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Comment by fsh | Hacker News Reader

This doesn't even work that well for the governing parties. Coalition governments are based on the parties making compromises where their positions disagree. This means that in particular the smaller partner(s) have to vote against their own program most of the time if they want to at least get their core issues through the parliament. Unfortunately, an alarming number of people seem not to know this.

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Sounds like working as intended - "supporting an idea" is meaningless without expressing priorities and strength - you claim to support some idea but will demonstrably give up on it if it gets you to the ruling majority - if I care about this idea I should not vote for you.

"We support clean energy" - "we had to support opening new coal plants because we wanted to get support on our budget proposal for some agency"... Do I really give a shit they claim to support clean energy ?

You're right, that's why the platform should be able to show all the promises a party has made and how many they also implemented (helped to). That would be decisive for single-issue parties, and still very helpful for major ones - you can see if the delivered anything at all and if yes, on which points. Like, did the Greens deliver anything on their green agenda, or just checked a few points on the social issues: did they deliver on their core points?

I don't think it's quite as clear-cut. MPs are meant to vote according to their conscience, not party lines or coalition agreements.

It's a choice to vote against what a party claims to be their values in order to maintain stability in the coalition. The smaller party could also take a chance knowing the larger party won't abandon their comfy government position over it.

It's also interesting to figure out which values or plans a party has been willing to compromise on, since none of them publicly state this before elections.

I feel like these tools work best if you just use them as an additional data point in your decision.

I think that works extremely well – taken action is relevant while intentions are much less so aren't they?

And building a "coalition" isn't a natural law nor even how things were intended – the house is named "parliament" so there shall be discussion of all voting members prior voting on EVERY SINGLE bill. That's the MPs job description.

A coalition in fact is an illegal voting cartel as since decades each contains the paragraph "there will be no differing votes" while each vote is subject only to the conscience of the MP by definition of the constitution.

How could that go together.

But aren't most people disappointed by the social democrats because they don't fight hard enough for their core issues?

Or if they really just bring their core issues through, they seem to be surveillance and not social issues.

If you make a coalition government with the conservatives and you take their program as the coalition program, you did a bad job in forming the coalition.

> If you make a coalition government with the conservatives and you take their program as the coalition program, you did a bad job in forming the coalition.

I like your reasoning. In the end (within reason) I do not care how the laws are implemented, I am voting for the party, which matches what I would like to implement.

That's why I don't understand center-left people not voting left. As if any other party would be willing to implement the program of the social democrats.

I truly believe that the outbreak of socialism within the first four years is baseless fear-mongering.

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