interest, as the chair of, say, a 5-member STV constituency, representing four corners and center of the republic.


Why ranked choice voting progresses in the US may be because it has now become obvious to many, including politicians, how divisive is the all-or-nothing single preference vote. A candidate has to be nice to other candidates to pick up their voters later preferences. But IRV or the Alternative Vote make little difference to a two-party system. Statistician John Curtice showed how little, by summing the Scottish local by-elections, which use AV. Australians say AV just puts the post in first past the post.

IRV might in theory change the parties in the two-party system, but it does not change the two party system, itself, contending a monopolistic single member system.

Regards,
Richard Lung.