Atlantic Sentinel

Tag: Multiparty Democracy

  • Catalan Socialists Learn from Their Mistakes

    Salvador Illa
    Catalan Socialist Party leader Salvador Illa listens to his Basque counterpart, Eneko Andueza, making a speech, January 16 (Socialistas Vascos)

    Catalonia’s Socialists missed an opportunity after the last election to split up the region’s left- and right-wing independence parties. The moderate Republican Left, which supports a Socialist government nationally, had tired of the hardliners in Together for Catalonia (Junts), but local Socialist Party leader Salvador Illa wouldn’t accept anything short of the presidency for himself.

    “Why should I invest a person that I defeated at the polls?” he remarked of the Republican party leader, Pere Aragonès.

    Illa won 50,000 more votes than the Republicans, but both parties got 33 out of 135 seats. Aragonès claimed the presidency too, but he had two paths to a majority, not one. Illa’s intransigence drove the Republicans into the arms of Junts.

    But the coalition proved short-lived and Illa has recently set his ego aside. (more…)

  • The Center Did Not Hold in France

    Paris France
    Skyline of Paris, France at night, February 9, 2019 (Unsplash/Sabina Fratila)

    My hunch was correct after all. Before the French elections, I argued the most likely outcome was Emmanuel Macron winning a second term as president but losing his majority in the National Assembly and being forced into a coalition with the center-right.

    After the presidential election, Macron’s liberals moved up in the polls. They also did reasonably well in the opening round of the legislative elections a week ago. It gave this Macronist hope that the president might defend his majority after all.

    But no. His alliance, Together, is projected to fall to 234 seats, down from the 350 it won in 2017 and 55 short of a majority.

    So what happens next? (more…)

  • Two Parties May Be Better Than Three

    Louvre Paris France
    The Louvre in Paris, France, February 9, 2020 (Unsplash/Louis Paulin)

    I once hailed the French voting model as an alternative to America’s. Unlike the first-past-the-post system, which encourages voters to sort into two major parties lest their vote go wasted, France’s two-round voting system encourages temporary, not permanent polarization. Multiple parties thrive in the first round. Voters choose between two finalists in the second.

    Until 2017, third parties seldom made the runoffs. But they played an important role by conditioning their support for one of the two major parties on policies or cabinet posts.

    Under François Hollande, several members of the Radical Left and Greens served in a Socialist-led government. Nicolas Sarkozy had ministers from small centrist and center-right parties who backed him in the presidential election.

    But what if the major parties don’t qualify for the runoffs at all? That has now happened in two presidential elections in a row, and it calls the stabilizing effect of the two-round voting system into question. (more…)

  • Three Political Traditions Explain the French Election

    Charles de Gaulle
    French president Charles de Gaulle visits the Netherlands, March 16, 1963 (Anefo/Eric Koch)

    France’s divisions haven’t healed. Like five years ago, Emmanuel Macron, the candidate of the cities, the optimists, the outward-looking and the university-educated, faces Marine Le Pen, the candidate of the small towns, the worried, the inward-looking and the working class, in the second and final voting round of the presidential election.

    The surprise of the first round was Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s strong third-place finish with 22 percent support, behind Le Pen’s 23 percent and Macron’s 28.

    Rather than a country split in two, France turns out to have three political blocs of almost equal size.

    This is a throwback to earlier times. Historian Sudhir Hazareesingh writes that France had three political families until Charles de Gaulle replaced proportional representation with a two-round voting system in 1958 that encouraged the formation of two parties. The center-right united into what is now the Republican party. The Communists were eclipsed by the Socialists on the left. (more…)

  • Political Fragmentation Hasn’t Weakened Germany

    German parliament Berlin
    Debate in the plenary chamber of the German parliament in Berlin, July 1, 2020 (Pixabay)

    When Germany’s Christian Democrats and Social Democrats — who frequently split up to 90 percent of the votes between them during the Cold War era — fell to a combined 50 percent support in the federal election in September, alarm bells went off across the Atlantic.

    The New York Times saw “messier politics” and “weaker leadership” ahead. The Washington Post feared a period of “limbo” as a result of Germany’s “Dutchification”. Harold James, a professor at Princeton University, lamented that Germany had acquired “the most destructive features of politics in neighboring countries.” The consequences, he argued, would be “complexity,” “endless negotiations” and “inevitably complicated coalition agreements.” Damon Linker, a columnist for The Week, predicted forming a “stable” government would be “challenging” and “decisive action” more difficult.

    Some people never learn. We saw the same reaction after the European elections in 2019, and again when Stefan Löfven lost his parliamentary majority in Sweden this summer. Yet Christian Democrats, Social Democrats and liberals were able to quickly form a working majority in the European Parliament and Löfven remains prime minister.

    Germany’s liberals and Greens — who can help either the Christian Democrats or Social Democrats to a majority — have already done a deal between them, clearing the biggest hurdle to a three-party coalition. Negotiations are now underway. Olaf Scholz, the Social Democratic Party leader, could become chancellor in a few weeks. So much for the “limbo” we were told to expect. (more…)

  • Political Fragmentation Isn’t the Problem

    Swedish parliament Stockholm
    Parliament House in Stockholm, Sweden (iStock/Roland Lundgren)

    Another political crisis in Europe, another chance to beat on multiparty democracy.

    It’s not like the two-party systems of America and Britain are crisis-free, yet journalists in those countries have a tendency to find complex causes for their own political problems while reducing continental Europe’s to “fragmentation”.

    Today’s example: Bloomberg, which argues the “turmoil” in Sweden “reflects a shifting political landscape” and this is a “warning to other countries with key elections looming — like Germany and France — where fractured politics have also upended old alliances.” (more…)

  • Fragmented Dutch Parliament Lacks Experience

    Dutch parliament The Hague
    Dutch lawmakers listen to a debate in parliament in The Hague, September 29, 2020 (Tweede Kamer)

    Regular readers know I’m not a fan of two-party democracy. It reduces politics to simplistic either-or choices. It encourages parties to radicalize their supporters and appeal to the extremes rather than the center. Multiparty democracy, by contrast, engenders moderation and compromise.

    Multiparty democracies are superior on almost every metric: their voters show higher trust in government and each other; their electoral systems are more responsive to changes in public opinion; their economies are more competitive and their societies less divisive.

    But there is a tradeoff. When voters aren’t loyal — which is itself a good thing; they should judge parties on their performance — turnover in parliament can be high, which robs it of experience and expertise. (more…)

  • Netanyahu’s Rivals Must Do Deal with Arab Parties

    Israeli parliament Jerusalem
    Debating chamber of the Israeli Knesset in Jerusalem, May 30, 2012 (Israeli Ministry of Tourism/Noam Chen)

    Israel’s center-left has a chance to eject Benjamin Netanyahu after twelve years of right-wing government — if they are willing to make a deal with Arab parties.

    Deals with non-Zionist parties are almost taboo in Israel, which is 75 percent Jewish. This permanently excludes the 20 percent of Israelis who are Arab from power.

    Little wonder Arab turnout is consistently low and fell below 50 percent on Tuesday, according to estimates. (more…)

  • Spanish Tribulations in Multiparty Democracy

    Pablo Iglesias
    Spanish Podemos party leader Pablo Iglesias speaks at a rally in Madrid, May 20, 2017 (Podemos)

    The rise of new parties on the left, right and center has created new opportunities in Spain: a left-wing minority government that usually relies on the support of Basque and Catalan separatists in Congress, but on rare occasions takes votes from the far-right newcomer Vox (Voice).

    It has also created crises, currently in the regions of Madrid and Murcia, where the once-dominant People’s Party (PP) has called snap elections in a bid to shore up the right-wing vote. (more…)

  • Far Right Comes to Sánchez’ Rescue in Spain

    Santiago Abascal
    Spanish Vox party leader Santiago Abascal gives a speech in Valencia, February 22, 2018 (Vox España)

    Sometimes bad people do good things. Spain’s neo-Francoist party Vox (Voice) has given Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez a majority for his plan to spend Spain’s €140 billion share of the EU’s €750 billion coronavirus recovery fund.

    Vox had criticized the plan for its “opaque” oversight during a debate in Congress, but when it became clear the conservative People’s Party (PP) would vote against it, the far right spied an opportunity.

    “We regret that in the worst moment of these 42 years of democracy, PP is not the opposition but the absolute destruction,” a Vox spokesman thundered.

    That’s a little rich coming from a party that wants to reverse Spain’s democratization in important ways, including by abolishing regional autonomies, teaching a more Franco-friendly version of twentieth-century history in middle schools and weakening women’s rights.

    But it is also an example of how multiparty democracy can make a country more governable. (more…)

  • Don’t Count on Republicans to Suddenly See the Light

    United States Capitol Washington
    United States Capitol in Washington DC, January 15, 2017 (DoD/William Lockwood)

    American centrists are optimistic. With Republicans likely to retain control of the Senate for at least the first two years of Joe Biden’s presidency — unless Democrats manage to flip not one, but two Georgia Senate seats in January — a new era of bipartisanship may be on the horizon.

    Joe Manchin, the conservative Democratic senator from West Virginia, tells The New York Times he sees a “golden opportunity to bring the country back together and for us to work in the middle.”

    James M. Curry and Frances E. Lee of the moderate center-right Niskanen Center argue unified government is overrated. Most legislation is passed with overwhelming bipartisan support.

    Scott Lincicome of the conservative anti-Trump website The Dispatch finds that the economy tends to perform better when the parties split Congress and the presidency. Fortune magazine agrees.

    This is the triumph of hope over experience. (more…)

  • Democratic Recriminations Argue for Switch to Multiparty System

    United States Capitol Washington
    Skyline of Washington DC at night (Shutterstock)

    Democrats in the United States were hoping for more than a simple victory over Donald Trump. Polls had suggested they could win in a landslide.

    That didn’t happen. Joe Biden decisively beat the president by more than six million votes, or a margin of 4 points, but Democrats lost seats in the House of Representatives and failed to take the majority from Republicans in the Senate.

    Democrats also lost seats in state houses, giving Republicans control of redistricting in most states; a power they could use to make it even more difficult for Democrats to win a majority of the seats even when they win a majority of the votes. (Districts are withdrawn every ten years following the Census.) (more…)

  • How to Restore American Democracy After Trump

    United States Capitol Washington
    United States Capitol in Washington DC (Shutterstock/Brandon Bourdages)

    Donald Trump’s presidency has exposed and exacerbated fundamental weaknesses in American democracy. He must be voted out in November, but that won’t be enough.

    If Democrats gain power, they must make five reforms to restore fairness, restore balance between the three branches of government and reverse the polarization that has made it impossible for the two parties to compromise on everything from climate change to gun laws to health care to immigration:

    1. Abolish the Electoral College.
    2. Add states.
    3. Put Congress first.
    4. Make it easier to remove the president.
    5. Abolish the two parties. (more…)

  • America’s Rigid Two-Party System Is What Its Founders Feared

    United States Capitol Washington
    The United States Capitol in Washington DC, December 10, 2019 (Unsplash/Julien Gaud)

    Lee Drutman, a political scientist, argues in The Atlantic that America has become the rigid two-party system its founders feared.

    The authors of America’s Constitution wanted to make it impossible for a partisan majority to ever unite and take control of the government, which it could then use to oppress the minority.

    The fragile consent of the governed would break down, and violence and authoritarianism would follow. This was how previous republics had fallen into civil wars and the Framers were intent on learning from history, not repeating its mistakes.

    They separated powers across competing institutions to prevent any one faction from dominating others. But they did not plan for the emergence of political parties, let alone just two parties. (more…)

  • Election Shows Britain Needs Electoral Reform

    British parliament London
    Westminster Palace in London, England (Unsplash/Matt Milton)

    The outcome of Britain’s general election on Thursday underscores the need for electoral reform.

    Support for the Conservatives rose from 42.4 to 43.6 percent, but in terms of seats they went up from 317 (48.7 percent) to 365 (56.2 percent) out of 650.

    Martin Sandbu of the Financial Times argues this hardly qualifies as a landslide. Boris Johnson “played the electoral system better” better than his predecessor, Theresa May. (more…)