| > The fact that "it is good when government is deadlocked and ineffective" is an actual argument people use is baffling to me I mean.. I don't think its good per se. Just better than the alternative in a society that's already extremely polarized and more or less evenly split. Unless that changes IMHO ideally we'd at least want as much decision making to move to the state level. > I believe that FPTP inevitably leads to extreme polarization, There aren't that many datapoints e.g. it hasn't yet happened in Britain (it sort of did in France, although it's more complicated) and I'm not that sure it was entirely true even in the US between 1940 and 1980 either. So I think its hard to prove empirically. > So it becomes beneficial to use what government power you might have in order to hinder your opponent's Is it radically different in multiparty systems, though? If you are outside the government coalition you have similar incentives. I wonder how effective would the Northern Ireland consensus/power-sharing based system if it became more widespread. On one hand it did seemingly led to a huge reduction in political polarization. On the other hand it's not particularly efficient and it's unlikely that any country would implement outside of extreme circumstances/being force to by a third party (unlike in Lebanon where it has failed entirely the conflict in NI was entirely political rather than religious) |
Granted, I don't follow it closely, but from what discourse I've observed things on the other side of the pond don't seem quite harmonious to me.
> I'm not that sure it was entirely true even in the US between 1940 and 1980 either.
Which does not necessarily disprove the argument. Things were arguably less polarized and better working in the past, but my argument is exactly that the political incentives of a two-party system will eventually cause things to degenerate. The fact that things were once "reasonable politics" but have, over the course of decades, degenerated to "our policy is whatever is the opposite of their policy" is exactly the issue.
> Is it radically different in multiparty systems, though? If you are outside the government coalition you have similar incentives.
Similar, yes, but not necessarily the most effective political move.
If a disenfranchised voter can vote for a third (or fourth) party without their vote "being wasted", a strategizing disenfranchised voter no longer "has" to vote for a "least-worst" option in order to avoid the "most-worst" option.
In that case, painting your opponent as "even worse" does not necessarily win you votes. If it does, it likely also gives votes to the other parties in your political sphere, and if they get enough votes to make a coalition government without you, why should they bother to include someone whose primary policy is being a troublemaker?
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To be clear, no system is perfect. I don't know what the best is, I just know it's not FPTP. The primary argument I am trying to make is that the polarization we see now is the inevitable (long-term) outcome of a two-party system, and that a two-party system is the inevitable outcome of winner-takes-all FPTP.