Analysts point to the asymmetry in US policy. Comparative Studies of the Republican Party Place On the far right of the western political spectrum, the Democrats are closer to the center. But the escalating division within the United States added to the feeling of a zero-sum conflict, which can be seen in the sentiment and horror of the deadly January 6 attack. Trump may blame some of the blame for the combustible atmosphere surrounding Washington, but the problems run deeper, down to the old pillars of the American political experience.
For Dortman, the Trump presidency and its violent code of conduct has damaged the need for fundamental political reform. An angry, conspiratorial political genre supported by a minority of voters accounted for half of the two-party system. “We need a center-right party that believes in free, fair and legitimate elections,” Drutmann told Today’s WorldView. “This party can only exist if the Republican Party is divided into parts.”
Dortman is not alone in this view. According to a Gallup poll Released Monday, nearly 62 percent of Americans want a third-party appearance – the highest number since Gallup began asking about a third party in 2003 – while only a third of Americans said they believed the current two parties adequately represented the audience.
Of course, there is no consensus on what this viable third party should be and certainly no clear path to take over. One can actually see American politics roughly split between four factions, with the rival progressive and middle wings of the Democrats on the one hand, and the Trumpian wings of the Republicans on the other. But the whole structure of the US electoral system dampens the political divide. The practice of electoral district manipulation, in which state governments are drawing districts in such a way as to skew voting in favor of the ruling party, has made competitive elections more difficult.
Like Drutman sees thatOnly in the United States can pluralist democracy flourish at the head of a new electoral system that allows for more accurate voter reflection. He is an advocate of the proportional representation voting forms found in many other countries, where elections allocate seats in the national legislature based on the vote share won by that particular party. Proportional representation, or PR voting, differs in its implementation from country to country, but version Drutman loves the most It is a combination of Irish multi-seat districts and voting by ranking, which allows voters to do so The order of their preference for the list of candidates It helps to ensure that every ballot has weight.
There can be flaws – Israel’s astonishing proportional representation system has put the country in its own perilous election cycle in recent years. But scholars tend to agree that it produces healthier democratic results. Parliamentary democracies with the public relations elections and stable multi-party coalition governments, typical of the North, generate a broader consensus on welfare policies that address inequality, exclusion and social justice, Harvard political scientist Pippa Norris wrote“This avoids the divisive, hostile politics, winner takes all, and the social inequality that characterizes majoritarian systems.”
There are many other countries that hold “first after” elections like the United States. In Canada and Britain, calls for proportional representation routinely come from parties that win a much larger share of the total vote than their number of seats in Parliament reflects. But multiparty parliamentary systems can still produce the kind of conciliatory politics that is difficult to imagine in Washington’s current party climate.
“Incentives to compromise or cooperate with political opponents are absent in a two-party system, the winner takes all – while cooperation between opposing parties through coalition governments, which is the usual ruling arrangement in countries with proportional voting systems, promotes a gentler, nicer policy,” Political scientists noted Noam Gidron, James Adams, and Will Horn. They added that “without reforming the basic features of the electoral system in the United States, it is likely that party competition based on pluralism, and winner takes all, will continue to maintain political hostility.”
In an intellectual exercise, Dortmann ventured into today’s WorldView a scenario in which the United States had something like a hybrid German system, in which the Bundestag, or national parliament, is elected through a combination of proportional representation and pluralistic voting. The hard-line Trumpian wing of the Republicans in this situation will be closer to the extreme right-wing anti-establishment alternative, the alternative for Germany, or the alternative for Germany. “They will be a fringe, far-right party that will be removed from power, or at best a junior coalition partner,” said Drutmann.
Instead, the political system has been functionally enabled in the United States De facto minority rule, A situation that led to a volatile partisan division and distorted national policy priorities. at Opinion article for the Washington Post last weekDortman wrote that some of the proposed policy reforms around the vote would ultimately be in the interest of ordinary Republicans and force them to stop “chasing a shrinking audience that is being mobilized by increasingly extremist threat rhetoric.”
Renewing American democracy seems like a daunting undertaking, but Dortman argues that nothing in the constitution precludes fundamental electoral reforms. Statewide in a few places, ranked selection voting has actually been implemented. Democrats are pushing through a major bill, He called it Law for the People, Would standardize election-related rules, establish independent redistricting committees at the state level, make automatic voter registration, and campaign financing more transparent, among other provisions. Another piece of legislation introduced by Rep. Don Bayer (Democrat, Virginia). Transforming the House of Representatives into a chamber elected by new multi-seat constituencies With the vote of choice ranked.
Drutman cites the experience of New Zealand, which after years of public discontent scrapped its first model A form of proportional representation in 1993 – We didn’t look back. “It’s one of those issues that once you think about it for a while, it makes sense,” he said. “But we don’t think about that.”
0 Comments