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From: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor)
Newsgroups: can.politics
Subject: Re: reform of government
Message-ID: <1067@dciem.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 22-Aug-84 17:28:54 EDT
Article-I.D.: dciem.1067
Posted: Wed Aug 22 17:28:54 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 22-Aug-84 18:51:12 EDT
References: <751@ubc-ean.CDN>
Organization: D.C.I.E.M., Toronto, Canada
Lines: 44

Why do we have poitical parties, and when should they enforce party
discipline in a vote?

Donald Acton argues that most votes cast by MPs should be in accord with
the wishes of the constituents on the particular issue.  Perhaps some
should be, but unfortunately, the wishes of the constituents can be
self-contradictory or in conflict with natural (physical) law.  The
case of capital punishment was quoted.  On the one hand, the constituents
presumably wish to reduce the rate of crimes for which the death penalty
would be enacted, and on the other they wish to enact the death penalty
for those crimes.  Unfortunately, there is no evidence that enacting
the death penalty reduces the rate for capital crimes, and there is
suggestive evidence that it does the opposite.  So in acceding to the
wishes of the constituents for a reduction in the crime rate, the
politicians violate the wishes of the constituents to enact the death
penalty.

Many actions of governments are interlinked, in that the effects of one
will affect the possible results of another.  Party policy is not a
set of unrelated choices, although it may be possible to find groups
of tightly bound choices that can be considered with less dependence
among the groups.  Voters may not recognize necessary linkages that
are seen (rightly or wrongly) by people who have considered the choices
more carefully; in such cases, to vote the people's choice might be
to deny the people's choice on an apparently different issue.

Countries with large numbers of parties in Parliament (or whatever) tend
to find it difficult to adhere to a consistent policy.  Even though
we may disagree with the policies of a government, consistency may
be better than inconsistently doing some things right and some things
wrong that interfere with the right things.  A totally different but
consistent policy might be even better, but inbetween won't be.
We have an advantage, here, in that even a minority government can
work with a consistent policy.  It may be tempered by the views of
the supporting third or fourth party, which prevents an extreme policy
from being implemented.  We might be better with a little easier
access to parliament by small parties, to avoid single-party dominance.
But we would not be better off with constantly shifting coalitions
in the manner of Israel or the Netherlands.
-- 

Martin Taylor
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