Former prime minster Justin Trudeau infamously broke his promise to reform the electoral system. Trudeau’s own preference was for a type of majoritarian system called the Alternative Vote (AV) AKA Instant Runoff Voting (IRV). However, the House of Commons Special Committee on Electoral Reform established by his government went in a different direction: it ultimately recommended that the government design a system of proportional representation (PR) and vote on it through referendum.
Grossly, electoral systems are classified into majoritarian and proportional types. In addition to AV there are two other well-known majoritarian systems: FPTP and the two-round system (used in France). Trudeau rejected the recommendation to move away from a majoritarian system and has negatively characterized proportional representation in different ways. In this townhall exchange, Trudeau explains his opposition to PR. "If we were to make a change or risk a change that would augment individual voices — that would augment extremist voices and activist voices that don’t get to sit within a party that figures out what’s best for the whole future of the country, like the three existing parties do — I think we would be entering a period of instability and uncertainty."
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Political stability, dissatisfaction with democracy, and political polarization are easiest to compare with simple data. With political stability, PR countries on average perform better. With democratic dissatisfaction, PR countries dramatically outperform majoritarian countries. On political polarization, PR countries outperform, with Ireland achieving the lowest polarization score in the whole OECD.
Further, when you examine the three comparison pairings listed above, the PR country performs better on each dimension for all three pairs. Trudeau feared that proportional systems would bring instability, polarization, and that voices which undermine what’s good for the country would be augmented, but it’s the majoritarian countries where these concerns are more severe.
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Trudeau’s thesis was that these problematic outcomes should be happening in PR countries, not majoritarian ones. Given the observation we see, there is no basis to say that majoritarian electoral systems can minimize these concerns, there is simply no supporting evidence for this.
The idea that PR (at least the MMP and STV systems) would definitely lead to these outcomes is also not supported by the evidence. To be able claim that PR would cause extremism, or that majoritarian systems protect against, you would at least need to observe an association that suggests this possibility, but we do not observe any such association.
What we do have an association for is that MMP/STV are protective against democratic and social decay, while majoritarian countries inflame these issues, which is the opposite of what Trudeau believed. This does not mean causality, but it does make a causal relationship possible.
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In proportional systems, coalitions tend to form, and different political parties sharing power helps alleviate the irrational decision-making of groupthink in a majority government. In addition, politicians must always be wary about losing their spot at the top because voters can easily select alternative parties without the inhibitions of vote splitting and vote wasting. In a proportional system, there is no shielding to give a false sense of security: politicians understand that if they are complacent, a disruptive political force can easily swallow them, so they must stay vigilant and proactive about emerging political issues to keep the public satisfied. In proportional systems, complacency and corruption can be easily punished by the electorate, which keeps politicians disciplined.
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There's no difference between a party that can impose its will and a cabal or coalition that does as we saw under the liberals ndp coalition last government. Remember that the vast majority of gov'ts this century have been minority gov'ts.
Effective management absolutely requires clear direction and vision. A gov't should have a clear mandate and be empowered to execute it within the boundaries of it's constitutional authority. Otherwise parties can throw the blame aorund and you see people stay in power forever. Israel is an example. In situations like that it's all about posturing and optics and never about good governance. You still get that with first pass to post to a degree but it does give governments the freedom to do unpopular things once in awhile when it's the right thing to do
There are lots of ways to improve the system and improve representation but proportional representation is probably the worst
The difference is that a coalition represents the population more accurately, and because they are separate parties, the "party whip" is less effective. The NDP can split from the Liberals in a way that members of the Liberal party cannot.
A coalition represents the population less. You lose your individual MP so you have no one locally to hold responsible. A coalition has to run on a platform that was never introduced in the election so now they're operating without even a mandate. And there's no accountability, one blames the other and nobody gets held to account.
Let's take the last of government as an example. They formed a coalition and jag meat basically sold out his party and everything he got elected for in exchange for what has amounted to nothing. Now he walked out the door with his pension intact and will make tons of money as a consultant because of his time in government. Meanwhile the liberals went on to win the next election and have now managed to buy themselves a majority. But young Canadians still can't afford a home, Food inflation is through the roof, and our economy is still tanking and nobody was held to account. Justin Trudeau is off making millions of dollars each year consulting with charity organizations that he gave money to while he was prime minister and doing speaking engagements.
The government to work and be effective people need a local representative, there needs to be one government that people can hold to account and there needs to be one clear vision that this government is working towards instead of a mishmash of ideology and sound bites but look good but do nothing for the people in the long run
It has been said that our democracy is a horrible way to govern people, with its only redeeming quality being that it's better than all of the others that are available. And this is true
There are other ways to improve our democratic representation, this just isn't one of them
You're talking about Jagmeet Singh as if he is the entire NDP, which illustrates my next point. You don't have a local representative in Canadian FPTP. You vote for the party, because any notable vote will be a three line (or at least two line) vote. See https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2019/bdp-lop/eb/YM32-5-2018-26-eng.pdf
That doesn't make any sense. Let's say I vote NDP, my candidate gets elected, but Liberals win a majority. My MP's views/opinions (which should be reflective of mine) don't matter in the slightest. I've lost representation.
If, instead, we have a system that doesn't favor majority governments, my MP's views do have to be considered for the coalition to survive. If the coalition members stick together, it's because they believe that is in the best interests of their voters.
Most of this entire discussion is missing the point. On the one hand a variety of views and/or options for political representation are needed. This is where first past the post utterly fails. It devolves mostly to a two choice system, as is becoming painfully obvious in the US. Or it might become unstable/unpredictable as seen in the UK where alternative parties are emerging, but probably to the detriment of the old parties. In the end it might well devolve back to a two party system, just two other parties. This is where some form of proportional representation system comes in. More than two parties are viable. But at the cost of stability. Back in schooly politics teacher liked to present Italy as the poster child for why (simple) PR doesn't work well. Though in recent years the Italian government has proven quite stable. Also, in Italys Case I'd love to run the experiment how they did with nothing changed except for organized crime being eradicated. Alas, in humanities controlled experiments like that aren't possible. But I'd not be surprised if spectacular corruption wasn't the bigger problem.
So what could the solution be? First I'd like to see corruption stomped out completely. I know, that's almost like wishing for world peace, and come to think about it, it's mostly the same characters that are in the way. Second, the solution is likely to be neither a simple majority system nor a simple proportional system. Ranked choice? My teacher was taken by the German system (a mixture of both), but that has it's own problems. Or something entirely different, like completely independent publicly funded media. Print, audio and audiovisual. And that media could run regular polls to publicly show which topics are important to people.
I think our problems stem more from the influence on populations rather than the actual modality in which our representation is formed. In Israel you have the corruptive influence of ultra-orthodox and nationalist hardliners mixed with some run if the mill corruption, in Italy you have a gigantic organized crime problem, with some rich people problem, in Germany the Springer group is trying to set up a Fox news situation and in the US you have the Fox/Heritage Foundation/billionaires and general corruption through money problem.