Leverage
Madsen Pirie outlines the problems of proportional representation.
[Emphasis mine.]Proportional representation… brings in the politics of what used to be called the smoke-filled room, of the deals struck in private between the political bosses. The first-past-the-post system may often bring to power parties with less than 50 percent of the popular vote. What it does not do is to give excessive power to very small parties. One has only to look at the disproportionate influence of the extreme orthodox parties in Israel. With only 2 or 3 seats they have exercised a major influence because their votes were needed to build coalitions. It’s possible to have a 10 percent shift in opinion in Scandinavia, and see only some junior agriculture minister swapped for someone from another party.
A democracy should enable people to change their government. It is more about throwing out who they don’t want than about electing the most popular. Proportional representation makes change difficult. Elections tend to bring small adjustments in the balance between the parties, and to result in coalitions of slightly different composition. There are times when a break from the status quo is needed. It happened in Britain in 1945 and in 1979, but it is doubtful that either would have happened under proportional representation.
Proportional representation does not equal proportional political influence. If, in a 100-seat proportional parliament, the three parties hold 49, 49 and 2 seats, the 2-seat party will clearly command massively more than 2 percent of political influence. This is because all parliaments pass laws by simple majority vote. Having the 2 votes to deliver that majority gives a tiny, unpopular part a massively disproportionate political influence.
The interesting question is, which system more often gives voters the policies they want? I don’t know the answer to this, but I suspect first-past-the-post may do better than PR. This is because under FPTP the two main parties put manifestos to the public in the clear expectation that they could win a majority and then be expected to carry out these policies. PR can mean parties abandoning the policies they put to the voters within hours of the election result being announced, as the price of forming a coalition.
Pirrie’s point about voting to keep parties out of government is well-taken too. Supposing a large majority of the electors loathe and despise the Liberal Democrats. Their overriding concern is to exclude the Lib Dems from government at all costs. Under FPTP this electoral wish is very likely to be realized. Under PR it may be impossible. Just because the Lib Dems are the “centre” party does not mean that their policies on certain issues may not be extreme. The UK has had a long debate about Europe, for instance, in which the party system does not easily focus the political issues. But the Lib Dems are generally on the extreme end of one side in this debate, the mirror image of UKIP, and well out of step with broader public opinion. Under PR the UK would never have any referenda about Europe, or even promises of such referenda. In practice the Lib Dems have often backed more recent calls for referenda. I believe they make such calls purely because we have FPTP. If we had PR, with the Lib Dems as permanent coalition partners, they would feel confident that public opinion on this issue could safely be ignored.
What if we had the Swiss system of direct democracy with constant referenda? Any Swiss readers with opinions?
Francis Sedgemore takes a different view…
http://sedgemore.com/2008/02/first-past-the-post-is-the-last-refuge-of-the-lazy-politician/
First past the post is the _first_ refuge of the lazy voter! 😉
Having voted NO in a recent attempt to foist PR onto the voters of Ontario, I may be biased towards FPTP, but retaining the ability to simply vote the bastards out was a key motivator for me.