Biden’s victory — an argument for proportional representation
While watching Donald Trump die a slow political death of a thousand cuts over the past week, I surely can’t be the only one to have wondered how many of America’s political problems stem from their hyper-partisan political system. A change to the system might be the only way of stopping Trump’s rebirth.
Political systems should be thought of like antivirus software: they are there to tell you what’s lurking in the background, waiting in the shadows. If a virus is left unattended it will grow and destroy your machine, but if a problem can be spotted in time, you can fix it. Like antivirus software, a political system has to be updated regularly to be effective. The political disorder seen in the U.S and U.K over the past five years are the result of archaic political systems that haven’t been updated to reflect the modern societies they serve. The two countries are running on old software.
It’s not clear that their leaders are aware of the problems with the machine. After his welcome victory over Donald Trump, a man who had spent the previous 4 years throwing proverbial paint over everyone, Joe Biden declared that “for more than 240 years (the US has had) a system of governance that has been the envy of the world”. Conservative politicians in the U.K have often said similar, describing Britain’s parliament as the “mother of all parliaments”, or, “the oldest democracy in the world”. This supposedly ancient wisdom is not reflected in its current politics, the UK is poised to find itself isolated internationally after its Withdrawal agreement with the EU expires on January 1st. Given the turmoil in these old democracies, who in their right mind would opt to install the oldest antivirus system in the world? Nobody. Your computer would grind to a halt. Instead, you would look for the newest, most recently updated system. The same should apply for politics.
Several Western European countries have avoided the political turbulence of the past decade. Germany, The Netherlands and France all feared a populist uprising of their own, from Alternative Fuer Deutschland, Geert Wilders, and Marie Le Pen respectively. Yet so far, all three of these political parties have failed to win political power. Why? These 3 countries have political systems that better accommodate the full spectrum of political opinion felt in a modern Western society. Their political system detect discontent at an earlier stage. Their software is up to date. They’ve installed all of their patches, largely because they’ve gone through some lengthy computer restarts over the years. Unlike the UK and the U.S, all three had to redesign their political systems after the trauma of WW2. France’s last major update to its constitution was in 1968, Germany’s was upon re-unification in 1990. By contrast, Britain’s democracy still runs from a hall built by one of William the Conqueror’s sons.
Germany and The Netherlands both use proportional representation. France uses a two-round system for its Presidency. These systems provide more options for citizens to express their political opinions than the straight two-way fight in the U.S and most of the UK. This is a shame because in political terms, conflict is desirable: cynics and critics are the drivers of progress. But that conflict should happen during election campaigns and voting behaviour, rather than partisan warfare through the governing process. One of the biggest flaws of the U.S political system is that it produces political logjam. The founding fathers devised a political system that would ensure sufficient checks and balances to constrain the President, yet American politics has become a quagmire. Like a never ending version of trench warfare, the two major parties take up their positions and slog it out across various political battleground (the Presidency, Congress, the Senate, various State elections etc).
A two-party system supresses political debate, which creates deeper grievances. A two-party political system is as satisfying for voters as shopping in a supermarket that only stocks two brands: say Marmite or Basics. Neither will really satisfy you but might be so turned off by Marmite that you will buy the Basic brand just to avoid the Marmite. This isn’t particularly satisfying and you’ll probably feel less inclined to shop there again — nobody leaves the shop feeling that they got what they wanted. Two party systems create odd coalitions of people who vote for the same party but have different, often competing interests. The Republicans are a coalition of Constitutionalists, Economic Libertarians and non-College Educated White voters. In a system of Proportional Representation, each one of these groups would probably have its own party, which would be better placed to defend the group’s interests. The same goes for the Democrats, who would probably dissolve into Social Democrats, Greens and Social Liberals. A similar re-alignment would happen in the UK.
The UK and the U.S depend on political customs, traditions and conventions, but these cannot be expected to function effectively in a system where politicians are focused on partisan total victory for their side. Previously such practices might have worked when politicians came from the same elite caste and exercised some restraint to appease one another, but as Donald Trump’s refusal to concede showed, those days are gone. Fortunately, he was undermined by the media stepping in and calling the race for Biden, but what if the media had defended him instead? To avoid a repeat at the time of the next election, there should be a legal requirement stipulating the point at which a “Loser” is declared. In other words, the system needs updating.
The U.S and the UK both need to stop with the reverential, rose-tinted trumpeting of their own political systems and acknowledge that their political systems urgently need updating for the twenty-first century. If not, they will continue to meander wildly through the twenty-first century as various viruses clog up their machines, stopping them from finding the solutions their citizens need.
