And Americans only have to pick one out of two opposing parties. How hard can it be?
The problem is two-fold. The majority of Americans are passively informed, and the majority of our news publications are compromised by wealthy owners.
Also, it’s two months, not three. Early voting ballots go out in the end of September.
and the majority of our news publications are compromised by wealthy owners
This is true in the vast majority of European countries too. If anything, you usually find an exception in a public broadcasting channel, which may or may not be influenced by political officials.
Passively informed is an understatement, also we’re supposed to be available to work at a moments call, with limited time off availability. Am I gonna just tell my boss I’m leaving early to go vote?
I mean… Yes???.. If it’s normal for a boss to chew you out for voting, then they’re being more transparent about voter suppression than I thought.
People making a choice isn’t the hard part. All 51 different territories having different rules for their elections is the hard part.
skill issue
Most of the problem States purposely fuck things up.
At least they don’t have 51 different constitutuons. Unlike ESSU.
Technically they do, the US constitution is just the trump card. State constituions in the US are kind of a hot mess.
After enough elections, you get tired of picking the party that aligns with you on 4% of issues because it’s ever so slightly higher than the other party which aligns with you on 0.5%.
You can get rid of your prime ministers pretty easily if they suck. We’re electing what is now essentially a king for at least the next 4 years.
Or hopefully, this time around, a Queen
More education, please. I’m American.
How does this process function?
How does it change the ratchet right effect seen in the US?
In a parliamentary system, Prime Ministers aren’t elected by popular vote, but instead chosen by Parliament. It’s basically like if the Speaker of the House were also the President.
Fun fact: the US system was originally designed to work sort of that way, except they wanted the President to be chosen by all the state legislatures instead of Congress, for extra Federalist separation of powers. That’s what the Electoral College is for: they couldn’t do “one state rep = one vote” because each state has different numbers of constituents per rep and such, so they needed a “compatibility layer.”
Then states immediately fucked up the plan by holding popular votes for Electors instead of having the legislature appoint them, and the rest is history.
Also, in most European states (France is similar to the US in that point), the head of state (president, king) is not the head of government (prime minister, chancellor). The former may be elected by popular vote, and has mainly representative tasks, the latter usually is elected by the parlament and drives the political decisions.
Actually France is a semi-presidential republic, unlike the US. Its President shares the executive power with the Prime Minister.
This makes sense. I’d add that the system of government in the US didn’t function as intended in many facets and almost immediately. In respect to the electoral college today, American exceptionalism prevents us accepting that a direct democracy in choosing our President would sentence us to the mediocrity we fear most. We don’t understand why we’ve an electoral college because we broke it before railroads and the cotton gin.
I appreciate the parliamentary system so far for its simplicity relative the US system. But, the good and bad consequences really depends on the nuance.
What compromise must be reached to prevent another election?
What offices are reelected? The entirety of parliament?
So the UK is probably the simplest to discuss because it doesn’t have a constitution, and this means parliament is sovereign and decides everything by a simple majority vote.
They can pass laws saying that certain things need a super majority, but then they can just turn round and unpass them as well
This means that what you think of as the executive, i.e. the prime minister and all his helpers, can be changed by a simple majority, and an election can be called by one. They don’t need to happen at the same time. The last parliament had three different prime ministers without an election, and it’s common to switch prime ministers well before an election in order to create an incumbent advantage.
This makes sense also. Thank you for teaching.
I’m looked up UK’s parliamentary party composition. There’s three major parties. And, if one adds up all the minor party seats they hold like 7%.
What isn’t this system suffering two-party dichotomy as seen in the US? In this I can quickly understand how deep cultural roots may be a significant factor. But, are there also systemic checks and balances that keep third parties alive? Is it as simple a core difference as ballot access?
It does. The UK sucks too because it doesn’t have proportional representation. But that’s a whole separate problem.
What basically makes it suck a little less than the US is each seat only receives tens of thousands of votes, so it’s possible for local interests to do well in particular seats and get a little bit more diversity.
It does suffer from it.
We are a two party system. It’s just one of them has suffered such a catastrophic loss in vote share that it looks like there’s three main parties.
It’s extremely regional. In most of England it’s Labour vs Tories. In some southern areas it’s Lib Dem vs Tories. In Scotland mostly the SNP vie with Labour for control. Northern Ireland is DUP (Tory aligned, but we only remembered they existed when they had to prop the Tories up) vs Sinn Fein. Wales is mostly Labour vs Tory with Plaid Cymru thrown in.
The minor parties are competitive in a handful of locations, so only Labour and Tories can actually win control.
In a Parliamentary system, you win a seat if enough people in one constituency like you. If the US had a similar system, the ‘Fuck NYC’ party might win upstate New York. In the UK, such local parties include the SNP in Scotland, the Liberal Democrats in southern England, SF and the DUP in Northern Ireland, and PC in Wales. None of them can win across the UK, but they often end up as kingmakers if neither of the big parties can get a majority. If that happens, they can then demand some benefits for the regions they represent.
In parliamentary systems, the government needs to maintain the confidence of the majority. Any elected official can request a vote of confidence be held and, at least in Canada, certain votes are always considered votes of confidence (ex. the government’s budget). If a confidence vote fails, parliament dissolves and can’t do anything until a new parliament is formed. All seats are up for re-election. Since the government can’t do anything until an election is held, they tend to happen very quickly.
The government can prevent a no confidence vote by swaying enough members. It’s a bit of a non-issue if the current government already holds the majority of seats. If they don’t hold a majority, they’ll often make deals with a smaller party in exchange for their confidence. This can be as little as modifying a bill to as much as forming an official coalition and granting members of another party cabinet positions.
I think I’m understanding how it supposed to work: Because it’s a unicameral legislature that appoints the executive, there’s no possibility of checks and balances by bicameral legislature and pseudo-democratic election of executive. So, the larger parties don’t kill off the smaller parties because, if they aren’t part of the majority coalition, they need smaller party favor to in the future be part of the majority coalition.
Is that generally the right idea?
Is it safe to assume that some things, like changing a federal or provincial constitution, would take more than a majority?
Is that generally the right idea?
In practice, that’s generally the idea. Small parties haven’t gone away because larger parties can usually bet on them lending a hand when the large party fails to win a majority, and voters aren’t afraid to vote for a small party when polls are split. However, this is mostly a left wing thing, at least in Canada. Small right wing parties tend to eventually join up with the “big tent” Conservative party. Although it’s mostly because small right wing parties tend to be unable to convince conservative voters to switch from the big party to their little party.
Because it’s a unicameral legislature that appoints the executive, there’s no possibility of checks and balances by bicameral legislature and pseudo-democratic election of executive.
Canada has a bicameral legislature, just like the UK. Our second chamber is the Senate, modelled after the UKs second chamber, The House of Lords. Senators are appointed by the Prime Minister and can serve until 75 (technically they are appointed by the reigning monarch but the constitution requires them to listen to the Prime Minister). All bills must pass a vote in both chambers before it is law.
In practice, the appointed Senators don’t like to vote down bills that have been approved by the elected Members of Parliament since it upsets Canadians who have been asking “what is the point of the senate?” and “why don’t we get rid of it?” for a long time. They will typically only request small changes to avoid loosing their very cushy jobs, though there are times they do play politics. They claim to be the chamber of “sober second thought”, where things are debated on their merits without political fervor. To their credit, most of their debates do end with a unanimous decision.
Is it safe to assume that some things, like changing a federal or provincial constitution, would take more than a majority?
For changing the constitution, it requires approval of Parliament (technically the Senate has a say but at most they can only delay changes for 180 days) and 7 out of 10 provinces. In cases where the change affects only one province, only Parliament that province needs to approve.
There are a few special parts of the constitution that need to be absolutely unanimous: removal of the monarchy, lowering the minumum number of seats a province has in parliment, removing English or French from the offical languages, and changing the composition of the Supreme Court.
The bicameral system operates at the extremes. The Senate is appointed sorta for life like our Supreme Court. But, the Parliament can be dissolved at any time by failure to form a majority coalition.
Super cool.
The best thank you I have is trying to demonstrate depth of understanding.
One purpose of the Senate appears to be to protect the minority from the majority. Another appears to be to protect the majority from the mediocre results of democratic governance. These roles are never safe, politic, or popular. That’s why they’re appointed effectively for life.
I don’t know what’s “best”. But, I think I now better understand why it was designed the way it is. Thank you.
What compromise must be reached to prevent another election?
What offices are reelected? The entirety of parliament?Do you mean what should happen after an election in case no coalition with the majority in the parlament can be formed?
There are also semi-presidential republics, which function differently. In those systems, the US-style president role is split into two different roles, president & prime minister. President handles foreign policy, the army and selects the prime minister with the approval of parliament, and the prime minister handles everything domestic. This separation of roles means the amount of damage an individual can do is much more limited.
Edit: Oh, I missed somebody already talked about the French system, which is a semi-presidential system. Oh well, leaving this up for posterity.
my favorite UK shitpost was liz truss, very funny.
Lasting shorter than a letuce
The US also has 5 times as many people as France.
Europe can have snap elections, but we don’t try and have elections for every European country at once, with two leaders trying desperately to visit each one to win support.
You can have 5 times more people counting votes and organizing things. I dont understand this excuse. Democracy can scale, especially nowadays with technology.
European Parliament elections were like a couple of months ago.
Fuck it. Elections will be a couple of months ago.
Wouldnt mind giving VOLT my ballet again :3
They wouldn’t need to visit each country, they don’t even bother caring about more than 4 states in the US!
That presumes the EU would be dumb enough to try the electoral college on for size again
That’s right we know where that shit came from you HRE and PLC descended fuckers!
Given the events of the last week, I can certainly see them being a bit more picky about lines of sight from nearby tall buildings.
Russia. Try to visit every city in four years.
Some countries end up with a great PM because everyone else was made inelligible. Looking at you, New Zealand.
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It is kinda trolling how you can just call an election when you think your party will do best
France is not the EU. This doesn’t happen in other European countries because there are rules and proper times to make proper campaigns. I don’t even think this is a good thing to joke about Americans because what was done in France was just plain stupid
And Belgium, and Holland, and…
This happens all over europe
Didn’t the Netherlands have a year of five premiers?
Also, Tories, y’all might want to disown them but the Brits are still euros as far as everyone else reckons, save maybe for a particularly unionist canadian or aussie.
Y’all might have rules about it but that doesn’t change that snap elections basically guarantee no incentive to figure anything out because you can always just hit the do-over button until someone’s base is the last one standing without turnout fatigue and someone secures an outright majority or a purely ideological coalition.
The idea of governing coalitions is kinda old fashioned anyways, just hold a STAR or approval vote for each of the cabinet positions including for premier and voilà, now you never have to engage in horse trading just to form a standing government, and the stress of negotiations can be reserved for law making or inter-departmental cabinet affairs.
Per te la Repubblica Italiana è uno scherzo?
I only speak A2 italian and even i understood that rage.
France is great at revolutions.
Some European countries have lower populations than a single US city.
Some European countries are small enough that you can drive the entire length in a single day.
Must be nice to have prime ministers who represent fewer people than the mayor of LA
Don’t be so American aka uneducated. They still have to have a full government and local governments. Just because they’re smaller than Texas doesn’t mean two guys can run the whole society. You guys really deserve Trump.
The United states has federal, state and local governments. And often county governments as well in the more populated states.
Just because i don’t know if Serbia is a representative or parliamentary democracy doesn’t make me uneducated. It means your backwater country is completely unimportant to the global community
Having three levels of government is standard. It’s not a special American thing. Most countries have this outside of the really small ones. Even Serbia does, to a limited extent.
Excluding the de-facto independent province of Kosovo, The country has one autonomous province with its own government, namely Vojvodina in the North. Central Serbia however is not a province and doesn’t have its own government.
The country is further divided into 117 municipalities and 28 cities, all of which have a local government. Six of the largest cities are additionally divided into city municipalities, which also have a local government. This means that depending on where you live in the country, you’ll be subject to somewhere between two and four levels of government.
Sounds unstable and scary.
edit: calm down, I’m sure 90% of the time it’s a much better system than the US, but the way it is described in the title does not sound stable.
Usually we just vote, they find a coalition and it stays that way for a few years
About coalitions: they mean that the parties in power need at least 50%, so if there’s not a single party with over 50% (“absolute majority”) they need a partner. The big parties in my country usually get 20-30%.
Usually we just vote, they find a coalition and it stays that way for a few years
laughs in Italian
I’ve read that in Belgium (the worst offendor in this regard), the regional governments have so much power that not having a national government for a year or so isn’t much of a problem.
Belgium is a federal country, like Germany or the US. The regions have control over some things, not everything. Plus the current federal government stays as caretaker until a new government is formed.
I’d argue that political stability consists of and depends on at least rule of law, separation of powers and democratic representation. The EU and its member still have a lot to progress in this regard, though. Coalition building is kind of a comprise towards building pluralistic quasi-consensus based decision-making.
IMO, coalition political systems have the potential to politically deal better with long-term issues as small parties can influence governments beyond a single term. Green parties, but unfortunately also far-right parties, for example can thus push for their topics.
The US also had a coalition, the National Unity Party during its Civil War.
