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What's the most interesting/unique/strange aspect of your country's politics?
In my country (Brazil), it's probably the "Centrão". It's basically like, a dozen or so centrist/center-right/random parties who vote together as if they were a bloc for reasons which can only be explained with corruption, which seems to be the case. (The Wikipedia article (PT-BR) straight up says that it's a group that tries to approach the executive for political favors so yeah.)
I'm not sure how we deal with the US, given how much the US has to cite as strange, but a lot of the stuff on this site is already dedicated to the US.
I'm a Brit and I think the weirdest part of our politics is probably how most executive power is constitutionally vested in the sovereign, who then delegates it to politicians as per established tradition. British General Elections are often framed (even in our own country) as analogous to US Presidental Elections, with the country voting for whom they want to be their next leader. However, a General Election is actually just a vote in which constituencies choose which candidate to return as their MP for the next Parliment, after which the sovereign is required to invite the member who she believes can command the confidence of the House - de-facto the leader of the largest party or coalition - to become her Prime Minister. The Prime Minister then chooses his Cabinet (typically but not necessarily from among the Members of the House of Commons), who again he technically has to recommend to the Sovereign for appointment.
This idiosyncratic system was thrust into the limelight last year when Boris Johnson unlawfully prorogued (suspended) Parliament to avoid scrutiny of his Brexit withdrawal bill - except, technically, he actually recommended prorogation to the Queen, who was then left between a rock and a hard place. Had she refused to take his recommendation, it would likely have spelt the end of the monarchy - which is considered to only hold public approval as long as it remains strictly ceremonial - so her only option was to act upon it and suffer the indignity of seeing the ultra-partisan prorogation attributed to her.
Oh and also our House of Lords has both hereditary members and Anglican bishops sitting in it. Apparently Iran is the only other country to have faith leaders of the state religion in their Parliment!
I didn't quite get the first part. When you vote in a general election, what choices do you make?
In General Elections citizens vote for MPs (Members of Parliment) to represent their constituencies in the House of Commons. Each constituency elects (or 'returns') one MP. Typically each major party will submit one candidate to the ballot in every constituency, although there are very many local parties, single issue candidates, and general nutjobs who also stand for election. (Running for election in the Prime Minister's constituency is a popular choice for activists and eccentrics because it guarantees that you get on the TV when the results are announced). MPs are a very approximate equivalent to congresspeople in America.
Crucially, though, we never cast a ballot for Prime Minister, and indeed constitutionally we have no direct say in who our Prime Minister is. In constitutional terms, the MP who is able to demonstrate the support of a majority of the House of Commons is invited by the Sovereign to become Prime Minister. This is de-facto the leader of one of the major parties. If no party is able to win a straight majority in the House of Commons, it is necessary for them to win the support of members from other parties, either through formal coalition (as in the 2010 Cameron-Clegg 'Rose Garden' Ministry), or through a somewhat looser arrangement called confidence-and-supply (Theresa May splashed an enormous amount of cash on the DUP, a minor party of Northern Irish neo-Puritans, to achieve a confidence-and-supply deal and thus a Parlimentary majority in 2017).
Okay, that's roughly what I thought. I used to think parliamentary democracy was pretty good, but these days, the UK form of it seems to have a lot of downsides.
I honestly much prefer our democracy to the American system. I think the fact that we don't vote directly for PM acts as a frictional force against populism and cults of personality. Additionally, the fact that if no party inspires enthusiasm in the electorate they have to seek out alliances to get into power is a net good in my opinion.
Although my top-level comment highlights the ways in which our system of government is curiously archaic (a natural consequence of it being a millenia old), the monarchy would be deposed if they ever tried to exercise their hypothetical power and while the House of Lords needs severe reform it's relatively impotent. Like many, my actual main gripe with the system is our unrepresentative method of electing MPs. In my view, an Irish style system, with larger constituencies, each returning multiple members via an STV vote is the ideal method which would shatter the two-party system and allow us to achieve genuine democracy.
I agree in theory about the frictional force, but I was thinking more about the whole Brexit thing and the way that the leadership handled it. Having members of parliament choose a leader somehow failed to head off that bit of populism.
Brexit is an embarrassment to our country, no doubt about it. I don't really think the Parliamentary system is to blame, though.
It's interesting to compare Johnson and Trump, since they both rode into office on the back of the same populist wave.
When America elected a populist, they elected an ostentatious hyper-capitalist and reality show host - an outsider to the political establishment.
When Britain elected a populist, they elected a toff of the highest order and a colonial apologist - someone representing not the establishment but the ultra-establishment - an Old Etonian and an Oxford Classicist; the finest steeplejack in a Tory party full of diligent ladder climbers.
Each leader exemplifies his own country's deepest seated complexes - America's religion of the bootstrap, Britain's Stockholmian attachment to its own class system. It's practically Freudian.
And yet, I tend to think our worst-case scenario better than yours. Boris is everything that is wrong with Britain and yet even so he is an order of magnitude more intelligent and more competent than Trump. I'd like to think that Brits would be too level-headed to elect a leader so comprehensively dismal as Trump, but in all honesty it's probably our Parliamentary system, that forces any would-be PM to spend years in the trenches of the junior ministries, that ensures a baseline of competence. Not a high bar, but any bar is better than none.
I can't help but think with a PR-type of electoral system there would never have been a UKIP.
My thinking is the more people feel represented the less the need to resort to extremism. We may have seen some rightward shift in the Overton window but not necessarily anything like we're seeing now.
While PR would definitely be much more representative of any political ideologies present in a population and would make politics have a lot less inertia and that would make people a lot more willing to work within "the system", it wouldn't stop political extremism and one could even argue enhance it since a good electoral process usually allows pretty fast entry for fringe ideologies and it allows the big parties to avoid the hell out of them in coalition systems like the AfD in Germany, which if overdone kind of has the same effect.
IMO we would gradually see their parliament share gradually go up from 5 to 12 to 22 to 40 to 65 or so seats over 30 years or so and not much else would be different for them. The left would look much more different.
Yeah by no means is any pr perfect, but looking at the specific case of UKIP it was a reaction to the feeling of voicelessness and disempowerment over a pretty specific issue that was then coopted in to a more general right wing purview.
Had that one issue been better addressed earlier there would never have been a need for UKIP.
Absolutely that's not to say another more general right wing party wouldn't have become prominent, but most likely not wrapped up in such an unrelated issue.
Haha, I just caught myself scrolling down with a pitchfork at the ready in case you had skipped The House of Lords. Peerage in a 21st century democracy blows my mind.
Source: non-UK citizen with UK family
Also, your habit of slipping random bullshit into important bills or sticking an insulting-glorious name on it. The patriot act, the single greatest act of legislative treason I can think of in this millenium, comes to mind.
Definitely. The US has a lot of weird stuff, although I feel a lot of that stuff is already talked about here. I noted it in the post:
There's a distinction in U.S. politics from most nominal democracies which isn't discussed much, and is key to understanding the tensions. We're a union of states rather than provinces.
A province is an administrative division of a centralized federal system; a state is a ruling entity in its own right. Even a nation like Canada (which devolves many federal responsibilities and offers some degree of autonomy to provinces) lacks the degree of decentralization that the U.S. has.
Despite a Supremacy Clause in the U.S. Constitution which declares Federal law paramount over the states, states have always had an escape by arguing that individual Federal laws violate other Constitutional provisions.
This is how, even in the modern era, you get nuttiness like local Sheriffs claiming sovereignty, or beneficial assertions like states permitting sanctuary cities for the undocumented.
As a general rule, this is where the essential "blue/red" division among states really lies - between states which support a strong Federal system, and states which don't. The legacy of slave-holding meant long-held suspicion and propaganda in favor of property owners over Federal regulation. Industrialized Northeastern states generally benefitted from Federal contracts and centralized banking. The Western half of the country was mainly consolidated into states after the Civil War, with Federal/State disputes centered on natural resource exploitation instead of slave-holding. The national political parties' alignments along the Federal/state power balance have changed over time, but the division remains a defining feature of the parties' platforms even if not explicit. [It's interesting to me that both major parties assert Federalism for purposes of military spending. Democrats assert Federal power over shared prosperity and liberty issues like the environment, infrastructure, civil/labor rights, banking, public health, redistributive taxation, etc. Present-day Republicans assert Federal power over morality, trade, borders, and defense, but little else. The practical outcomes for states are really weird - some of the most "independent" states are the biggest beneficiaries of Federal spending.]
None of this ongoing power struggle makes full sense when measured exclusively against more established nations' long histories of struggle against monarchy, inter-ethnic strife, conquest, or non-slavery labor exploitation. Frankly, it's amazing the U.S. has held together as long as it has. "American" national identity is a very fragile idea, and the ability to create individual reality bubbles may be the final blow.
Although I understand the historical reasoning, it's always been a surprise to me that the modern Democratic party is still more in favour of the Federal government. Passing things through the senate means considering the positions of California, Mississippi, and Utah, for example, all on equal footing - positions that are likely to be wildly different in a huge number of areas.
Why settle for watered-down Federal policy when delegating more to the states would empower the populous, prosperous, and primarily Democratic coasts to forge ahead on any number of issues?
I think they have little choice, because that is how it is in the constitution. There aren't really any mechanisms outside of the existing system.
I also think there is a lot of benefit to the constitution as it is. It provides protections to minority groups, restrictions to government power. Ultimately, I think it's important that the constitution be respected as it prevents tyranny of the majority. Otherwise we'd risk extreme state overreach.
I was under the impression that quite a lot of it comes down to interpretations of the law, and how much power the federal government chooses to exercise.
Sure, there are certain things outlined in the constitution that are fairly clear cut, but backing away from the "everything is federal because everything affects interstate commerce" argument would be a big shift, as would changes in how federal funding is assigned. More than that, politics is a process of persuasion and consensus - simply stating their intent to decentralise more powers would be a significant step towards doing so, if they so chose.
The argument of state overreach is a totally fair one, and I'm certainly not suggesting an absolute transfer of power. I am just surprised, as I said, that Democrats aren't in favour of gently shifting it stateward from where it is right now.
It's just one of those "cat out of the bag situations". If more power is granted to the states, then when human rights issues come up like gay marriage, we may be unable to have federal solutions. Ultimately I think most democrats believe things will get better in the future, and that preservation of federal power will be optimal in the end.
In Switzerland it's certainly semi-direct democracy. Also that the government is composed of people coming from four different parties, that's unthinkable in systems that are bipartisan.
To complete what has been said: the head of the executive branch (in other countries : President or Prime Minister) is collectively represented by 7 peoples called Federal Councillor. Even though they are selected amongst the leading parties, they represent the federal council and not their parties. A lot of things in Swiss politics and mentality are based on the idea of compromise, which somewhat avoid too much polarisation.
I'm from New Zealand. An electral system named MMP is used. Although imo MMP is great, it has a few quirks and unique abnormalities. To quickly summarise how it works; everybody has two votes. The first is for a national popular vote between parties and the second is for a local constiuent MP. Every elected constituent MP is given a seat in parliament, the remaining MPs are split up between parties based on the national popular vote minus the number of consituent MPs.
For an example here lets imagine there are 100 seats in a parliament under this system: Party A wins 5 constituent seats and 25% of the national popular vote. They are awarded the 5 constituent MPs plus 20 MPs from the party list for 25 MPs in total. Party B wins no constituent seats and 25% of the popular vote. They are awarded 25 MPs from the party list. There is also a 5% threshold for list MP seats, if a party does not get 5% of the national popular vote they aren't given any MPs.
This may seem like a fairly straightfoward and fair system but there are some interesting scenarios which can occur:
They seem like nice problems to have? Smaller parties have a chance, but are encouraged to build coalitions.
I more seeing as unique and strange occurances rather than a problems.
This sounds like UDMR (democratic Magyar union in Romania). Since 1990 they've been allies or even members of every government. They really don't adhere to any doctrine, they just cling to power.
That's pretty interesting. I wonder if in a multi-party US there would be a Black/Hispanic party doing the same thing or not because of history (and size). Why is that status wildly unpopular though, do people just want them to join Sweden? Do you think it should be or not?
By this I mean the Swedish speaking areas of Finland (who seem pretty localized?) get to join Sweden and leave the rest of Finland to Finnish people.
based alert(the only other alternative is probably to send them all there, probably by force which is bad)Why? I'm assuming it's because Finland seems to be more similar to Estonia/Hungary ethnically/linguistically than the rest of Scandinavia so the languages aren't similar?
Well ehm as a Swede I think we rather like the status quo right now, and don't want the south west coast of Finland to join us. Hell Åland have been on that for decades and its a fairly clear "no" from Sweden. Mostly because Finland is one of Swedens closest allies technically.
Growing up in East Sweden ment I had to take some classes in Finnish too (since a lot of Swedes are Swedish-Finns) not the same as in Finland though and the languages are miles apart (I can swear in Finnish, say thank you and stuff like that and what I remember mostly is the swearing tbh).
Vegai will have to excuse me but isn't one of the core contention that Finland is a dual-lingual country like Canada for example due to the fact that a large enough minority speaks Swedish? Wouldn't a party going in saying "Ehm lets just scrap it in school unless its a kid from Swedish speaking parents" or something? That way ducking Per (The Finns Party), allowing for the secondary language to persist, without blowing costs of teaching every single Finnish kid to speak it?
From Sweden. Our King has the supreme power over the military and can refuse to open the government when its elected. BUT he can only have that legal power IF he promises never to use it. If he does, he then doesn't have that power.
Like a lot of our laws they are the result of a continuous conflict that needs to be ongoing (same as why we don't have a minimum wage as the base pay is set by a yearly recurring conflict between bosses unions and worker unions).
We also have a set of government agencies outside of the control of the government where the government in some cases aren't allowed and others not expected to, meddle in their affairs as they should be "above political influence".
Legally no one can technically "own land" - and in many cases landownership is a complex issue. For example you can never block the path to water so others can't use it, and you can't do what you want with your land as its not practically yours. I mean it is yours, but its not as in many other countries - yours-yours. Something about a trust from the former generation to the next, handled by the current generation.
What is so interesting about "centrão"? The right is prone to convenience alliances worldwide. Ideological purity is not their strong suit.
To me it's how it's a dozen or so parties. Usually there is one or a few parties on the center-right, but not that many all representing basically the same thing. This also adds a layer of obtuse/arcane-ness to it, which is probably needed given the wiki description of their purpose.
Well, I'm American, and that's probably plenty enough information right there.