Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site dciem.UUCP Path: utzoo!dciem!mmt 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 {allegra,linus,ihnp4,floyd,ubc-vision}!utzoo!dciem!mmt {uw-beaver,qucis,watmath}!utcsrgv!dciem!mmt