I write this for an audience which I know spans at least four continents and I do so, writing from the jurisdiction which has the longest continuously sitting parliament in the world (NSW). Right from the get go, I need to declare that I like the system of government that we have in Australia and I think that it is among the best in the world. I also happen to think that we have some utterly terrible corruption in the political parties but that's not actually the fault of the parliaments themselves.
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Matt Whitman of the Ten Minute Bible Hour Youtube channel among other things¹, came up with what I think is an excellent suggestion:
Idea for making things better: If someone is on the ballot in all 50 states, they should participate in the presidential debates whether I like their ideas or not. This would force us (voters) to engage in full-spectrum thought instead of simplistic 1 and 0 thought.
- Matt Whitman on Twitter, 19th Sep 2020.
The reason why I think that this is an excellent suggestion is that as with so many things in life, the world is far more complex than most of us have the ability to imagine and so when you arrive at a particular position, it is usually because of an equally complex process of thought, which is influenced by myriad factors. When it comes to electing someone for a position in which the executive of a nation is singularly vested, then that process should demand a complex process of thought; and the only way that such a process can happen is if there is an complex process of inputs from which the electorate has the ability to make such thoughts.
Of course, as we live in a world which is run by powerful people who have vested interests in making people not think at all, then the forces that be, do not want the status quo to change. If you can make the voters engage in really dumb thought, then its like combining a positive simplistic 1 and a negative simplistic 1. Simple maths tells us that +1 -1 = 0.
There was a really curious reply to this, which looked at the pragmatic outcomes of this:
No, they really shouldn't be. Getting on the ballot is strictly a $$ issue. People would start buying their way into the national spotlight. The 2 party system has its flaws, but it's infinitely better than parliamentary systems. The parties are basically single-issue lobbyists.
- Dominic on Twitter, 19th Sep 2020.
I think that this is flawed but nonetheless completely valid. His warning about people buying their way into the national spotlight is arguably what the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave did; however that was enabled precisely because of the political machines which form the two party system in America. All of this made me want to pull apart the ideas here. I tend to look at the Anglosphere because these are the parliaments that I am most familiar with (being an Anglophone).
You have to be really careful when you talk about what the two party system actually is. In the contexts of the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand etc. the parliaments themselves are really quite indifferent and agnostic when it comes to the flavour of the people that sit in the seats. In the case of the United Kingdom and New Zealand, there isn't even a formal constitution; so whatever conception that exists surrounding the political parties, must exist from the outside. In the case of the United States and Australia which do have written constitutions, those constitutions are completely silent on the subject; mostly because at the time of inception of those countries, no formal political parties either existed or had a sufficiently large enough hold over the game of politics that they needed to be mentioned.
All of this should lead us to a rather obvious question; namely would the various parliaments operate without any political parties? In the cases of the United States, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand, the answer is 'yes'. Those countries proved that having no political parties is no impediment whatsoever to the functioning of government.
Representative parliamentary democracy (which is what all of these countries have in common) fills up the seats in the parliaments and the executive, on an electoral basis which is actually independent of the political parties. The people who fill those seats can in fact come from a party, no party, or perhaps a formal melding of parties.
The two party system if it is in fact to be considered as a thing, needs to be viewed through the lens of cold reality and not the gamification of politics that everyone in the grandstands has made it. The rules of the game itself need to be examined.
There are in fact only two conditions which happen after an election. Either you win the seat, or you do not. When the music stops, you either have a seat, or you do not.
As there are only two possible conditions, then you should expect that interested parties will organise themselves in order to win those seats. In an Australian House of Representatives seat, unless the seat is as safe as houses, then you can end up with loads of various groups competing for those seats. The rules which determine how those seats are allocated will naturally determine how many different kinds of voices occupy those seats; we will come back to that later.
Once the various seats have been filled, there are in fact only two conditions which happen. Governments and majorities are formed out of the majority of members in the room (this also applies to the office of the President where the number of seats in the room is 1). There are only two possible condition. Either you are in the majority, or not. You are either in the government, which is formed out of the majority of members, or you are not.
If you go back to the rules which govern how those seats and majorities are formed, there are no explicit rules at all. If there was a truly partiless parliament, then that majority of seats would need to be formed whenever any piece of legislation was deliberated upon. That process exists. In Westminster Parliaments, that process is called a 'division' and there is always a mad dash of people running through the building to appear on the floors of the various parliaments whenever this happens. Depending on the jurisdiction in the United States, this is often known as the less pretentious name of a 'vote'.
Yet again for pieces of legislation, there are only two possible conditions. Either the legislation is passed with an 'aye' or a 'yay', or not.
This is important to bear in mind here. The parliaments themselves don't care about what kind of political parties are used to load up the seats with. The constitutions also don't care about what kind of arguments happen in the process of hammering legislation into shape. All of this is political overlay; which actually sits outside of the rules of parliaments.
The reason why Australia, New Zealand, and Germany, have more voices which speak into those parliaments, is to do with the rules under which members of their parliaments are selected.
Political scientist Maurice Duverger noted that Single Member Districts tended towards two party politics; this is known as Duverger's Law. Australia, New Zealand, and Germany, have elements in their selection processes for members which elect multiple members at once. Where you have proportional representation, the various seats are allocated on a proportional basis of the number of votes that someone has won². Australia also operates with preferential voting which means that someone's vote in the ballot box is transferred if their favoured candidate fails to garner enough votes. That means that for Australia at least, every member of the House of Representatives has been elected with at least 50% of the votes, and in the places with proportional representation they have all been elected with an appropriate quota of votes.
Australia, New Zealand, and Germany, all have a plurality of voices speaking into the chambers and that is a function of the vote counting process which puts the members there.
None of this actually addresses the central question of whether or not a two party system is a good idea. That I fear is a matter of opinion; which is very much subject to your own personal biases. I personally think that having lots of different voices speaking into parliaments is a far better idea than voting systems which narrow the kinds of discussions which can be had, and I also think that having big party machines which gamify the political process for mostly private purposes, is itself quite terrible.
There is also one issue that I personally find quite appalling; which is split into two parts:
A political party apart from representing a narrower range of interests that presumably everyone has to sign up for, invariably will have some kind of party discipline system which ensures that people all vote the same way. If an individual dares to think too far outside of the party's intellectual box, they may find themselves disendorsed by the party. That means that matters of conscience and matters of singular harm, can be completely trampled by the big party machines.
I also wonder if in fact, the two party system is genuinely real. In the United States, the Republican Party has had recent factions such as the Tea Party, the Freedom Caucus, and Donald Trump. This means that instead of being wrangled on the floor of parliaments, legislation is more likely to be wrangled and hammered out in secret. I do not think that this is good for transparency of democracy. In Australia, New Zealand, and Germany, where we you have parties in coalition to form government and parties who are not in the government but who hold the balance of power and the necessary wedge votes within parliaments, then you get open dissent on the floors of parliaments to legislation and the necessary discussion which happens, is a matter of public record.
All of this brings me one of the reasons why I think that multi-party parliamentary systems and in particular the ones in Australia, New Zealand and Germany are better than the United States or the United Kingdom.
Even despite single issue parties, or rather precisely because of them, there is more full-spectrum thought instead of simplistic 1 and 0 thought. There have been parties and politicians in Australia which I have found to be utterly repugnant and repulsive but I still think that their ideas should be aired in public to at least give us the chance to test those ideas and make our choices. Also, by having those different voices, the end results of legislation are also not 1 or 0 but tend towards more compromise and negotiation.
I think that we are better off for it and still flawed anyway.
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