Fred-Rik
I am Anglo? I'm not sure where you got this from. No English blood in me at all. And I've been quite clear that Canada's Westminster system is not the penultimate system of governance humanity can ever invent. All I said is that, about a year ago, I started believing that the Canadan system is more effective than the American system. The author of that poltical science book I mentioned last post seems to agree with that assertion; he wrote that book in 2014.
In the past couple of posts, you mentioned FPTP causes voters to game their vote. I agree. We really don't know the true support of Canada's minor parties because some of their supporters cast their vote to their second or third favorite party--lest the arch enemy party wins the election. A ranked ballot would give a few more seats to the NDP and Greem Party (and fewer to the Liberals). This would better reflect the will of the people. A ranked ballot will produce a result closer to a PR result. Even though a ranked ballots falls short, this system is better than how seats are allocated now.
Regardless, Canada ranks in the top ten countries in terms of all the parameters that define a healthy nation. We cannot take this statistic away because Canada is not in the category of governance by proportional representation.
You mentioned that the Slovak Repubilc is not a proportional representation at all. Here is the wikipedia phrase on that matter:
"Slovakia's highest legislative body is the 150-seat unicameral National Council of the Slovak Republic (Národná rada Slovenskej republiky). Delegates are elected for a four-year term on the basis of proportional representation."
The president is elected in a FPTP style election, coupled with a run-off of the two top contenders. But that president has little formal power. It's really a hard stretch to cast SR into the group of FPTP elections.
So I thought I had better check on your assertion of the Czech Republic on Wikipedia:
"The members of the Chamber of Deputies are elected for a four-year term by proportional representation, with a 5% election threshold. There are 14 voting districts, identical to the country's administrative regions. The Chamber of Deputies, the successor to the Czech National Council, has the powers and responsibilities of the now defunct federal parliament of the former Czechoslovakia. The members of the Senate are elected in single-seat constituencies by two-round runoff voting for a six-year term, with one-third elected every even year in the autumn."
The Chamber is a basic PR system. THe Senate is FPTP, but the run-off election takes much of the gaming away. Voters can vote their first choice in the first round--and not fear their vote would be effectively going to their worst choice. I would call the CR system a 75% PR hybrid.
Both CR and SR are closer to PR than Germany, from what I have read in these Wiki articles in the past few days.
Of course, you can claim to know more about this than I. But I'll stick the Wiki articles.
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Over the past two years, I have engaged with many political writers on Medium. My sense is that most of them have never been on the inside of a political party. They do not understand the local forces between aspiring candidates, the active supporters, and the not-so-active supporters. They do not understand the forces between the low ranking representatives of the party and the high ranking members.
In other words, these writers are perplexed at why the people they have voted for cannot wave a magic wand and build (or fight for) the world the politician and writer both want. So these writers write internet articles in hopes they can somehow bend the will of the politicians who failed them.
On one hand, Fred-Rik, you are different than these writers. But on the other hand, you are still naive about the internal competition within any political party for who has status, influence, and power in the party. The party people may be civil to each, for an openly disunited party has trouble winning elections. But beneath all the cheerleading and rallying and smiling, the culture is underlying dysfunctional as the amibitous members jostle each other for a higher position in the party. And that dysfunction affects the quality within in the party, then in governance, and finally in society
at-large.
In my last Medium article, I gave four points to build a better democracy. I doubt it very much that even social democracies like Norway employ those points in their deliberations. Rather the champions of the ideas for Norway have their preference already cast in stone and only concede or compromise as little as possible as the process grinds its way through the realm PR politics.
Admittedly I might be wrong. The back political rooms of Norway might already be employing these four points. But I haven't been in the back rooms of Norwegian political meetings. Neither have you.
But I've been to more than a few in Canada. It is far from an open and transparent process, with all sorts of subtle subtergue and intrigue. One never really knows where the truth lies.
THere's nothing that I have read that PR politicians put their first loyalty to the country and its citizens rather than to the party. In that sense, PR politicians are just the same as FPTP politicians.
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I have had a quite a few Medium people challege me on the TDG. They ask some good questions. I try to answer them as best I can.
I believe you and I have had discussions for the past two years. You have not asked any good questions about the TDG. While I have enjoyed challenging on the assertion that PR is the highest form of governance humanity can ever invent, it seems your mind is pretty closed to spend a couple of hours with my book (which is available for a free read).
And my last article did not inspire you.
