Interesting Links for 11-08-2018

[andrewducker]

Voting systems matter: the overlooked lesson from Macron for British politics

(tags: politics uk voting france )

Friends is the UK's most popular streaming show

(tags: comedy tv uk )

Somehow I'd failed to notice that Turkey and the USA are now in a trade war. Is there a list of countries that the US is in a slapfight with?

(tags: usa turkey trade )

Anne Frank Center asks Facebook to remove Holocaust denial pages

(tags: facebook Holocaust fraud )

Why Do We Still See A Drug-Free Birth As A Badge Of Honour?

(tags: medication pain childbirth )

UN says it has credible reports that China holds million Uighurs in secret camps

(tags: china rights OhForFucksSake )

'Star Trek 4': Chris Pine, Chris Hemsworth Talks Fall Through

(tags: StarTrek fail movies )

Comments

[calimac]

"The Alliance scored a higher vote share in failing to break the electoral mould in Britain than Macron did in smashing it in France. The reason? Different electoral systems."

Well, no. They've left a little bit out, which is that Macron's 24% was enough to get him first place, while the Alliance's 25% got it third place.

One might argue that the plethora of French candidates which contributed to this placement was the result of their different electoral system, but that would be a second-order argument this article does not make, and in any case 1) the French system may enable the number of major candidates, but it doesn't dictate the near-even split of the results, 2) insofar as the UK's system enables anything, it pushes against there being a strong nationwide third party at all.

[skington]

Indeed: the winner of the French Presidential election typically gets those sorts of numbers (Hollande 2012 28%; Sarkozy 2007 31%; Chirac 2002 19%; Chirac 1995 20%; Mitterrand 1988 34%; Mitterrand 1981 25%; Giscard d'Estaing 1974 32%; Pompidou 1967 44%; De Gaulle 1965 44%). The two-ballot system encourages smaller parties to “count themselves” in the first round, confident that they won't be harming the larger party they'd expect to vote for in the second round. (This went badly wrong in 2002 when a combination of Jospin running out of steam and a number of other left-wing candidates running meant that the final ballot was Chirac vs Le Pen, but in general the rule holds.)

Of course, you can wonder why there are smaller parties. I suspect it's a holdover from the IVth Republic which used PR to elect the Parliament; even though the Vth Republic has mostly used the two-ballot majoritarian system, smaller parties tend to do deals with larger parties and get allocated a number of winnable seats, and therefore still exist. Contrast that with the pearl-clutching in the UK when the LibDems agree not to stand candidates the Greens and vice-versa!

[calimac]

And the extraordinary bowel-straining attendant on the allocation of seats between the Alliance parties in the 1980s.

The difference between the UK and France here is a matter of unenacted political culture, nothing to do with the formal electoral system, or likely to be changed (at least much, or immediately) by an alteration in the latter.

[skington]

I wouldn't say there's no relationship with electoral systems. Duverger's law tells us that a two-party system emerges from FPTP. France has consistently had two significant parties on the left (broadly: socialists and communists) and two significant parties on the right (broadly: Gaullists and centrists) under the Vth Republic; in the UK those would be factions of the Labour and Tory parties respectively, as splitting would be electoral suicide.

(Note that there is in fact such a thing as the Cooperative Party in the UK, although you'd never know it.)

[calimac]

I already cited Duverger's Law without naming it, in an earlier comment when I wrote, "insofar as the UK's system enables anything, it pushes against there being a strong nationwide third party at all."

As the phrasing might suggest, I don't think much of Duverger's Law as an explanation of political cultures. It pushes, yes, but if it really controlled, then there wouldn't be third parties getting 25% of the vote. The fact is, the US has FPTP and a strict two-party system; Canada and the UK have FPTP, and they don't have a strict two-party system. Why the difference? Duverger's Law has nothing to do with explaining that. It's political culture that isn't dictated by electoral system law.

[zotz]

Unless you're active in the Labour movement, in which case the Co-operative Party is very well-known.

[skington]

OK, but it doesn't campaign as a separate political party, and news reports don't break results down into Labour + Co-operative the way you see French election results reported as Socialists + Radicals + Other.

[calimac]

I should add that I've heard of the Cooperative Party, albeit only because I've seen candidates in official election returns listed as "Labour and Cooperative" and I looked it up to see what that meant.

As the Cooperative Party has no existence outside the Labour umbrella, and since they first hitched up around 1920 never has, it has no relevance to discussions of third parties in British politics whatever. It's like discussing the National Liberals, especially after the Woolton-Teviot agreement, as if they had a separate existence from the Conservatives. They didn't. End of story.

[redbird]

Even if there were a list of countries the US was in that sort of fight with, it would be obsolete as soon as the bastard in the White House woke up.

In other words, the question assumes that there's anything resembling policy and planning going on here.

[dewline]

There is planning, though. The plan being to break up with any democracy that can't be broken up into little pieces.

[calimac]

"Somehow I'd failed to notice that Turkey and the USA are now in a trade war. Is there a list of countries that the US is in a slapfight with?"

Comment.