Has the Political system failed?

POINTBREAK

I am not talking about Ireland in particular but it seems to me there is something seriously wrong with the process used to elect political leaders. I say that because they keep getting it wrong.
The problem seems to be that its a certain type of person who decides to become a politician and there isn't that much difference between them. So what makes them think they are suitable to lead us in the first place?
The process seems to be.......
Join a political party.
Work your way up until you get selected as a candidate.
The Party them works to get you elected.
You get elected, BUT you then have to do what the Party tells you.
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So we are only really electing Politicians that have been pre selected by a Political Party and once elected the Party has control of them. Is this actually Democracy? Government of the People by the People? Or is it government of the people by political parties? Whatever it is, it clearly isn't working.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

beeftotheheels

One of the reasons why most democracies involve political parties and whip systems is that the alternative, a legislature of independents interested in their own local/ vested interest ideals, could be unworkable. How would you ever get any legislation passed? How much horse trading would a budget, for example, involve? Ideals have to be tempered by reality.

That said, we seem to have a particular issue with the way we have tempered democracy in Ireland as Permabear noted.

POINTBREAK

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

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Voting for an Independent seems a waste of time to me for 2 reasons.
Its extremely difficult for them to get elected when they are up against a big party machine.
If they do get elected and get to parliament, they have little or no power to do anything.

mikemac

Unless everything falls into place and the independent is needed to make up the government

Like Tony Gregory held Haughey to ransom and demanded tens of millions for his area at a time when the country was in bad financial shape.
Others have since done the same but never as successfully.

But the numbers have to fall exactly for this happen. If not, the independent can do little and goes to the back benches

OP, have you an alternative proposal as you've been thinking about this?

POINTBREAK

beeftotheheels wrote: »

One of the reasons why most democracies involve political parties and whip systems is that the alternative, a legislature of independents interested in their own local/ vested interest ideals, could be unworkable. How would you ever get any legislation passed? How much horse trading would a budget, for example, involve? Ideals have to be tempered by reality.

That said, we seem to have a particular issue with the way we have tempered democracy in Ireland as Permabear noted.

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Its not just Ireland.
If we had no political parties I don't see how that would be unworkable. Political Parties seem to spend most of their time blaming each other and really seem more interested in remaining in power than acting for the greater good of the community. I would be happy if they were banned.

View

I'd say there is a failure in our political system.

It relates to the complete absence of a powerful local government system here which has the power to deliver real change within the local communities that they operate in - that is to say raise local taxes, make decisions and deliver services to their communities.

It is important because with such a system, politicians can "cut their teeth" on a small local scale where, if they make mistakes, the impact is confined to one community.

Under our current system, it is perfectly possible to go from being a candidate with no experience of local (or national) governance to being a cabinet Minister within a few short days (as, indeed, Garret Fitzgerald did).

That means, it is perfectly possible to become a Minister (or TD) here by "sounding good" on topics without ever having had to deliver on them. That is a serious weakness in the system.

Zombrex

POINTBREAK wrote: »

I am not talking about Ireland in particular but it seems to me there is something seriously wrong with the process used to elect political leaders. I say that because they keep getting it wrong.

You are going to have to define what you mean by "failed" or "succeeded" before your question can be answered.

Democracy gives every adult man and woman the ability to vote for any candidate they want, and allows anyone to run for election (within particular reasonable criteria).

To me this is the goal of democracy and thus it is a success.

POINTBREAK

feelingstressed wrote: »

Unless everything falls into place and the independent is needed to make up the government

Like Tony Gregory held Haughey to ransom and demanded tens of millions for his area at a time when the country was in bad financial shape.
Others have since done the same but never as successfully.

But the numbers have to fall exactly for this happen. If not, the independent can do little and goes to the back benches

OP, have you an alternative proposal as you've been thinking about this?

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I would prefer government by real people selected by Sortition.
An Independent can sometimes hold the government to ransom, but if we had no political parties that couldn't happen.

View

POINTBREAK wrote: »

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Its not just Ireland.
If we had no political parties I don't see how that would be unworkable. Political Parties seem to spend most of their time blaming each other and really seem more interested in remaining in power than acting for the greater good of the community. I would be happy if they were banned.

Even if you ban political parties, you'll end up with factions in a parliament as there will always be people who agree on political issues and/or candidates for leadership. It is unreasonable to suggest that such people should be prohibited from standing on a common platform and advocate a common set of policies to the electorate . As it is, our voting system encourages "beauty contest" style politics where policies play second place to "Vote for me, I'm grand" nonsense, which leaves people upset then about our candidates tending to all do the same things when in power. Ironically, PR-STV was apparently originally devised as a system which would weaken the grip of parties in the politicial system!

beeftotheheels

View wrote: »

Under our current system, it is perfectly possible to go from being a candidate with no experience of local (or national) governance to being a cabinet Minister within a few short days (as, indeed, Garret Fitzgerald did).

I think our problems are a little bigger than that when you compare and contrast Garret with Jackie Healey Rae!

That said, a strong local government system would allow the national parliament focus more on national issues, and if X Co Co had genuine powers to improve the lot of the electorate of X then we might see less parish pump politics in the Dail (which has to be a major concern with independent TDs under our current system).

POINTBREAK

Wicknight wrote: »

You are going to have to define what you mean by "failed" or "succeeded" before your question can be answered.

Democracy gives every adult man and woman the ability to vote for any candidate they want, and allows anyone to run for election (within particular reasonable criteria).

To me this is the goal of democracy and thus it is a success.

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By failed I mean with finance in Ireland. The UK is the same and have the added mistakes of jumping into wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Democracy does indeed allow anyone to run for election, but the Political Parties then do everything in their power to stop the individual getting elected.

POINTBREAK

View wrote: »

Even if you ban political parties, you'll end up with factions in a parliament as there will always be people who agree on political issues and/or candidates for leadership. It is unreasonable to suggest that such people should be prohibited from standing on a common platform and advocate a common set of policies to the electorate . As it is, our voting system encourages "beauty contest" style politics where policies play second place to "Vote for me, I'm grand" nonsense, which leaves people upset then about our candidates tending to all do the same things when in power. Ironically, PR-STV was apparently originally devised as a system which would weaken the grip of parties in the politicial system!

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Groups of people working together is not a fault, but when they are organised into political parties that is when the problems start. They are focused on staying in power. If there were no parties, just Independents selected for a set term we would have genuine people with one aim, and that would be the greater good.

View

beeftotheheels wrote: »

I think our problems are a little bigger than that when you compare and contrast Garret with Jackie Healey Rae!

That said, a strong local government system would allow the national parliament focus more on national issues, and if X Co Co had genuine powers to improve the lot of the electorate of X then we might see less parish pump politics in the Dail (which has to be a major concern with independent TDs under our current system).

Many of our TDs just function as "Super County Councillors" - were local government reformed to give it real power (with central government doing much less as a result), most of them would probably be happier being "Ministers" of their local County Councils and delivering (or trying to deliver) real change locally.

If that means Jackie Healy Rae as the "Minister-President" of Kerry, so be it - it would be between him and the Kerry electorate as to whether he would be up to the job.

PS JHR is apparently a lot sharper than he comes across - more than one civil servant found that out the hard way when appearing before Oireachtas committees.

View

POINTBREAK wrote: »

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Groups of people working together is not a fault, but when they are organised into political parties that is when the problems start. They are focused on staying in power. If there were no parties, just Independents selected for a set term we would have genuine people with one aim, and that would be the greater good.

Under our governmental system, the government must command a majority in the Dail. Hence, unless you change the system, you will have political parties or, if they are banned, political factions focused on staying in power.

POINTBREAK

View wrote: »

Under our governmental system, the government must command a majority in the Dail. Hence, unless you change the system, you will have political parties or, if they are banned, political factions focused on staying in power.

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If they were elected for one set term only, there would be no re-election to be concerned about. Then they could make decisions that don't take into consideration their own power concerns. That would be progress.

beeftotheheels

POINTBREAK wrote: »

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If they were elected for one set term only, there would be no re-election to be concerned about. Then they could make decisions that don't take into consideration their own power concerns. That would be progress.

There would be no experience, there would be no accountability. How can you be certain that that would be progress when compared to other suggestions for reforming our political system?

POINTBREAK

beeftotheheels wrote: »

There would be no experience, there would be no accountability. How can you be certain that that would be progress when compared to other suggestions for reforming our political system?

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The experience we could do without. It hasn't exactly been a benefit up to now. Accountability? The only accountability is that they are afraid of losing power. They can make all the mistakes they want at the minute and very little happens.
We would get progress, because they would not be focusing on remaining in power which seems the main purpose of the parties.

POINTBREAK

"Power to ordinary people
An inherent problem with electoral politics is the over-representative of the politically active groups in society who tend to be those who join political parties. For example in 2000 less than 2% [10] of the UK population belonged to a political party whilst in 2005 there were at best only 3 independent MPs (see List of UK minor party and independent MPs elected) so that 99.5% of all UK MPs belonged to a political party. As a result political members of the UK population were represented by one MP per 1800 of those belonging to a party whilst those who did not belong to a party had one MP per 19million individuals who did not belong to a party"

View

POINTBREAK wrote: »

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If they were elected for one set term only, there would be no re-election to be concerned about. Then they could make decisions that don't take into consideration their own power concerns. That would be progress.

Alternatively, they could take decisions to line their own pockets. After all, there would be nothing to stop them doing so, would there? They could make our current politicians seem like choir-boys in comparasion.

View

POINTBREAK wrote: »

"Power to ordinary people
An inherent problem with electoral politics is the over-representative of the politically active groups in society who tend to be those who join political parties."

So? That's like finding an over-representation in accountancy of those people who studied accountancy. Obviously, if you don't train to be an accountant or get involved in politics, you are unlikely to be represented in those circles.

Scofflaw

I quite like sortition and lottery systems, and dislike political parties and the use of the whip in all votes - but I can't help but notice that for all the complaints about the failings of Irish democracy, all the available evidence suggests that the Irish democratic process delivers exactly what the electorate wants.

That's not to say that improvement isn't possible, but that the root problem is that the Irish people are getting what the majority of them want, and that rather than reform what may be needed is education and engagement of the electorate - which is both a bigger task, and a lot less fun.

cordially,
Scofflaw

POINTBREAK

View wrote: »

Alternatively, they could take decisions to line their own pockets. After all, there would be nothing to stop them doing so, would there? They could make our current politicians seem like choir-boys in comparasion.

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In an assembly like this no one person would have enough power to line their own pockets. The representatives would vote on each issue just as they do now. You could certainly put up a proposal to line your pockets but getting it through would need a majority vote.

POINTBREAK

View wrote: »

So? That's like finding an over-representation in accountancy of those people who studied accountancy. Obviously, if you don't train to be an accountant or get involved in politics, you are unlikely to be represented in those circles.

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No its not. We all form the electorate, so its not like its a selected group I am talking about.

POINTBREAK

Scofflaw wrote: »

I quite like sortition and lottery systems, and dislike political parties and the use of the whip in all votes - but I can't help but notice that for all the complaints about the failings of Irish democracy, all the available evidence suggests that the Irish democratic process delivers exactly what the electorate wants.

That's not to say that improvement isn't possible, but that the root problem is that the Irish people are getting what the majority of them want, and that rather than reform what may be needed is education and engagement of the electorate - which is both a bigger task, and a lot less fun.

cordially,
Scofflaw

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I don't know if that is true.
Is there not a large number of people who don't vote at all?
What size is the government mandate?
I mean did the majority of people in Ireland vote for this government. In the UK they certainly didn't.

beeftotheheels

POINTBREAK wrote: »

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In an assembly like this no one person would have enough power to line their own pockets. The representatives would vote on each issue just as they do now. You could certainly put up a proposal to line your pockets but getting it through would need a majority vote.

Are we to have a government on top of the legislature elected by lottery?

How do we choose the Minister for Finance to head off to ECOFIN meetings and negotiate on our behalf?

What's to stop her instead using her time in Paris (if that is where the ECOFIN meeting is) to go shopping since there is no accountability?

What's to stop her being completely outclassed since the lottery system could throw up a second year theology student as the minister for Finance?

ps No offence intended to any second year theology students out there, it was chosen as a random example of a young person with limited experience of the real world, could have chosen any degree.

View

POINTBREAK wrote: »

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In an assembly like this no one person would have enough power to line their own pockets. The representatives would vote on each issue just as they do now. You could certainly put up a proposal to line your pockets but getting it through would need a majority vote.

And, what's to stop a majority of the representatives agreeing to all vote the same way in order to enrich themselves? After all, it is not as if there would be a threat that the electorate would refuse to re-elect them given the system you are proposing.

View

POINTBREAK wrote: »

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No its not. We all form the electorate, so its not like its a selected group I am talking about.

I didn't dispute that we all form the electorate. We are all free to join political parties and/or get involved in the political process. Obviously, if you don't do so, then you are unlikely to make it as a politician - it would be a rather strange system where you could end up as a politician if you have no interest in politics and/or make no effort to get involved in the political process.

dan_d

I think a similar conversation to this was had around here before. I have to agree with the OP's post. Something is not right, but narrowing down the something is difficult.

Our system is in theory quite a good one. But I think it could definitely do with tweaking. I do think, at the very least, that there should be time limits set on either the length of time any one party can be in power, or the length of time any one individual can be in one particular office. Narrow it down further to putting time limits on say the posts of Taoiseach and Tanaiste if need be. (I have suggested this here before). A huge part of our problems is due to the fact that Bertie Ahern was in office for 13 years. That is a very,very long time for one man to be calling the shots. The electorate put FF in, but by default, that meant Bertie was in charge. It seems....wrong, really. Power corrupts, that much we know.

Maybe a way to go would be to give more power to local Government and allow our politicians to concentrate on national issues, rather than local issues (I did say this at the time of the election), and put time limits on certain offices. I couldn't give 2 fiddler's curses what our local representatives are going to do about the potholes and Metro North - what I want to know is what they're going to do about the country's money and employment problems. It's something that became top of the agenda in the last election I think - people were less interested in the local area and more interested in the national problems Heralds time for some change, methinks.

Boulevardier

A lot of the problem stems from the frequent failure of politicians to carry out their election pronises when they enter government. As things stand, the only sanction available to voters is to replace them at the next election with another set of politicians - who proceeed to do exactly the same thing.

Part of the answer might be to legally oblige politicians, once elected to government, to carry out their promises or be made to resign. I can think of one way this might be done, and it may seem a bit mad, but bear with me.

Politicians during a general election would have the option, subect to certain criteria, to "register" a policy undertaking with the High Court. failure to carry out a registered election promise would mean that the High Court could disqualify the politicians in question from holding government office for the remainder of that Dail.

Obviously this could only be applied to specific measures, such as restoring the minimum wage or whatever. Vaguer promises such as "bringing about greater prosperity" would not qualify.

In any case, does anyone else think this could be a runner, or am I just a bit nuts?

beeftotheheels

Boulevardier wrote: »

A lot of the problem stems from the frequent failure of politicians to carry out their election pronises when they enter government. As things stand, the only sanction available to voters is to replace them at the next election with another set of politicians - who proceeed to do exactly the same thing.

Part of the answer might be to legally oblige politicians, once elected to government, to carry out their promises or be made to resign.

I see two problems with this.

The first is coalitions which by definition require compromise, and this time we pretty much knew that we were voting for a FG Lab coalition, but given the nature of coalition politics we can never be certain of how our next government will look until it is formed.

The second is external realities. While the people might have wanted to burn the bond holders, and while the opposition might have thought this was feasible, once in government the obvious legal difficulties would have become apparent.

Our government are constrained by international and contractual obligations, which we the people are also constrained by (but don't always understand).

The other problem of course, is that a lot of the mess we are in today is precisely because FF did carry out their election promises to throw money at us.

But the crux of your idea of having something we can hold politicians to account by is not a bad one. A constitutional debt break is an obvious one.

Additional constitutional provisions on conduct "unbecoming" a TD might also be a good idea to allow us remove individuals who are not fit for purpose. We'd have to define the offence in detail (although the last lost should give us loads of ideas about conduct we'd like to ban), and then empower some officer (the president perhaps) to react to public outcry by referring the matter to the Courts. We'd need to be very careful not to create something which could be used as a political tool, so we would need to incorporate lots of checks and balances.