I think in any coalition, if the parties negotiated right, everyone can implement part of the promises. This of course is more difficult if the coalitioners come from opposite sides of the spectrum, or if there are several dwarf parties that can blackmail a narrow coalition (see Italy).
On the other hand, if there is a narrower party spectrum, the voter's choice may not be between partial implementation of election promises and opposition, but voting for a party with mere hints of one's preferred policies or not vote at all. (For the record, this is my current "choice" at home.) *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Do people vote for parties on a single issue?
Well those people who vote for extremist right wing parties that have policies of deporting Asians/Turks/A.random.foreigner aren't voting for them because they have a good, rounded, transport policy. Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
Silly me, and here I am thinking this whole time that they just wanted the trains to run on time. "Schiller sprach zu Goethe, Steck in dem Arsch die Flöte! Goethe sagte zu Schiller, Mein Arsch ist kein Triller!"
Do people vote for parties on a single issue? No, but nowadays the parties compromise on most issues and as I said, I already don't agree with the parties before the compromises. Probably its me, but I guess I'm not alone. Most conservative voters will tell you the same as the CDU has given up conservatism on nearly every field apart from immigration and foreign policy, which are the only two, where I'm left of the center. I prefer a party to go to oppostion than to change its entire soul. Der Amerikaner ist die Orchidee unter den MenschenVolker Pispers
In particular, from what I cauht from your comments in other threads, it appears your concept of economy is not the 'the freeer the market, the better' dogma of today, and doesn't exactly map to the views of our industrial-capitalist Swedish conservative, Starvid, either. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
I think if you want decisions to match the political will of the majority, in the end Swiss style referendums are better then vesting the power with representatives. A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
I disagree that 5 parties are better than 4. The more parties the more the parties have to compromise.
They will have to compromise more publicly, but I am not sure that they will have to compromise more in absolute terms. If the new party represents a genuine interest group that is sufficiently distinct from the core voters of the existing parties, then the existing parties would have to compromise with that group anyway (or attempt to exclude them from political influence altogether and bet that they will hold their noses and vote for them anyway because the alternative is worse).
The difference is that with a separate party, those compromises get more out in the open and the interest group that the new party represents is at least represented by people they actually agree with, rather than people who have already made the compromises before the election.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
That's true. But I would like to know which compromises they are willing to accept before I vote.
There is, of course, a tradeoff between the variety of positions that candidates can take before the election and the ability of candidates to stick to those positions after the election.
And while I can in principle sympathise with the notion that a few big parties will mean that the deals that are brokered before the election will have a better chance of being implemented, this can be both an asset and a liability in terms of representation. It's cool when you happen to largely agree with the compromises that are made. It's a lot less cool when you are effectively presented with a fait accompli that you don't much care for.
More importantly, unless you are prepared to invest a not inconsiderable time in semi-professional politics, you really have only two ways to influence a political party: You can join a party you support (and leave it if they sell out on an issue you find to be of overriding importance), or you can stop voting for them.
The problem with having only a few big parties thus becomes that it effectively prevents voters from punishing their party for making compromises they don't like. After all, if you can only choose between CDU and SPD, you can't very well vote for someone else because SPD sold one of your ideals down the river in a compromise with the CDU - since that someone else would be CDU, who are even worse. So you hold your nose and vote for the SPD while they continue to sell you down the river.
If, on the other hand, you have a continuum of parties, you can shuffle your vote around within the bloc to reflect your support for the stances the different parties take in the internal compromises of the bloc, without giving the other bloc (who are presumably even worse than your own, or you would have switched) an advantage.
Roughly speaking, in the short term the same compromises are going to get made, whether there are more parties or fewer (unless you propose to use the few, big parties model to effectively disenfranchise a large part of the population - the way they do it on the other side of the Pond). So having fewer parties just means that the voters have a harder time booting out the leadership of their bloc. I'm not sure that's desirable. To put it mildly.
Regarding the FDP sell-out, I can't say I'm surprised. Neoliberalism isn't so much an ideology as it's an excuse to further narrow special interests - a scam, in other words - so one should not be surprised when neoliberal politicians cater to special interests. That's a feature, not a bug.
From the above, it appears to me that Martin's real problem as a conservative is lack of diversification on the Right, he can't punish the CDU for compromising with the SPD :-) *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
In the FDP's case, I wouldn't call it sell-out, because I think the special interests came before neoliberalism
It's my impression that it always does. That was kinda my point: Neoliberalism is a political cover for catering to special interests. Thus, one should not be surprised when neoliberals cater to special interests. And if those special interests aren't your own, well it's not like you didn't know in advance that they are motivated more by expediency than principle.
Then I will always lose, but will have the impression it was fair ;-) Der Amerikaner ist die Orchidee unter den MenschenVolker Pispers
