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Comment by woodpanel | Hacker News Reader

High Pirate Party Numbers = 4 more years for Angela Merkel

I welcome the German pirates for several reasons:

- "the discussion it brought up is already very beneficial."

- they have a high turn out of former non-voters

- "harmless stupidity": The German pirates seem to be ambivalent as of now. For instance, they are the only left-wing party that's not in favor of female employee quotas (an idea so absurd, there's not even an english wikipedia entry http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frauenquote). If they dig deeper into this populist lefty anti-authoritarian theme (as it seems to be the case) the first thing they will achieve is less votes for the other left-wing parties.

And personally, I think this would be a good thing (see "female employee quotas").

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I think it's pretty unlikely that they fully get into all that "gender politics" stuff like the greens. That has several reasons - mainly the see themselves as more "liberal" (it has a different meaning here than in the us) than greens, and also they are not as female-dominated in their ranks as greens are.

I think it's unlikely that they'll embrace a full blown "Frauenquote" (funny how there isn't an english wikipedia entry for it ^^), because the discussion inside the party (i am not a member) seems to be going in a direction they call "post gender". I think this post gender idead, by and large, is a good one.

I hope they'll pursue this path more, bringing an approach of true equality to politics instead of the "gender fights" other left-leaning parties like to put on the political stage.

female employee quotas an idea so absurd, there's not even an english wikipedia entry

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_government#Quotas

How is Frauenquote different from Affirmitive Action? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action)

Reading the entry - it isn't. It's basically the same thing.

What is different in germany, though, is that the discussion here revolves around forcing private sector enterprises to have specific (government set) quota of women in their leadership (or else be punished by the law).

Affirmative action in the US seems to revolve more around not negatively discriminating against women when making hiring decisions, but not forcing government set quotas on companies.

I can't quite imagine the US government interfering with private enterprise in this way.

"Affirmative action in the US seems to revolve more around not negatively discriminating against women when making hiring decisions,"

Affirmative action is when two people are equally suited for a job/position/benefit, the one from the disadvantaged group (based on sex, ethnic/socioeconomic background, physical impairment, ...) gets it. In more extreme varieties, it means that the one from the disadvantaged group has less strict requirements to fulfill. In a way, a women's quota is a species of the genus affirmative action.

"Frauenquote" is just a specialization of the term "positive discrimination" in the UK, France, Spain and in most of the EU, and "affirmative action" in the US and some other countries. Other countries do not have a specific term for the gender case, but it is exactly the same thing, and lots of similar policies exist. You can see this by taking a look at Wikipedia/Quotenregelung which is linked to Affirmative action in English Wikipedia.

About the Pirate Party's take on this: I don't think there's a mature consensus yet. According to a recent poll (http://www.taz.de/!89247/) only 6 percent sees the party as postgender.

> High Pirate Party Numbers = 4 more years for Angela Merkel

How does that follow?

Because the Pirate party is taking away voters from both the traditional conservative camp (FDP, CDU/CSU) and the traditional social democrat/Green camp, yet is too new to be seriously considered as a coalition partner for a government. That means a grand coalition (CDU/CSU and SPD) led by Merkel becomes more likely - the same one as in the previous administration, before the FDP gained enough votes to have a traditional conservative coalition, but the FDP is currently vanishing into obscurity.

That makes sense. It would also possibly the best outcome for the Pirates: being in opposition would give them time to be more professional and get their act together, and would mean that in the next elections, both CDU and SPD would be unpopular incumbents (meaning they both lose more votes to the Pirates).

Absolutely. Entering a government after they first get into the parliament would do them no good. They first need to establish themselves, before they can govern.

Shouldn't everyone just vote for the party who he likes most? Voting for a party has also long-term effects that you have to consider. Also in Germany every party gets money for each vote and so on... the coalition aspect is just one of many...

Does anybody know enougth about the Swiss and German system that can explain to me why we never here the term "coalition" in swiss politics? If you are in the parlament you are in it. I mean there is stuff to vote on and everybody votes for what he likes what effects does not been in "the coalition" have?

I hope I made myself clear.

It seems to be in large part traditional that German parties have formed formal coalitions to support governments - in the Swiss parliament you have "Fraktionen", which can have members from several parties, but are not as formally organized (German coalition governments are usually based on a written contract).

Another big factor seems to be that the German Bundeskanzler has the sole power to decide policy and choose his ministers, so having parties form a solid majority to elect and support him is very important. In Switzerland, the government consists of the seven Bundesräte, who are peers and elected independently by the parliament. They rotate at being the Bundespräsident (formal head of government), who does not have special powers.

They dont rotate its always the oldes in years of beeing a Bundesrat.

According to the German Wikipedia, this is completely wrong - they rotate every year, and the office is given to the one who hasn't been President for the longest time (or ever).

This is, however, purely a custom; formally, the Bundespräsident is elected.

Possible. Not importent anyway.

You probably don't hear it because Switzerland has a pretty much perpetual coalition:

Since 1959 the four main parties has effectively voluntarily split the federal council between them based on parliamentary representation to rather than risk being left outside government for any length of time.

The distribution of seats follows a formula agreed by those parties, so it's not "news" that the council keeps pretty much the same party composition election after election.

Most other countries don't have any long standing arrangements like that, so the question of who will form the government is always a major subject in advance of elections.

Ah the Idea would be to get a colision that is more than half the gov and then putting in all the seven head ministers only from parties in the colision. Now I see, that didn't even occur to me that one could do that but in hinsite its pretty clever. In Switzerland this almost equal distribution of the 7 head ministers was just called "Zauberformel" witch just means "Magicformula", now I understand why the called it that.

Well it has been broken anyway, the right wing basiclly kicked out both of there ministers witch led to the split of that party. The biggest party ended up with no seat in the Bundesrat (Top 7). Now they have one again but he has the militäry and nobody cares about that :)

The old parties need to wisen up and become much more flexible in the way they form coalitions. It would be nice if they got that message from the rise of the Pirate Party.

SPD/Green is the only combination with a chance of getting >50% to end the CDU/SPD coalition. The pirates are draining votes from both of them, and I doubt SPD or CDU would be willing to form a coalition with a party as young and controversial as the PP.

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