Ban political parties?

[kabbes]

Blimey, I was surprised to see my name as the starter of a thread at the top of the new posts list.

Anyway, I take on board the points about how to stop factions of like-minded individuals joining together. My response: I don't care if like-minded individuals have loose alliances. That's politics. What I don't want is a system where you vote for a party rather than an individual and where your representative has to do whatever his or her party tells him to do, on the pain of dire consequences for his future employment prospects if he does not.

I think it is quite easy to draw the line. It's quite clear what currently constitutes a political party. Just ban that. No party name on ballot forms. No party name on placards. No party funding. No whips. None of any of the current mess that constitutes our party political system.

 

[kabbes]

How many representatives would you limit the voting to?

Personal representatives, or community ones?

And this question deserves a response. The answer is: I don't know. I'm not enough of a constitutional expert to be able to answer it. To put it another way: "the right number".

I don't have any inherent problem with the current Lords/Commons/Local government system (although I'd like a lot more local power and a lot less central power). You could, as a start, have exactly the same number of representatives as we currently do. Just stop them being party-aligned.

 

[butchersapron]

Secret parties it is then. Even less accountable than what we currently have.

We vote for individuals already anyway don't we? And that led to what?

 

[Azrael]

I'd happily ban the whips, and ban political parties from using closed lists to appoint placemen/women, but banning parties, as nice as it would be, isn't practical. They emerged in the late 19th century because the machinery was needed for an expanded franchise. Ban them, and you'd get endless fights over what constituted an "alliance" or a "party", and I suspect that the actual difference would be slight.

It might make tribal voters think a bit more, but the local press would soon tip them off as to who was "their creature".

 

[kabbes]

Reprensentation is the problem itself (or participation if viewed from the other side) You can't stop people who hold similiar views or who think they have similiar interets from banding together in defence or furtherance of them - apart from being authoritarian it replicates (and would actually encourage) classic liberal infantile individualism and the myth of freely competing equals let the best man win bollocks. Parties sitting on top of a shit system isn't the main problem, the system that produces them is.

I have sympathy with this, but the issue of whether a representative democracy is the right system of government is a more fundamental debate. I'm saying that given the existence of our representative democracy, the existence of political parties makes things much, much worse.

 

[Combustible]

Do you think we do that now? Your MP will vote as he is told to by the top brass of his party, he doesn't give a rat fuck where you stand on the issue, he just wants to keep his job.

It is still possible for there to be negative electoral consequences for the way an MP votes. Generally if the party line is likely to be unpopular with their constituents, a typical careerist MP will weigh up whether or not they'll be damaged more by voting with or against the top brass. Of course with secret voting there would be no such weighing up required. All the party leadership would have to do is ensure the right people were selected or endorsed and they could carry on voting with the party unimpeded. The other thing is a lot of MPs who aren't particularly careerist, still vote for the party line as a matter of loyalty and would continue to do so secret ballot or not.

Surely it would be best (short of massive overhaul of society) to have at least one chamber which could counteract careerism and the entrenchment of the main parties. So if the House of Lords was elected by PR, had members who could not be members of the government whilst being members of the chamber or for a fixed time afterwards. In this case voting along party lines would be less damaging as there would be more parties and no careerist would want to sit in there as there would be no prospect of joining the government in the near future.

 

[perplexis]

No Unfortunately certain people are motivated by power even when there is no money attached. And it's not just about people banding together because they are 'weak'. There are practical reasons for it - because otherwise it would be difficult to get anything done.

I liked unicorn-land better

I see what you're saying, but in a system where there isn't actually much to be gained by having power, then who'd bother?
I think what I'm driving at is that though there would obviously need to be collaboration in order to do anything effective, the nature of that collaboration could be dynamic, rather than entrenched and based on the similarities/differences in views pertaining to the subject at hand.
At present the existence of parties and the "party-lines" that this engenders prevents MPs from being flexible in their votes. No-one should fear standing against their party, but shit, everyone wants to keep their jobs, so the motivation is more to keep schtum than to rally against something.
I don't believe that banding together would happen without incentive. I appreciate that those incentives can be other than financial, and that even in terms of cheap evolutionary psychology power itself is considered a motivator. Nonetheless, without a party on which to depend, the alliances people formed would likely be mroe fluid, and thus probably more useful than hidebound adherence to a single unit allows. There's no way to ensure that some kind of unofficial party system doesn't develop, other than to keep the MPs in office for only a brief period (inefficient, I realise), or maybe make them make decisions in isolation.

The idea of a lottery to select X-number of representatives is quite good. Maybe they could make up a portion of the elected representatives? On a short term basis. They'd be like instant focus groups....

 

[Barking_Mad]

Blimey, I was surprised to see my name as the starter of a thread at the top of the new posts list.

Anyway, I take on board the points about how to stop factions of like-minded individuals joining together. My response: I don't care if like-minded individuals have loose alliances. That's politics. What I don't want is a system where you vote for a party rather than an individual and where your representative has to do whatever his or her party tells him to do, on the pain of dire consequences for his future employment prospects if he does not.

I think it is quite easy to draw the line. It's quite clear what currently constitutes a political party. Just ban that. No party name on ballot forms. No party name on placards. No party funding. No whips. None of any of the current mess that constitutes our party political system.

I believe the current political system is dying, it's just not as abvious as it might seem. The whole punch and judy show of politics should be replaced by sensible debate, not division. Good ideas should be king, not dogmatic, self interested individuals and groups of people.

It's playground politics and as human beings we should be beyond squabbling and division, by now. The problem is that parties use this as a tool to win votes, to do as they wish for another 4/5 years.

When you look at it, it's all pretty pathetic.

 

[Azrael]

A better way of ensuring MPs' independence would be abolishing their sallery. Financial independence begets political independence.

Salleries are nice in theory, but they end up giving power to the party heirarchy, and ironically, a move to help the working man and woman into Parliament actually decreases their voice.

Good luck ever getting the Commons to vote for that!

 

[kabbes]

Secret parties it is then. Even less accountable than what we currently have.

Less accountable? I really don't think so.

A "secret party" sounds sinister, but the voting record of a member would be entirely transparent. If you are happy with the way they vote, who cares what secret alliance they may have? It's not ideal, but it's better than a system in which you have a choice of two near-identikit parties that will just vote in opposition to each other on carefully selected policies that never really change anything anyway, except to make it all steadily more authoritarian year by year.

We vote for individuals already anyway don't we? And that led to what?

In what practical way do we really vote for individuals?

 

[kabbes]

I see what you're saying, but in a system where there isn't actually much to be gained by having power, then who'd bother?
I think what I'm driving at is that though there would obviously need to be collaboration in order to do anything effective, the nature of that collaboration could be dynamic, rather than entrenched and based on the similarities/differences in views pertaining to the subject at hand.
At present the existence of parties and the "party-lines" that this engenders prevents MPs from being flexible in their votes. No-one should fear standing against their party, but shit, everyone wants to keep their jobs, so the motivation is more to keep schtum than to rally against something.
I don't believe that banding together would happen without incentive. I appreciate that those incentives can be other than financial, and that even in terms of cheap evolutionary psychology power itself is considered a motivator. Nonetheless, without a party on which to depend, the alliances people formed would likely be mroe fluid, and thus probably more useful than hidebound adherence to a single unit allows. There's no way to ensure that some kind of unofficial party system doesn't develop, other than to keep the MPs in office for only a brief period (inefficient, I realise), or maybe make them make decisions in isolation.

^^ Yes, this is exactly what I am getting at.

 

[Crispy]

elected 1st house of representatives from geographical areas
2nd house - half lottery, half PR across the country, with a proper revision/veto power.

 

[Das Uberdog]

All should have right to freedom of association. Parties are a good thing in any political system - it's bourgeois Parliamentary 'democracy' which is the problem.

 

[Barking_Mad]

I see what you're saying, but in a system where there isn't actually much to be gained by having power, then who'd bother?

Non sibi sed omnibus - my tagline, innit?

 

[N_igma]

Yes lets have no political parties in a country of 60,000,000 plus. We'll get them all into a room and discuss politics one way or another.

 

[butchersapron]

The competing logics of capital accumulation and political legitimacy/initiative are worth looking at here as well. Classcially, the modern state developed arm in arm with the capitalist system and was used to defend and extend that. Today, capital, since the final construction of the world market, no longer has need of many of those functions it previously jointly carried out with the state (it's still dependent on the state in many many ways though) - and those previously joint functions are the terrain on which broad 20th century parliamentayy politics was carried out on. This is one of the crisis of the modern democratic sytem - it's something we're seeing very interersting things happening around right now.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

elected 1st house of representatives from geographical areas
2nd house - half lottery, half PR across the country, with a proper revision/veto power.

A second house chosen by lottery is probably a more realistic aspiration. I would structure it so that certain sectors would have quotas – x scientists, y lawyers (yes, a law-making chamber does need lawyers!), etc – with the balance taken from a pool that is open to anyone who wishes to give it a go.

 

[N_igma]

The D'Hondt system is the most prefereable imo but seems a long way away, espeically considering PR weakens the largest parties.

 

[Roadkill]

A better way of ensuring MPs' independence would be abolishing their sallery. Financial independence begets political independence.

Oh great, a Parliament composed entirely of the wealthy and/or those good enough at brown-nosing to attract some sort of private sponsorship. That's just what we want.

 

[kabbes]

Yes lets have no political parties in a country of 60,000,000 plus. We'll get them all into a room and discuss politics one way or another.

Yes, they can all then have a good old tilt at that giant strawman you've just brought into the room!

 

[Wolveryeti]

I think proportional representation - at least in one house of government, could go some way towards fixing the current system. First past the post and the resultant tactical voting is what encourages parties to take the piss out of democracy.

 

[cesare]

Oh great, a Parliament composed entirely of the wealthy and/or those good enough at brown-nosing to attract some sort of private sponsorship. That's just what we want.

That would apply to abolishing parties as well. The representatives that would rise to the surface of attracting sufficient public attention to be voted for, would be those with enough money to do it.

I'm keener on the idea of community representation.

 

[cesare]

Yes, they can all then have a good old tilt at that giant strawman you've just brought into the room!

It isn't really a strawman, it goes back to that question that I asked to start off with.

How would you organise it?

 

[N_igma]

Yes, they can all then have a good old tilt at that giant strawman you've just brought into the room!

How else would you achieve political discourse?

If you want to remove political parties then that leaves individuals, in order for them to promote their manifesto they'll need to accumulate lots of cash. While some cash can be done through fundraising, you'll need to already have an existing wealth to network your campaign. Therefore all we'll be left with is a society of oligarchs. Unless of course you can fit 60,00,000 plus people into a room and fight it out there until some one becomes leader.

 

[Dr Jon]

Here's an idea:

I don't agree that the only alternative to democracy is jackbooted authoritarian dictatorship. We need to get the bullshit and corruption out of politics. Probably a good way to do that is to devolve most of the decision making to the community and make democracy the participatory privilege it was intended to be. Central government should be apolitical; a competent and professional provider of services and guardian of Quality of Life within the national network of autonomous communities. Or summat like that. You get the basic idea anyway...

The sort of apolitical central government I have in mind is something like a cross between the civil service and the government of Bhutan, which sees its duty as being to enable and promote Gross National Happiness. Its mission would be purely to provide services and security to a network of autonomous communities, which work on a scale where democracy actually works, giving people direct involvement in how they run their lives.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

It isn't really a strawman, it goes back to that question that I asked to start off with.

How would you organise it?

I think that's where the bottom-up-ness of the system would need to be reinforced. More devolved powers to a local level where the concept of direct democracy makes more sense, and a system of progression to the central parliament. For instance, to stand for national parliament, there could be a requirement that you first serve at a local level for X-number of years in the constituency you wish to represent. That way, people will know what they are voting for. Essentially, in each general election (if we're not going down my preferred route of a lottery), voters will choose between a number of local councillors, whose voting records at a local level can serve as a basis for discriminating between them.

 

[Crispy]

voters will choose between a number of local councillors, whose ability to manipulate people and media at a local level can serve as a basis for discriminating between them.

fixed it for you

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Here's an idea: The sort of apolitical central government I have in mind is something like a cross between the civil service and the government of Bhutan, which sees its duty as being to enable and promote Gross National Happiness. Its mission would be purely to provide services and security to a network of autonomous communities, which work on a scale where democracy actually works, giving people direct involvement in how they run their lives.

Bhutan is a very authoritarian place, DJ. Also it is very homogeneous culturally. Nothing like that could work here.

 

[Azrael]

Oh great, a Parliament composed entirely of the wealthy and/or those good enough at brown-nosing to attract some sort of private sponsorship. That's just what we want.

Put it like this: you have 600 odd financially independent MPs; or 600 "professional" salleried MPs who can be bullied into voting the way the leadership wants on pain of loosing their livelihood. They vote through legislation that the elite want regardless. In real terms, the elite wins.

Paying MPs is nice in theory, but it actually concentrates power in the hands of the government.

Some Labour MPs used to be funded by their trade union. It was rough and ready, but dispersed power.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

fixed it for you

Safeguards against that would include the publication of the voting records of each candidate, and in depth analysis of any decisions they have made on the committees they've worked on, provided by an independent central statistical service. If more powers have been devolved to a local level, they will have been involved in some pretty important decisions, and they would not be able to hide from the public record.