Wednesday 19 December 2012

People to the right of the Tories dislike fptp

We can assume that in a fptp system Duverger's law holds and that there are two main parties which emerge. To vote for any of the other parties is generally considered to be a wasted vote. This means that voters have a choice between an ostensibly left-wing party and a right-wing party. Whilst this might be adequate for voters who consider themselves between these parties it is obviously a problem for people 'outside' this pair. People on the right of (for example) the Tories and people on the left of Labour are excluded. Because democracy is the means by which the electorate can hold the state to account and stop its expansion it is rational to be more concerned about a lack of democracy on the right than the left. So if we consider people to the right of the Tories... they have no one to vote for but the Tory party who may be too economically interventionist (socialist) for their taste. This means that people on the right are not able to constrain the government to the extent that they wish to. For everyone to the left of the Tories fptp appears to be an adequate system because Tory voters have a party available to them to their right and Labour voters are not really too concerned about a lack of democracy on the right. (Although they may be concerned about Labour being too right-wing.) So fptp works for (and is tolerated by) everyone to the left of the Tories.

No comments:

Post a Comment