Re: [Marxism] Duverger's Law and proportional representation

[Jim Farmelant <farmelantj@xxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 5 Aug 2004 12:12:01 +0200 "Jurriaan Bendien"
<andromeda246@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
> 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

Friedrich Engels made a similar observation, more than a century
ago, in a letter to Friedrich Sorge, in which he discussed the
reasons why there had not emerged a major socialist workers
party in the US.  Engels noted among other things that:

"First, the Constitution, based as in England upon party
government, which causes every vote for any candidate
not put up by one of the two governing parties to
appear to be lost.  And the American, like the Englishman,
wants to influence his state; he does not throw his
vote away."

And that reason plus the other reasons that Engels discussed
in his letter such as the division of the American working
class between native-born and immigrants plus its
divisions along racial and ethnic lines not only explained
why there was no major socialist workers party in Engels'
day but go a long way to explaining why that is still the
case today.

>
> 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.

There is the fact that policy differences between conservative
governments and social democratic governments have
diminished greatly over the past couple of decades.  Governments
of the center-right and governments of the center-left, all in
practice follow neo-liberal economic policies.  The increased
mobility of capital has made it increasingly difficult to implement
reformist policies that would raise working class incomes and/or
conditions at the expense of capital.  Its very easy now a days
to launch a capital strike against such policies.  The last major social
democratic government that attempted such a thing was
Mitterrand's Socialist government after it was first elected
to office in 1981.  They attempted to reduce unemployment
through a policy of Keynesian reflation.  They proposed nationalizing
a number of large companies, sought to boost social insurance,
reduce working hours etc.  Within a couple of years, Mitterrand's
government was forced to reverse many of its policies.  The
attempt to reduce unemployment through reflation resulted
mostly in rising imports rather than dropping unemployment.
The government was forced to drop its proposals to nationalize
major companies, and indeed came to embrace the privatization
of state-owned companies, and it was forced to scale back
many of its proposals for expanding the welfare state.

Since then most social democratic parties have in deed, if not
word, adopted the policies of the Third Way, that is neo-liberalism
with a "human face."

It's by no means clear that electoral reforms in the US would
do much to change this situation, even if the political system
were to change so that more political parties emerged as
major players within it.  The one positive that might come
out of such reforms might be that a real labor party might
then become possible in the US.  However, such a labor
party would not be able to accomplish much unless there
is a mass radicalization of the working class and other
strata in the US.

>
> 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%20
PR.
> htm
> http://www.fairvote.org/reports/1993/amy.html
> or http://www.worldpolicy.org/globalrights/democracy/abcs.html
>
> Jurriaan
>
>
>
>
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>


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