For law to be valid the legal system needs some central authority to which to defer... this doesn't mean the legal system is necessarily aggressive or authoritarian in nature merely that there needs to be some arbiter of truth. In the past this has been provided by monarchs and now it is generally the government chosen by the people in a democracy. Without a government there can be no valid law because there is nothing to determine (objective) truth.
The problem with first past the post is that even though there is a democracy which should unite the people... the fptp system divides the electorate into two separate parts for no reason. There is no advantage to the few-winner first past the post system. There is no reason to restrict the number of winners in each constituency to only a small number. We can have multiple-member constituencies. It is unusual to restrict the choice available to voters in this way (to use fptp) and so then it is normal to have a more proportional system. Proportionality in representation is fair and so we can describe proportional representation as fair representation. It is reasonable to describe 'proportional representation' as fair representation and this more accurately defines the distinction between the two systems. It is because proportionality is fair that adherents advocate it and so there is no reason not to describe pr as fair representation.
No comments:
Post a Comment