| IIIIITHE1IIIII said: 1. The political party system needs to be terminated and replaced by direct democracy |
Direct Democracy is a *bad* idea. Extremely bad. And here's why: most people have neither the time, the patience, nor the intelligence to be capable of being across all of the issues necessary to make judgments while still doing everything else they have to do in life. They have jobs, among other things, that place demands on their time.
Of course, they can take a bit of time out of their lives once in a few years to vote for who they feel will do a good job of representing their interests. But they couldn't be expected to vote on every issue that comes up... not to mention that you still need people to be writing the legislation that they vote on.
The purpose of the political party system, at its core, is to have a system that allows people to choose the overall direction they feel the government should be moving in. In some countries, such as the US, the system has become rather perverted, and in others, it's not as bad, but still isn't functioning quite as intended. But the fundamental of it is solid.
What's more, representative democracy is a good thing - it means that people are selecting someone from among their ranks to represent their interests; that person's job then becomes one of reading and understanding various proposed legislation, learning all of the nuances that require dedicated study (such as coming to an informed position on issues such as climate change - note that many politicians, especially conservative ones, don't actually do this, unfortunately), and then evaluating the legislation as it affects the people for whom the politician is responsible, including indirect effects.
Unfortunately, representative democracy and the political party system were established as one-and-the-same, and the result, with the rise of the 24 hour news cycle, has been chaos and manipulation. The failure, at its core, is that representatives are tasked with being both party representatives and electorate representatives, tasks which are frequently at odds with each other... and then, when you add in the effects of money on politics, it becomes highly corrupt to boot.
What I suggest is that government needs to separate out these two systems into distinct parts of the government. And I have an idea for how to do it, too (using Australia's system, so apologies if there's any confusion resulting from that): there are typically two "houses" of government, and then an executive branch. Party politics should fundamentally apply only to one of the "houses" (I'll call it the Upper House), and not to the executive branch. Representative democracy should reign in the other "house" (I'll call it the Lower House). To ensure they remain separate, the constitutional definitions of the two "houses" should explicitly state that no Lower House member may be in any form of contract with any political party, and may not have been in such a contract within the last 5 years. This includes membership, naturally, so Lower House politicians cannot be party politicians. It would also establish that no member may be in any form of contract with any other member, so that formal blocs cannot be formed.
With that restriction in place, the Lower House members would then be elected by the usual method, whereby people within each electorate vote, and those who receive the most votes become members. I would propose a system by which each electorate would get two seats, with a preferential election system - the two candidates with the most support would get the seats for that electorate. By having two seats, you significantly reduce the ability for electorates to be gerrymandered, and ensure that left/right divides become less of an issue in terms of representation.
For the Upper House, elections would be by party, rather than by candidate. Parties would put forward their candidates, though, so that voters can see exactly who they're voting for as their party representatives. For Upper House seats, party representation would be proportional... from across the country. So if a particular left-wing party gets 30% of the vote, then they get approximately 30% of the seats.
The Executive would then be elected separately, with the same restrictions as found on the Lower House regarding memberships/contracts. However, with the exception of the Head of State position, all Executive positions would be selected in a manner more similar to that used within companies - that is, no public campaigns, etc, but resumes and responses to "selection criteria". The Head of State, of course, is the public face of the nation, and thus needs a public campaign.
All positions would be formal jobs, with requirements that members cannot hold other jobs simultaneously with it, that they have contracts explicitly restricting what they can do afterwards (to remove cases where, for instance, a Minister for Health makes changes that benefit a specific pharmaceutical company, and then leaves and immediately gets hired by said pharmaceutical company), and a routine job performance check system that allows voters to deal with representatives that fail to do their job of representing them.
My full idea for an overhaul of democracy includes more (including the melding of local, state, and federal levels of government into a system that is more coherent)... but that's a discussion for another post. The point of this one is to emphasise that the flaw isn't representative democracy, or political parties, but rather, in how they interact.
All of that said, democracy does need a serious overhaul. The current electoral systems used in most countries was devised something like 200 years ago, and modifications have been nothing more than tinkering around the edges, while the core is rotting due to changing technology and changing culture.
