[Marxism] Duverger's Law and proportional representation

["Jurriaan Bendien" <andromeda246@xxxxxxxxx>]

Duverger's Law, attributed to French sociologist Maurice Duverger, asserts
that a first-past-the-post, winner-takes-all electoral system (normally
featuring multiple electorates) spontaneously leads to a two-party system.

See also http://www.janda.org/c24/Readings/Duverger/Duverger.htm

The Law is not an absolute truth, but expresses a tendency: Duverger
suggested that a first-past-the-post system creates barriers for the
emergence of a new political force, and accelerate the elimination of an
already weakening political force; proportional representation would have
the opposite effect. Counter-examples to Duverger's law are Scotland, Canada
and India. Both Malta and Australia have a single transferable vote system,
but still remain dominated by two main parties.

Marxists have sometimes debated whether or not one should actively campaign
for or support proportional representation where a first-past-the-post,
winner-takes-all election system exists. Supporters of the idea argue that
it is one of the ways to break the stranglehold and adversarial politics of
two main parties with respect to political power, reduce the ability to buy
votes, and ensure that all political tendencies are at least represented in
parliamentary bodies, whereas in a first-past-the-post system, a large
portion of votes are simply lost, and thus many voters are not represented
at all (I do not have exact figures for the US, but basically about half the
voters have no political voice, either because they don't vote, or because
they did not vote for the winning candidate).

Opponents of the idea argue that bourgeois democracy is a hollow farce
anyway, and that the electoral system, whatever form it takes, is driven by
money; the electoral system, whatever form it takes, simply buys consent for
policies which aren't democratically decided anyway and do not express the
popular will. Thus, arguing for proportional representation would merely
reinforce the illusion that state policies in capitalist society can express
the popular will, rather than being the policies of the ruling class or
wealthy elites.

However, in the United States, I think a mass campaign for proportional
representation is very likely to gain ground in the next decade, both
because of a large number of voters disaffected by a political system in
which they feel they can have no influence, and because the legitimacy of
the political system as it is now is increasingly undermined.

See further:
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/polit/damy/articles/Brief%20History%20of%20PR.
htm
http://www.fairvote.org/reports/1993/amy.html
or http://www.worldpolicy.org/globalrights/democracy/abcs.html

Jurriaan




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