Amen!Though West Germany adopted PR, like the weak Weimar regime, it started with few parties and before long passed a law that parties with less than 5% of the vote would get no seats in parliament. (Our Canadian Greens got less than that in 2006, I note.)
[...]
The unification of West and East Germany in 1990 made a more complex nation-state. Federal German politics is now a constellation of five parties, and the FDP has struggled to meet the 5% threshold.
[...]
It is hard for ... [Angela Merkel's coalition] government to make strong decisions. Even the mildest measures to make labour markets more flexible, and thus reduce East German unemployment, are a struggle.
[...]
Andrew Coyne did not read Tuesday's Post editorial attentively. With inexact reasoning, he claims there is a contradiction between two consequences of PR alleged by the Post: party fragmentation and excessive consensus. If he followed the politics of Continental Europe with active interest, he would see the drift that results when those two factors collaborate.
[...]
PR is not good for countries as complex as unified Germany and Canada. It would mean endless and incoherent coalition governments.
Friday, April 20, 2007
PR - more evidence it's a bad idea
In today's National Post Gerald Owen rebuts Andrew Coyne in an excellent column discussing PR in relation to the German experience:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
PR sounds great when you are in the minority and lust for power , but Taliban-Jack will rue the day
he crusaded for it if he ever got into power , this because you end up with no true power and an Italy style Parliament that has had about 50 Election since WW2's end in 1946.
Post a Comment