[Adverblessly]

Here in Israel with proportional representation, every small party has outsized power since every one of them has enough power to vote down the current government by joining hands with the opposition. As a result, decisions that are undesirable by the majority are consistently made.

We are currently after an election but before forming a new government and as part of the coalition negotiations the upcoming government is trying to pass several laws to weaken Israel's democracy, including one that effectively strips the Supreme Court of its ability to override non-constitutional[1] laws and directives (and let's not mention the personal legislation).

I suspect then that the problem is not specifically in the voting system, and the voting system at best can be a contributing factor.

[1] - Technically Israel doesn't have a constitution and instead has "Basic Laws" that serve a similar function, let's not get into that :)

[version_five]

I subscribe to the idea that the most important aspect of democracy is to be able to kick out the incumbents (and less important is that every opinion gets direct representation). I think for all the challenges in the US, it does this quite well.

[danaris]

I beg your pardon?

Re-election rates for incumbents in the US Congress are very high [0]. In the House, they haven't dropped below 80% for at least 60 years. The Senate is slightly less stable, but still way above 60% ever since Reagan was elected.

[0] https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/reelection-ra...

[rayiner]

But that’s because people like their representative. It’s everyone else’s representative they don’t like.

[BeFlatXIII]

People love wasteful spending on jobs programs.

[nicoburns]

The problem you have in the US is that you only have one alternative choice, so if neither choice is good, then you have no recourse

[version_five]

There are two components though. One is the ability to choose the party, the other is the pressure on a party to adjust so that it appeals to enough voters to elect it. If a party doesn't need to adjust to get some votes, as in proportional representation, then we (potentially) end up with coalitions that live or die based on narrow issues, which is what the original post I replied to alluded to. On the other hand, if you have two parties that fight over the votes, you come closer to having parties that optimize for broad appeal.

There are lots of problems with democracy (just fewer than the other potential systems as has famously been said). Imo a two party first past the post system can actually help regularize the will of the people by forcing parties to align with actually electable platforms and not dig in on single issues. Lots more to say about that, I just want to counter the usual rhetoric about how proportional representation or similar systems are somehow automatically better

[ashwagary]

Put simply, "when most of the thieving stopped, the thriving stopped."

Britain faltering is not "strange" and has little to do with political party, rather its ability to use violence to extract capital from productive outside entities and support its welfare state is nearing an end.

The Economist has a long history of avoiding the elephant in the room because the people running it are hopelessly biased.

[sparks1970]

Who are these productive outside entities who's capital is being violently extracted and why is this system (whatever it is) coming to an end?

I'm genuinely interested but you don't support your assertion with any evidence.

[MrMan]

I think they are talking about the long tail of colonialism maybe. I locate Britain's suicide as very very recent - when they left the EU.

[alltheworlds]

Please could you link that aritcle?

[helloworld11]

This isn't quite right. U.S politics is much less party-centric than it is in many other countries. Basically, though you've got a vast majority of candidates for X or Y office who are either democrats or republicans, their platform tendencies can be quite diverse, even though they often go against the grain of their own party's nominal positions. It's somewhat subtle, but this detail of U.S party politics makes for a strong multi-party diversity of candidates even though there are formally only two parties that mean anything for votes.

This is how you can have, for example, a surprisingly moderate republican senator like Susan Collins, sharing the same party with someone like Trump. And then also in the same party, a Rand Paul type.

[robbiep]

I put to you that it in fact does this terribly, because if the government shits itself midway through term there is no mechanism for removal or new elections, as there are in most other countries. Wait out the 4 year term (or two year cycle) and deal with the tribalism

[BeFlatXIII]

The upside is that the regular cycle means elections are at predictable intervals. US mid-term elections already have low turnout. Snap elections after a vote of no confidence only would decrease turnout.

[dragonwriter]

> I subscribe to the idea that the most important aspect of democracy is to be able to kick out the incumbents

In think you are wrong on both points. The most important aspect of democracy is that it produces a government that reflects the popular will; being able to throw out the incumbents—at which the US does exceptionally badly—has some instrumental value to that, but isn’t an independent goal. And the pervasive use of FPTP elections is a big part of why the US is bad both at tossing incumbents and at providing effectivelt representative government.

[foolswisdom]

I agree. And I'll point out that in the US 200 years ago, the only federal office directly voted on was house of representatives (not the senate, not the president).

[mushbino]

In the US? I believe the average age of a representative is 75 and most of them have been there for a very long time.

[justin66]

> average age of a representative is 75

Come on. It's 58. I didn't even have to type to check this, just "Search Google for..."

[binarycrusader]

Congress? Sure. But the Senate? Median age there is ~69 years. Median term length? Nearly 14 years!

https://infogalactic.com/info/List_of_current_United_States_...

[AnimalMuppet]

OK, but members of the House are "representatives"; members of the Senate are "senators". So if you're going to regard mushbino's statement as referring to only one side, it has to be referring to the House.

[justin66]

It would be a bit odd if the median term length were much longer, and if you look at an actuarial table you'll see why. I guess that's one advantage to electing the ancient: built-in term limits.

[Animats]

> Here in Israel with proportional representation, every small party has outsized power since every one of them has enough power to vote down the current government by joining hands with the opposition.

Now Benjamin Netanyahu is soon to be back in power. He's generally acknowledged to be a crook, but nobody else seems to be able to assemble a governing coalition. He's already been Prime Minister for 15 years.

[aswanson]

Yeah, that guy has been around since forever. The only one I can think of that's been in power longer is putin.

[ValentineC]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_state_leaders_...

[pantalaimon]

Is there a minimum quorum a party has to reach before they can enter parliament?

In Germany they need to get at least 5% of the votes. This was introduced because many small parties had made the parliament of the Weimar Republik unstable.

[captaincrowbar]

When New Zealand went shopping for a new electoral system in the 1990s, we ended up with one based closely on the German model, including the 5% threshold. The Israeli parliament was frequently pointed to as an Awful Warning of what would happen if we din't have the threshold.

[lambertsimnel]

Until 1992, Israel had a threshold of only 1%. Since then it has been repeatedly increased, and is now 3.25%. The parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe (CoE) recommends such thresholds be no more than 3%. [0] (Many member states defy this recommendation. Israel is considered non-European for the CoE's purposes, and therefore isn't a member state, but it is an observer. New Zealand is neither a member state nor an observer, but it does participate in some CoE conventions.)

The aforementioned thresholds are "formal" thresholds, but there are also "effective" thresholds, arising from district magnitude. In the absence of a single "at-large" (nationwide, in this context) district, districts need to be large to bring the effective threshold down even to 5%. (It depends on the seat-allocation method, but it could be about twenty representatives per district for a 5% effective threshold, and over thirty for a 3% effective threshold.)

Where the effective threshold is higher than the formal threshold, the latter has no effect. But where a parliament has districts with different numbers of representatives, districts can have different effective thresholds, so any formal threshold could have an effect in some districts and not in others. I believe this is the case in Czechia, Poland and Turkey (but I don't know whether the formal thresholds there apply nationally or at district level). On the other hand, the Netherlands has no formal threshold and a uniform effective threshold of only 0.67%. The effective threshold of Israel's Knesset would be less than 1%, but still greater than the Netherlands'.

[0] "58. In well-established democracies, there should be no thresholds higher than 3% during the parliamentary elections. It should thus be possible to express a maximum number of opinions. Excluding numerous groups of people from the right to be represented is detrimental to a democratic system. In well-established democracies, a balance has to be found between fair representation of views in the community and effectiveness in parliament and government." http://assembly.coe.int/nw/xml/XRef/Xref-XML2HTML-en.asp?fil...

[alltheworlds]

> Here in Israel with proportional representation, every small party has outsized power since every one of them has enough power to vote down the current government by joining hands with the opposition. As a result, decisions that are undesirable by the majority are consistently made.

Could you explain this a bit more? Surely if they are proportionally elected and have the numbers to outvote the current government, then they're representing the majority views, not minority?

In the UK, our government gets elected by winning 40% of the vote and therefore almost every decision it takes is against the wishes of the majority of voters.

PR should result in less of it, not more.

[nine_k]

A simple majority may not be enough in certain cases.

Let's imagine a parliament with parties with these shares of seats (proportional to electoral votes): A = 50%, B = 33%, C = 15%, D = 2%. (Note: Not an actual Israeli parliament!)

Even for cases where a simple majority is sufficient, A would be able to overpower all other parties combined, had it one more representative. But with precisely 50% (or, funnier yet, something like 49.75%), it has to seek a coalition with at least one other party, even if every A representative is going to vote the same way (which is not a given). The smallest party, D, voting in an agreement with A, can turn tables with a guarantee; D's representatives will be courted by every other party, but by A's most of all.

For cases where a qualified majority, like 2/3, is required, a coalition is a must. A + C would narrowly miss it, and again D has an outsized influence. A + B would definitely make it, but usually A and B are opposed to each other. Thus the votes of C are worth more than their modest 15% of electorate represented.

OTOH B + C + D is enough to block any bill requiring a simple majority.

So C and D, which collectively represent 17% of electorate, will be able to command serious concessions from both A and B, which collectively represent 83%, but are usually opposed to each other.

(And no, something like A = 87% may be even worse.)

[dragonwriter]

> Here in Israel with proportional representation, every small party has outsized power since every one of them has enough power to vote down the current government by joining hands with the opposition.

Unless there are no minor parties outside of government, isn’t that offset by the risk of what they currently get from being in government being lost while the rest of government continues by bringing in one or more currently-out-of-government minor parties in exchange for prioritizing some of their priorities?

(Anyhow, there’s been extensive comparative study across established democracies and a number of positive outcomes, including greater public satisfaction with government, track with greater effecrivd proportionality.

[Adverblessly]

You are correct in theory, it is certainly a technical possibility to avoid such a problem. In practice, this isn't done and isn't possible since the major factions are too at odds with each other to create such a situation. In particular, everyone in the center-left knows that there's no point in trying to cooperate with Binyamin Netanyahu because he is guaranteed to betray them and not uphold his part of whatever bargain they make. Everyone in the right knows that they can't cooperate with anyone outside of Binyamin Netanyahu because they'll be accused of being evil terrorist supporting leftists and will lose many votes in the next election.

The point I was making is that it is actually this dynamic (and the fact that it is legitimized enough that it is able to continue) that is causing issues and that whatever is creating it is the real problem. Proportional representation may be the superior system, but it is not the cure for the problems democracies are facing and so the specific system in use should not be blamed as the root cause of these problems and it is then in my opinion a contributing factor at best.

[dragonwriter]

> In particular, everyone in the center-left knows that there's no point in trying to cooperate with Binyamin Netanyahu because he is guaranteed to betray them and not uphold his part of whatever bargain they make. Everyone in the right knows that they can't cooperate with anyone outside of Binyamin Netanyahu because they'll be accused of being evil terrorist supporting leftists and will lose many votes in the next election.

So, by your description, due to the polarizing influence of a particular personality (a—and I get that Netanyahu’s political longevity makes this east to forget—transitory situation) you have, despite (but not because of proportional representation) the dynamics of a two-party system with potentially influential potential defectors from a majority, rather than the normal dynamics of multiparty coalition building.

Guess what, that’s a fairly common state of FPTP independent of personalities; the potential defectors just aren’t conveniently marked with a different party label than the solid partisans.

[lambertsimnel]

> Here in Israel with proportional representation, every small party has outsized power since every one of them has enough power to vote down the current government by joining hands with the opposition.

If small parties' power is such a problem, why don't the big parties form another grand coalition? Or form Scandinavian-style pre-election pacts with the small parties?

[Edited to acknowledge grand coalitions aren't a foreign concept in Israel]

[foolswisdom]

Simple, because you aren't going to form a coalition with parties radically different than yours, you choose those that are mostly aligned with you. But now any party within the coalition, even a small one, can force the coalition to listen to them, because the alternative is to form a coalition with parties even more at odds.

[lambertsimnel]

That's the dilemma the big parties face. By choosing not to deal with each other, they empower small parties. Without actual majority support, they (rightly) have to compromise with somebody.

[jrochkind1]

What are the radical differences between Likud and Yesh Atid?

(In fact, they did form a government coalition in 2013, which lasted about two years. And then there was the 2020, where the two biggest parties in that election, Likud and Blue and White (of which Yesh Atid was a major constituent), formed a government. So it happens. I'm not sure the current two biggest parties, Likud and Yesh Atid, have a radical difference in policy platform. (the most radical things the newly elected coalition government is putting on the agenda are not really from Likus). They certainly are not going to form a government together this time, but I don't think it's because they are radically different, exactly.).

[solatic]

You're making the common mistake that these parties are about their platforms, not their leaders. It's not so much a difference between Likud and Yesh Atid so much as a difference between Netanyahu and Lapid, with Netanyahu's struggles to avoid a corruption verdict and Lapid's insistence that elected politicians must not continue to serve after indictment.

Lapid and other center-opposition leaders have all indicated a willingness to negotiate with a Likud without Netanyahu at the helm.

[Adverblessly]

To add to this (which I feel is also a partial answer to lambertsimnel's original question here), if we look at politics as an iterated prisoner's dillema, the center-left parties have chosen a "tit for tat" strategy whereas Binyamin Netanyahu has chosen an "always defect" strategy.

Of particular note, at the start of the corona crisis, there have already been several failed elections. At the time, Benny Ganz's party ran together with Yesh Atid (and Telem) in a combined list, but since Yesh Atid refused to cooperate with Binyamin Netanyahu (after their own bad expereinces), Benny Ganz chose to split up the combined party and join Binyamin Netanyahu in the coalition, citing the importance of having a stable government for these difficult times (of COVID).

The coalition agreement stipulated that Binyamin Netanyahu will be the Prime Minister for the first two years and Benny Ganz for the final two years (elections in Israel are theoretically every 4 years). However, after two years, Binyamin Netanyahu disbanded the government (by manufacturing a disagreement so that the coalition could not vote together). Benny Ganz then learned his lesson.

(There are of course more disagreements and issues and a lot more nuance then what I can present in a short comment on an online forum, but hopefully this is a useful example to understand the sort of issues we are having)

Going back to my original post, I'm trying to say that the fact that whatever factors have lead to this sort of rotten situation (and that we stay in that situation continually) are the real problem, and not specifically the voting system. Even if we accept that proportional representation is the best system ever, it is not on its own enough to prevent the sorts of problems you see lately in democracies around the world.

[jrochkind1]

I was replying to the comment, "you aren't going to form a coalition with parties radically different than yours."

But yes, it seems politics world-wide, the US certainly included, is increasingly more about personality, affect and identity/community -- and sheer competition for power between different players -- than it is about policy platform, agreed. Sometimes between parties which are actually not that different from each other. I think we may be agreeing with each other.

I think the reason that a "national unity" coalition government in Israel seems so unlikely currently may not in fact be that the major parties "are radically different from each other". (The coalitions formed may be, because of the outsized influence of minority parties on the flanks necessary to build the coalition, which is the whole topic of this thread -- why don't the major parties form a coalition to avoid that? I suggest the reason they don't is not that they are radically different from each other, disagreeing with the comment I was replying to)

[TapWaterBandit]

This is interesting. Does Israel have parliamentary supremacy? In NZ we have MMP which is proportional but Supreme Court rulings on law do no "override" action as parliament is still supreme. So it can't override laws perse.

[dkjaudyeqooe]

If you have a constitution (I'm not sure what happened after you rejected Australia's, but you're still in there and it's not too late to join) then the Supreme Court can override laws which it deems unconstitutional.

[TapWaterBandit]

You are correct and it looks like I misunderstood my own countries system of government. Thank for the correction :)

[8note]

The majority can be struck down by a group of minorities? Or the plurality?

[lambertsimnel]

I think the issue is that recent governing coalitions' majorities in the Knesset (over and above what they need to appoint a prime minister) is smaller than an individual small party. Consequently, an individual small party could unilaterally bring down the government (or threaten to).

[dkjaudyeqooe]

No, he's complaining that minority parties can join with the opposition to form a majority and consequently bring down the government (this can happen when government forms a minority government or relies on minority parties to form a government).

A shocking example of the perils of democracy.

[Taniwha]

if the minority parties work together with the opposition to form a majority representing a majority of the public surely that's a great example of real democracy in action, it may be a 'peril' to the governing party .... but at that point they represent a minority of the populous - this is not 'shocking' this is how a democratic country should behave

I live in New Zealand we have a proportional representative voting system (MPP), since we changed we've had coalitions and minority governments .... but we haven't had dysfunction or anarchy, largely I think because our parties know that if they go beyond the pale they wont get reelected

[Adverblessly]

The problem is not that the minority parties can cooperate with the opposition to bring down the current government, that's indeed a good thing. The problem is that every coalition in recent years has been so narrow that any individual party in the coalition, no matter how small, is still large enough to bring down the coalition on their own.

And my point in general was not that proportional represntation is bad because it has this specific failure mode, but rather that our political climate has put us in the situation where the failure mode happens consistently, and so the real problem democracies are facing (in my opinion) are the factors that lead to this situation rather than specifically the voting system (which at best is a contributing factor).

> our parties know that if they go beyond the pale they wont get reelected

Ours know that going beyond the pale won't cause them any problems, especially for the smaller parties ;)