Politics Discussion Thread (Heated Arguing Warning)

[Japper007]

"Right Wing" in Europe tends to be used almost exclusively for a party's social policies (at least to my ears/eyes). Compared to Anglo-American politics, almost every party in Europe appears to me to be on the left economically. Those that aren't tend to be described as "free market" or "classically liberal", like the Free Democrats in Germany.

This is a relatively recent development, right vs left used to be mostly economic policy in Europe as well (welfare state/government run utility companies vs laisse faire capitalism/liberalisation of utilities) But recently many right wing parties have started adopting far right talking points, due to a shift in public opinion towards favoring those policies. Statements that would've seen you painted fascist just 10 years ago are now bread and butter for many of the "regular" right wing.

The biggest difference by far though is that European right wing isn't tied up in religion and other conservative/reactionary stuff that are front and center to the right wing in America. F.e. Christian conservative parties are often more left or centrist leaning and many right wing parties champion transgender and gay civil rights.

[AdrienIer]

The biggest difference by far though is that European right wing isn't tied up in religion and other conservative/reactionary stuff that are front and center to the right wing in America. F.e. Christian conservative parties are often more left or centrist leaning and many right wing parties champion transgender and gay civil rights.

It depends on the European country. In Spain the PP is enormously religious while the other major parties are not. In France it is also the right that is the party of religious people, the religious wing even got their candidate in the last presidential election. In Germany the name of the right wing party is literally "christian democrat". The only large European country where the religious party is on the left is Italy.

[Japper007]

The biggest difference by far though is that European right wing isn't tied up in religion and other conservative/reactionary stuff that are front and center to the right wing in America. F.e. Christian conservative parties are often more left or centrist leaning and many right wing parties champion transgender and gay civil rights.

It depends on the European country. In Spain the PP is enormously religious while the other major parties are not. In France it is also the right that is the party of religious people, they even got their candidate in the last presidential election. In Germany the name of the right wing party is literally "christian democrat". The only large European country where the religious party is on the left is Italy.

Also here in the Netherlands, and I would hardly call the CDU (Germany) right wing? It's more center, perhaps just a little right of it...

[AdrienIer]

The CDU encompasses the right wing, even though Merkel is more center right. Schäuble was a right wing finance minister for example. The reason the German government is not right wing is because it's a coalition between the CDU and the center left SPD.

[Rowain]

The CDU encompasses the right wing, even though Merkel is more center right. Schäuble was a right wing finance minister for example. The reason the German government is not right wing is because it's a coalition between the CDU and the center left SPD.

If you call the SPD center-left then you must call the CDU center-right. The CSU (the bavarian part of the CDU/CSU cooperation) is right till the point of far-right.

[darrelljs]

I can't tell if forcing parties to form coalitions and work together is a better thing than having a two party system where, three branches aside, the winner takes all. It seems to give more power to fringe groups, but at least you have a better chance of finding a party that matches your beliefs.

Darrell

[Rowain]

I can't tell if forcing parties to form coalitions and work together is a better thing than having a two party system where, three branches aside, the winner takes all.  It seems to give more power to fringe groups, but at least you have a better chance of finding a party that matches your beliefs.

Darrell

The winner takes all has the big problem that with the right manipulaition of voting districts a small minority (in extremis just abit more than 25% in a 2-party-system even less the more parties there are) can gain absolute power. I prefer systems where the resulting goverment has at least 50% of the votes .

[Japper007]

I can't tell if forcing parties to form coalitions and work together is a better thing than having a two party system where, three branches aside, the winner takes all.  It seems to give more power to fringe groups, but at least you have a better chance of finding a party that matches your beliefs.

Darrell

The winner takes all has the big problem that with the right manipulaition of voting districts a small minority (in extremis just abit more than 25% in a 2-party-system even less the more parties there are) can gain absolute power. I prefer systems where the resulting goverment has at least 50% of the votes .

To be fair gerrymandering wouldn't be a problem if the Anglo-Saxon model just counted total votes (which would have also saved the US from a certain orange buffoon ), many coalition countries had such district systems too before getting rid of them (such as again the Netherlands, sorry I mostly know my own countries parlimentary history for examples). It's an entirely separate problem from the problems of winner takes all systems.

The key problem in winner takes all systems is the spoiler effect, smalller parties cannot exist for anything other than to take away votes from the parties that will win the election, or at least are expected to be the largest (just look at the third parties in the US, they never have a chance!). 
f.e. over here we have a general left-wing party with a focus on environmental issues (Groen-Links) and a general left-wing party with a specific focus on animal rights (de Partij voor de Dieren, literally "the Party for the Animals" ). Now in a "winner takes all system" they'd be directly competing for basically the same voter-base (like 95% of the party program is the exact same) and the smaller PvdD would only serve to take away votes from GL, while in a coalition system they can (and often do!) work together to tackle the overlap in their party programs while also being able to have their more specific issues heard. A coalition system also acts as a break on poltical extremism (such as the deep divide in the US between liberals and conservatives), as parties are still expecting to work with eachother after the elections, and parties that refuse to add water to wine are not going to rule.

[MJW (ya that one)]

The main problem for FPTP system for me is that party members are just extensions of the party because you get deselected if you rebel. So your vote is just a vote for a party and the district system doesn't make any sense. The only exception is USA's open primary system were you cannot be deselected. That has a lot of problems and even that's starting to fail anyway as politics becomes more and more nationalized (it will fail around 2028 when the DEMs realize they will never have to face a GOP President again and so cause as much polarization as possible).

[Mardoc]

The winner takes all has the big problem that with the right manipulaition of voting districts a small minority (in extremis just abit more than 25% in a 2-party-system even less the more parties there are) can gain absolute power. I prefer systems where the resulting goverment has at least 50% of the votes .

Well - that's basically assuming complete party/voter unity, and self-sacrificing MPs.  You could get the same thing with a coalition government in a proportional system, if you make similarly implausible assumptions, by proposing that the junior members of government don't get anything they want.

For gerrymandering to lead to minority control:

- You have to have power first, before you can gerrymander districts to keep power.  In addition, you have to persuade your MP's that they don't want safe seats, that it's better to be a member of a ruling coalition by a hairs-breadth than to be guaranteed a career as an opposition member with a chance of ruling later.
- You're assuming party unity.  That may be a valid assumption in a proportional system where the MPs all come from a party list controlled by leadership, but it's explicitly not true in a district-based (winner takes all) system.  A Democrat from New York and a Democrat from Virginia are going to have dramatically different priorities, and there is very little that the party chairman can do to force them to work together.  At most, the party can withhold funding toward reelection, but that usually won't matter, and it's cutting off your nose to spite your face.   If a representative votes more in line with the national party than with their constituents' preferences, they're not likely to stay a representative for long.

It's even more obvious in the Republican party today, as evidenced by the fairly anemic policy changes in the last year despite the Republicans having nominal control of all three of House, Senate, and Presidency.  A republican from Maine and a republican from Texas can find very little to agree on, so very little gets done.  A lot of the struggle is over the primaries and intra-party coalitions such as the Freedom Caucus.