Here comes a new law in political science: Joe’s Law. As I write, the Republic of Ireland is still working out, after its general election, what sort of a coalition government will be entailed by its system of proportional representation. And the Germans are fretting already about whether and how a new coalition might be put together, the last one having disintegrated. A new election looms, held according to Germany’s ‘personalised proportional representation’ voting system.
Voters may not have agreed on much but they did share a longing for bold and decisive government
Joe, meanwhile, is a first cousin twice removed whom I didn’t even know. He’s 16, and has a paper to write about our ‘first past the post’ (FPTP) voting system. Joe contacted me via his grandfather, my first cousin. We met on Zoom for a lengthy discussion, and from the back-and-forth I developed what is for me a new and (I believe) strong argument in favour of FPTP: a repudiation of all those rival voting systems we call proportional representation (PR). I name it after my fellow explorer, whether or not Joe himself agrees with it.
This is Joe’s Law: ‘Binary choices cannot proportionately reflect divergent opinions.’
A binary choice is between two alternatives: typically yes or no, between taking and not taking a course of action – whether or not, for instance, to take an umbrella this morning – where there can be no halfway house. Or whether to use my savings for an annuity to support me for the rest of my life.
Government in a democracy – the big policy decisions taken by those we elect to represent us – typically involves a series of choices that are, more often than not, essentially binary. Leadership means making binary choices.
Examples? Some in this list have happened, others might. Choosing tax rises that target business. Acceding – or not – to a public service trade union’s wage demands. Going to war to recover the Falkland Islands. Serious reform of the NHS. Substantially boosting defence spending. Cutting winter fuel payments for the elderly. ‘Assisted dying’. Gay marriage. Calling a referendum on EU membership. Letting go of the Chagos Islands. Sending illegal immigrants to Rwanda. Leaving the European Convention on Human Rights. Hitting China with punitive tariffs. Letting Ukraine deploy our missiles against Russia. Abolishing tuition fees/student loans. Introducing a compulsory citizens’ ID system. These are essentially ‘do or don’t’ decisions.
Some, it’s true, could be watered down as a compromise, but most depend for their efficacy on a crisp, stark, binary choice.
Applied, then, to public policy, Joe’s Law is fatal to what must be the ultimate purpose of proportional representation: policy that corresponds most accurately to what the people want. Different people want different things. A binary choice – yes or no – cannot reflect divergent opinions.
Joe’s Law is not (I emphasise) fatal to the idea of achieving a parliament composed of parties whose size mirrors the relative strengths of the many strands of opinion within the electorate. If the aim is that the size of political parties returned to parliament should correspond to the number of voters who back each, then PR can do that. FPTP doesn’t. If there were only two parties competing, and if the proportions of their supporters were evenly spread across all constituencies, and 49 per cent voted for Party A, and 51 per cent for Party B, FPTP would return every seat for Party B; but PR would return a House divided 51/49 for B and A respectively.
Opinion is never spread evenly, of course; but in Britain PR would still achieve a parliament that reflected different political parties’ relative support more accurately than FPTP, which tends to throttle small parties by discouraging potential supporters from casting a wasted vote. PR, by contrast, by making each voter feel their vote ‘counts’, encourages a multiplicity of parties to thrive.
Thus elections in countries using PR rarely return a single party with an absolute majority, necessitating instead the formation of multi-party coalitions – as in Ireland and Germany, where this column began.
When parties to a coalition cannot agree to a clear ‘do’ or ‘don’t’, the default position tends to be either ‘don’t’ or ‘do a bit, but not much’. Both responses constipate decisive government. Both discourage innovation that carries risk. This deadening effect is not what people have voted for.
Joe’s Law tells you why. What PR cannot do – what a multi-party coalition struggles to do – is devise an actual programme for government, a King’s Speech, that itself reflects fairly the ideological composition of the legislature, or even those party to a coalition. That is because, however it is formed, the government faces binary choices, and Joe’s Law kicks in. These binary choices offer little scope for folding divergent wishes together within a single decision. One or more of the partners must be overruled, or the decision fudged or deferred.
In short, if you seek government representative of all rather than some of the people, not one but three fences must be cleared. First you must create a parliament that looks as much as possible like the electorate that returned it. PR easily clears that fence. But then comes the second: to create from that legislature an administration. PR can clear that fence too, typically with coalition governments.
But such coalitions then approach the third fence: making a programme for government that allows all participants to see their own viewpoints reflected in the choices made. Joe’s Law says you can’t do that.
Proportional representation therefore represents a fraud on the electorate. It offers them a polling-booth experience that assures them their viewpoint can find a voice in government. And indeed a range of small parties rocks up in the legislature; so voters believe the process has been ‘fair’, reflecting the national will.
Next, a broad coalition government is formed. Good, voters think. A kaleidoscope of national opinion matched by a multi-coloured legislature, and now a multicoloured governing coalition.
Only when this coalition must make policy choices, and so many of these prove to be binary, does this version of democracy cheat its electorate. Voters may not have agreed on much, but they did share a longing for one thing: clear, bold and decisive government. The one thing PR struggles to achieve.
Comments
Comment section temporarily unavailable for maintenance.