The Electoral System - II

 

Last Saturday I posted my first in a series of three posts on the electoral system. I claimed that the two-party system we have in Malta is as much a product of our political history (particularly the post-war Labour Party's size and orientation) as of the electoral system itself (which does not exclude third parties but makes it difficult for them to break in, and hastens their exit when they're in decline. Fausto made an interesting comment about the system actually encouraging splits, which I think it does, although only under certain conditions and not to the same extent that a pure PR system would.

Another part of Fausto's comment leads me to today's subject:

It is difficult, if not impossible, to determine the direction of causality, but I think it is significant that in British political system the two main parties resembled each other the most in the 1950s (at the time of "Butskellism") when the two party system was then at its height.

Now, I am no great admirer of 'Butskellism' as such. However, I'm a great admirer of political moderation (which is what Butskellism was at that time), and I believe that this is what a two-party system delivers. To be electable, the two parties will have to stick to the centre-ground (whatever that may be at that particular point in time). Presenting a radical programme will mean almost certain defeat, although parties may still do it when they think they have a superiour idea that will triumph in the longer term. If it continues to lose them elections, however, they will eventually be forced to abandon it.

It could be argued that a two-coalition system can achieve this just as well as a two-party system. I believe it can do so only to the extent that the coalitions behave like parties (as the Conservative-Liberal Unionist coalition of the late 19th and early 20th centuries did in the UK). Seconda Repubblica style coalitions are unstable and tend to lead to situations where the tail wags the dog. The very fact that extremist parties of all hues end up being incorporated and legitimized is, I think, a bad thing in itself. It would be much better, in my humble opinion, if their voters are recruited by the moderate parties, who would take whatever legitimate interests they may have into account in order to acquire and keep their support.

I think that the arguments against a pure PR system, in particular, are extremely strong. Such a system does not guarantee that electors will have a genuine choice between potential governments. They would be able to affect the performance of individual parties but the formation of a government would be in the hands of coalition-brokers. In many cases, the result is that most governments include the same centrist party (or two) plus one or more of the others. Combined with a party-list system (as it often is) the result is that the electors can choose neither their individual represenatives nor their government.

A pure first-past-the-post sytem, while having lots of advantages, does not offer the electorate the same freedom in choosing their individual representatives that our STV system does. In our system, the parties don't just present you with one candidate, take it or leave it. Moreover, there are no real 'safe seats' even if you're running in one of your party's strongholds, because you can always be defeated by a rival from your own party. Indeed, on an individual candidate level the competition in our elections is between candidates from the same party. An added advantage is that, rather than wasting their last few votes, the electors of the other party can also have a small say in choosing the last of the other party's successful candidates, as I pointed out here. In other words, your vote counts, as it should.

Nor, as I argued last Saturday, does the system exclude third parties. If the electorate wants one badly enough, it can always get it, even through second and lower preferences (although this would normally require explicit cooperation between parties). Indeed, I view this as the only possible chink in the system's armour. I would be much happier if there were a threshold (say 7-10%) for a party to have representatives in Parliament, even if they can elect candidates from the individual districts. This would not lock out genuinely popular movements but would keep the fringe where it belongs.

Indeed, for all its faults, I think that our system is one of the best of those I have studied. This may not exactly have come about by design, but it is so nevertheless. I believe that the poor quality of our politicians may be attributable not to the system itself but to the fact that we're probably not the most sophisticated group of electors on the planet.