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Comment by bjornsing | Hacker News Reader

This seems to gloss over the major difference between Scandinavian voting systems and e.g. the US one: They are very party-focused. At the end of the day it’s the cabals at the top of the major parties that decide who gets to sit in parliament and how they vote. Sometimes it feels like it would be more honest if e.g. Swedish parliament just had 8 members and their voting buttons controlled more / fewer lights on the voting results dashboard. Leads to a very collectivist political culture.

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I think you may have an overly rosy view of the US system. Search former rep Justin Amash's tweets for keywords like "house", "speaker", and "deliberation":

https://xcancel.com/justinamash/status/1486169720911020036

On the other hand, I suppose we do have primaries in the US. Sounds like that's not a thing in Scandinavia.

I understand a big part of the job of party leadership in the US is simply negotiating with / persuading representatives of your own party to vote for upcoming bills. So perhaps that's another sense in which party leadership is weaker in the US. The focus on local representation also creates problems though, since representatives are incentivized to deliver federal projects in the district they represent, even if that's not best for the nation as a whole.

I really wish there a method for prototyping new democracy designs. I feel that this area has been very stagnant, and radical improvements could be possible.

> On the other hand, I suppose we do have primaries in the US. Sounds like that's not a thing in Scandinavia.

Whilst we do not have primary elections, you can vote for individual candidates on the ballots, moving them up on the party list. This strategy does actually work to get candidates further down on the list over other candidates that would have been selected first.

I'd argue that primaries are a serious bug rather than a feature of the US political system, at least in places where only registered members of a party can vote in that party's primary. By requiring candidates for the general election to first pass through a gauntlet composed of the most die-hard voters from one part of the political spectrum, you frequently end up with candidates who are way more extreme than the electorate in general.

This seems to be true even if the party in question is the minority party for a given race. Instead of picking a candidate with crossover appeal from voters in the majority, they end up with some raging partisan who can't possibly win, making it effectively a one horse race. Another major failure mode is that even in pretty evenly split areas it encourages pandering to the extreme fringe of the party and winning by a narrow margin rather than winning with a broad coalition because broad coalitions with crossover appeal don't help you get out of the primary. This has been weaponized in recent years, with moderates being threatened with primary challenges if they don't follow the party line, even though this misrepresents the politics of their actual voter base.

I'd like to try a system where everybody had to use the same process to get on the ballot and then parties could endorse one of them (and probably have that indicated on the ballot).

A couple states (notably California) simply have a primary election to determine who the 2 candidates will be in the general election. They're often both from the same party in "one party" districts where people overwhelmingly prefer one of the parties.

California's voting districts are gerrymandered along party lines, so the districts are about 75% safe seats for one party, and 25% safe seats for another party, despite the last Presidential election only being 58% for the one party and 42% for the other.

Despite this, California has some of the most egregious pandering to extremes within the parties (due to the safe seats) and has a reputation for having "extreme" candidates.

> you frequently end up with candidates who are way more extreme than the electorate in general.

I agree (as a non-American), I think the US primaries system is weird, but how does this not apply to other systems where it’s just a small handful of political insiders that select who runs?

Is it the case that this middle ground is the worst of all worlds?

If you mean Presidential primaries, they're a mix of both popular selection and insider selection.

Parties always have a favored inside candidate, but they have to actually convince folks of the candidate.

This happens a lot in American politics, especially at the local elections where we elect positions that are non-political. The governor appoints a Sheriff or Coroner, but they have to face an election in a few weeks.

> By requiring candidates for the general election to first pass through a gauntlet composed of the most die-hard voters from one part of the political spectrum, you frequently end up with candidates who are way more extreme than the electorate in general.

It's not always that they're more extreme, it's largely the people who have the extra time to go to additional elections or caucusing. Ex: retirees. And this is affected each party differently.

One way to think about it is: Imagine an electorate that constitutes a bell curve along a left-right axis. The mode of the bell curve represents a milquetoast moderate position, with the tails representing extremes. Different electoral systems can have different biases:

* You can have a "heavy-tailed" congress, where extremists are overrepresented.

* You can have a "thin-tailed" congress, where moderates are overrepresented.

* You can have a "representative" congress, where the range of views in congress looks very similar to the population at large.

At first blush, for the sake of policy stability, a "thin-tailed" congress appears desirable.

But there is also an interesting argument that it's important not to disempower extremists. Democracy could be considered as a "safety valve" that empowers groups to resolve disagreements cooperatively. If some groups don't feel their views are represented, they might condemn the system and seek other ways for their voices to be heard. Something like the 60s civil rights movement in the US could be seen as an example of this. Arguably, the 60s would've been more stable, if the US electoral system wasn't as disenfranchising to minorities with "extreme" views relative to the median at that time.

I can't think of any arguments for a heavy-tailed congress though.

The weird thing about the US system is on the one hand there is the promotion of extremists, but on the other hand, authors like Ezra Klein complain about excessive "veto points" and checks and balances that prevent elected officials from accomplishing stuff. Individually these seem like flaws, but it might be bad to fix one without fixing the other.

I think the US system sucks in absolute terms, but has also worked remarkably well given that it was designed in 1787. "By our estimate, national constitutions have lasted an average of only seventeen years since 1789" https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/lifespan-written-constitut...

People love to complain about "American exceptionalism", but from my perspective, it contributes to a sense of civic pride that's kept the wheels on the bus for such a long time despite a lousy constitution. So I'm concerned that it may be going away.

The American systems elects unpopular candidates, and then gives them very little power.

Makes sense, I guess.

In practice it actually works the other way around - when primaries are restricted to actual party members, it tends to moderate the candidates because the "smoke-filled rooms" emphasize ability to build coalitions through consensus. But once you open them up to basically anyone who is willing to declare party affiliation, those people vote mostly according to their beliefs - they don't participate in internal party politics otherwise so they don't value consensus building - and that's why Repubs got radicalized first.

I cannot speak fully to the Swedish situation, but in Denmark, MPs are independent as defined in the constitution. Yes, elections are largely party-based, but once elected, MPs are allowed to vote as they want. Of course, if they chose to defy the party line, they risk "losing the whip" as they'd say in the UK, which basically amounts to being expelled from the party.

That being said, it does not take a lot of signatures to get on a ballot as a candidate outside the parties in Denmark (a few hundreds, I believe), though only two candidates have successfully managed to get elected that way. Conversely, Denmark has a high threshold for political parties (requiring signatures amounting to 1% of the vote of the last election, so usually around 21k), but the threshold to get into parliament is only 2% (which I believe is one of the lowest amongst countries that uses similar proportional representative systems).

Returning to the towing the line (or rather lack thereof), the Danish parliament have a lot of independent MPs in parliament, because a lot find reason to quit their party after getting elected. Wikipedia has a fine table of MPs who has changed colours since the last election in November 2022:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_Folketi...

MPs are independent in Germany as well, but in practice they vote with their parliamentary group almost all the time. "Fraktionsdisziplin" (discipline of the group) is a common term and generally expected - failure to achieve that is considered failure of the leadership and can quickly escalate.

And even those who are elected directly wouldn't win their local election without their party, so all of them are very beholden to their party. Continuous defection on votes will see them not get re-elected, even if they don't get thrown out of the party.

Theory vs practice makes all the difference.

I don't necessarily think this is a failure of theory in face of practice. Most party members are team members, and are willing to follow party leadership most of the time. Yes, I know the leadership has leverage that ordinary members do not, but I think most of the time, leadership need not exert that leverage. But the list of members who switch party in Denmark between elections suggest that the theory is very much practised, but it needn't be all the time.

Most of the time leadership doesn't need to pressure individuals, because they follow the commands -- not because they so well aligned on all topic (they are not).

Of course there's an argument to be made that it would be a lot more chaotic if every elected MP truly was only beholden to their consciousness, because your certainty of how some vote will go would be very low and you'd have to actually convince MPs that it's the right thing to do (that would open up the question of transparency, i.e. who voted for what; official German politics are fundamentally opposed to that idea).

Brokering backroom deals among party elites is far more efficient and predictable -- you can always buy agreement by offering some concessions on a different topic they care about. But then we're back to that question: why do you need hundreds of people if the decisions are made by a few dozens?

In the Norwegian parlament it's actually quite common that only part of the parlament is gathered for votes when it's clear who would win a complete vote. So in that sense it's actually very close to your 8 members.

It still matters who you vote on though, but mostly from the representatives ability to influence what gets discussed. And there is a lot of 'day-to-day' politics where the details gets formed by the representatives, while the 'big lines' are set by the party.

Finaly I can't help but notice that the American political culture is significantly less diverse than the Scandinavian one. Yes, you have the odd representative crossing party lines, but in practice it seems like all this possibility for diverse opinions ends up being lost when they get squashed into two big tents.

I don’t really want to learn hundreds of different individual political platforms. It’s even a stretch to study 7-9 platforms. Instead I tick the party that is closest to my views but the individual that dissents on a specific issue, or who focuses on that particular issue I like. This is how you can, as a non member, try to steer the politics of the parties.

In modern times the US is really only different in theory. This wasn't always the case, but currently national party positions totally dominate congressional voting with the individuals who happen to fill those seats being largely interchangeable cogs. There are exceptions, but those people are largely notable because they are so rare. And more importantly, they're slowly being replaced by people who will follow the party line.

There have been studies on this that show party line voting becoming more and more common over the years to the point where it's basically the expected norm today. Arguably the US is in an even worse position because it's usually the President who sets the legislative agenda and voting position for their party in Congress, even though the system is set up assuming Congress acts like an independent branch.

Well, not quite. The U.S. house currently has 220 Republicans, and to pass a bill takes 218 votes. If 3 Republicans decide they don't like something, the bill won't pass, and this is happening quite frequently right now. (The Democrats could decide to join the Republicans and pass it anyway, but so far this has not happened.)

The current President keeps wanting to pass bills which simply don't pass.

Likewise, the Senate realistically needs 60% votes to pass controversial legislation, and that just isn't happening either.

You're right that the U.S. congress used to vote far more upon regional lines or other non-party interests than it does now. There is something studied in political science (I can't remember its name) that predicts that well-funded, important elections will eventually converge on being 50/50, with the winner essentially being statistical noise.

TIL "(convergence to) electoral mean". But also seems to fall apart with more complex issues https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3872446/

You're right that defections haven't totally gone away, but I think the current Congress actually emphasizes how rare they are now. The only reason things aren't passing is because the house is so close that a tiny percentage of Republicans defecting can sink a bill. But the vast majority of Republicans follow the party line and basically none of the Democrats are willing to cross over either. In a system with realistic local representation you'd expect a lot more crossover in both directions.

This was the norm for most of the 20th century. Major legislation passed with votes from both parties - often over ⅔ and immune to a Presidential veto.

My reaction to this is to focus more on things locally.

I'm sure part of the issue is the move towards giant omnibus bills rather than bills addressing individual issues. They tend to emphasize the ideological differences between the parties.

That's up to the voters, ultimately. You can choose to vote for independent MPs, right? Or MPs who promise not to always tow the party line? I suppose if people choose to vote based on parties, of course you get party focused politics.

No you can’t really vote for an independent MP in the Swedish voting system. They would have to register a party, it’s very hard to win a seat, and there is no guarantee that they will not win two or more seats – thus perpetuating the collectivism.

At least you don't have the spoiler problem like 3rd parties in the US have though, right?

Why is it hard for a new party to win a seat? In the US, for a 3rd party to win, something like 50% of the relevant electorate has to coordinate their vote to switch to the 3rd party. It sounds like in Scandinavia, the fraction of the electorate which needs to coordinate is just 1 / num_seats, which is way smaller.

If I were a Swede, I would be tempted to troll everyone by setting up an "independents party". The seats for that party are allocated based on a separate vote, open to the public. Candidates of the "independents party" have absolutely no obligation to vote together, and act as free agents once they get elected. Sort of like a democracy-within-a-democracy.

It might be hard to convince people to vote for a party made up of random people who might have very contradictory views.

You're describing direct democracy parties and they exist in other places in non-trolly way. For example the Australian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Direct_Democracy

> Why is it hard for a new party to win a seat?

There are thresholds to avoid too many small parties / independents getting elected. You need to win 4% of the vote nationally or 12% regionally to get a single seat, and if you do then you typically get more than one. Congrats, you’re now a collectivist too.

> If I were a Swede…

I’ve considered it. :)

toe the line, as in keep your toes behind the line at the start of the race, not tow the line.

> You can choose to vote for independent MPs, right?

Not if they can’t afford to run a campaign.

Traditionally what a 'independent MP' would do is create a new party. Usually it requires a certain number of signatures, not from people supporting them, just supporting their right to become a party. Then they need to have candidates for the ridings they want to be in.

One example is the Norwegian party 'Patient Focus' which

  was formed in April 2021, as a support movement for an expansion of the hospital in the town of Alta in Alta Municipality in Finnmark county, Norway. In the 2021 parliamentary election, it won one of Finnmark's five seats in the Storting (Parlament).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Focus_(Norway)

At least in the parliamentary system, you are voting for an abstract notion of how things should be run, a worldview, or a list of policies.

In the American system, the cult of personality rules above all. The vast majority of Americans disagree with what Donald Trump is implementing right now. That’s clear when you ask people in the abstract. But we don’t choose that way. Personality and celebrity rules the day here.

Parliamentary systems with proportional party list voting systems are far from immune the cult of personality. See: Hitler.

There's a reason why so many governments with such systems one would consider "free" still have to outright ban parties from elections.

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