[jonex]

It's the difference between proportional voting vs winner takes it all. In the latter case you can't really hold politicians accountable, as you will have to choose between effectively throwing your vote away or voting for the one opposition candidate, that often will be just as bad.

While the UK have some level of representativeness, each circuit has a winner takes it all structure, making change quite hard to achieve on a larger scale.

[HPsquared]

This might be a "grass is greener" thing. Do elected representatives actually have higher approval rating, or enact policies that better fit with public opinion, under proportional systems? Sure it'd probably make things a little better, but it won't actually solve anything hard, I think. All Western countries are struggling (and mostly failing) to deal with the same problems regardless of details like electoral system.

[ghusto]

With proportionate representation you get what _should_ happen, in my opinion, which is sometimes nothing. If the coalition can't decide on something, then it doesn't happen, which is the correct outcome because not enough people agree about it. It represents the people (who also can not agree on it).

The alternative is a decision that most people don't agree with.

[BobaFloutist]

That sounds like kind of a mirror of some of peoples biggest complaints regarding bureaucracy and committees. Deadlock can not only be worse than an imperfect solution, it can be weaponized by a minority to exert outsized power and extract otherwise unthinkable concessions. We see this sometimes in the US House, where more fringe or radical groups within parties can block the literally functioning of the actual country, safe in their assumptions that the two parties will not form a majority coalition and that the parties as a whole will take more damage from the fallout than the radical groups.

I'm not saying that that makes the system worse, mind you. I'm not even saying you're wrong that it's a better system. I just think anyone who thinks any one system is the easy, obvious fix to fair and just representational government is either shortsighted, or has different priorities than I do.

[KoolKat23]

That's ironically just something the British government used to pride themselves on, Pragmatism.

If it's important enough or dysfunctional enough a quick decision will be taken. There's clearly deadlock in first past post too, look at the US, if neither party advocates for it at all, it gets nowhere.

[HPsquared]

My view is it's always organised elites making the decisions, no matter the system. Nominally left-wing parties often make brazen right-wing moves, and vice-versa. The votes that matter are those of the MPs, Congress members etc. which are always influenced by a range of factors and organised factions. That's the actual decision-making mechanism.

[actionfromafar]

It’s the organized elites, true, but they aren’t a monolithic block either. In a proportional system they also must spread their influence on many parties. This is a good thing. With a single party there is a greater risk of a cordyceps infection taking over, see Republicans.

[nostrademons]

IMHO the simple change that would have the biggest effect on the American political system would be to require Congresspeople to live full-time in their districts and conduct all official business over videoconference and e-mail. Lots of behavioral science has shown that the biggest generator of trust and allegiance is physical proximity and face-to-face interactions. Make all reps have their face to face interactions with their constituents and maybe they will actually start representing their constituents. It also makes lobbying a lot less economical (instead of hiring one lobbyist that can have lunch with 435 representatives, you would need 435 lobbyists, or at least 435 plane trips) and gerrymandering a bit less practical (there's a decent chance the rep would no longer live in the district and be forced to give up their seat).

That and ensuring a bidirectional feedback mechanism between the executive and legislative branch, so that laws that aren't enforced by an administration fall off the books, and presidents that don't enforce the laws lose their job. Right now, the legal corpus of the U.S. is a constantly-accreting body, which means that no matter what the President wants to do, they can find some law somewhere to justify it, and then anything they don't want to do, they just say "We don't have the resources to enforce this". This gives the President all the power. They should be a servant to the law, not its arbiter.

[actionfromafar]

With a Supreme Court like this one, what’s on the books don’t matter. They’ll find the interpretation.

[jacquesm]

They are influenced by money.

[gargan]

It's the opposite of what you say. Proportional representation isn't accountable because you don't know what coalition you're voting for - coalitions are done in backrooms after the election. Winner takes all is more accountable because the coalitions are done before the election (aka political parties). Parties are made up of different factions and they're agreed before the election.

[phatfish]

I guess you don't live in the UK, because winner takes all is far worse for backroom deals. The deals just end up being between factions within the same party!

Deals and bargaining all happen AFTER a party takes power and completely hidden until a government can't pass their own bills like the Labour attempt to reform welfare.

With proportional representation the deals are made in order to form a government, BEFORE it has power, and are between separate political parties.

Sure there may be agreements that are not all made public, but these are much harder to keep in the "backroom".

[4ndrewl]

You take what happened in the two elections previously (and I know technically we don't vote for PMs, but they drive the agenda of the party).

2015 we voted for Cameron, ended up with May then Johnson 2019 we voted for Johnson, ended up with Truss(!!) then Sunak(!)

[TheOtherHobbes]

This time everyone voted for Starmer and got friend-of-Epstein Mandelson via McSweeney as a cut-out.

PMs don't drive the agenda. The UK is one of the most corrupt developed countries in the world. The people driving the agenda are billionaire and multi-millionaire donors.

PM is a sales job, not a strategy job, and increasingly ridiculous PMs have been selected because the donors have had enough of liberal democracy as a concept. If it stops working - which it pretty much has - there's going to be less resistance to removing it altogether.

Which is why there's resistance to Digital ID. There's widespread distrust - with reason - of the political establishment right across the divide.

[4ndrewl]

Slightly different point really - every leader has someone behind them (which is why we have the term Thatcherism, not Josephism).

The point really was about parties themselves being coalitions in all but name.

[ghusto]

I think he's right, actually. It rings true with what we see here in the Netherlands. People don't feel like they're "throwing their vote away" if they vote for a minor party, so politicians can't have a laid back attitude.

[galangalalgol]

There are efforts to make this happen in the us starting locally and working up. The states are left to decide how they implement elections on their own with a couple of exceptions. There is a tragedy of the commons aspect to it though, as if some states adopt proportional representation but not others the ones that do not adopt it gain advantage. Ranked choice voting is taking hold much faster than pr in the us, and it is pretty slow too. It can happen though. Both are viewed as being left leaning, which doesn't really make sense to me.

[AlecSchueler]

Yep and the coalitions are famous for exemplifying the concept of "poldering:" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polder_model

[crazygringo]

If their minor party doesn't end up as part of the governing coalition, there's no sense in which people feel like their vote wound up having no effect?

[KoolKat23]

That's not really true. It just means there is a gradient of success rather than outright success or loss. Particular portions of what you voted for may be successful. First past the post means you take it all or leave it all, policywise, small things are likely to fall through the cracks.

[ghssds]

Don't vote. By voting, you partake in a system unable to give most people effective representation. By voting, you ostensibly accept your own alienation.

[wizzwizz4]

This is bad advice. By voting, you accept nothing. By not voting, you merely lose the small power that voting grants you. (Why do you think people are working so hard to disenfranchise voters in the US?)

Construct better systems, by all means, but don't just ignore the system that exists.