Any history nerds who can explain how electoral reforms have come about since it seems like the incentive structure is completely aligned against the politicians currently in office ever seeing a pressing need to reform elections when it was those same elections that got them elected and so therefore benefit them personally, even if they acknowledge that they are imperfect systems.
It seems impossible. Bourgeois Democracy is such an endless crock of shit from top to bottom.
yeah, history loser here, parties that have been historically kept out of governance eke out a marginal win and then jam electoral reform through in order to guarantee they're more likely to win in future (this is assuming, of course, the reform benefits them, which it usually does)
So the most common method is the loser option - vote for a third party that wants positive electoral reform and hope it actually tries to follow through?
hope they're smart enough to recognise this is a one-off and they are otherwise slated for eradication; or indeed what i missed from my initial example, a declining part that is on its way out will also attempt election reform in order to put their thumbs on the scale and make the fall less damaging to their prospects
It's a classic misunderstanding. Electoral reform isn't something that people demand and receive from the government. It's the opposite. It's what the government does to release popular pressure in a limited manner.
I'm not counting tallies, but a majority of electoral reforms happened when the people were about to revolt or riot.The problem with electoral reforms is that politicians and parties are only going to advocate for them if they think it’ll benefit them. Dems advocate for eliminating the electoral college or nullifying via the interstate compact and republicans oppose it because the former gains an advantage from one person one vote while Republicans can’t win the presidency without the EC. So it’s easy to attack politicians advocating for them as wanting to rewrite the laws to secure their position and compromising democracy in the process.
The PRI in mexico only did electoral reform when they were threaten by the mass movement at the time, and i dont see one doing the same to the Democrats soon
union organizing isn't the be-all end-all but if they fuck over labor too many times i could see whatever the most unionized state is being a huge wedge, and union-backed independants or a pseudo-labor party taking state legislature positions in districts with high unionization. maybe a congressional rep but that's asking a lot.
I'm not sure how many unions or members are interested in liberal electoral politics though, and even if they are they'd have to build almost all org structure from scratch.
I used to be a big proponent of electoral reform, but the reality is that any reform that’s likely to be effective would be rejected by existing power structures absent some mass movement (and if you have a mass movement, you don’t really need electoral reform).
Justin Trudeau campaigned on electoral reform during his first run at PM, saying if he were to be elected, it would be the last election under a first-past-the-post electoral system. His follow through was to strike a multiparty committee to discuss the issue, and when the committee came back with a recommendation, he rejected it and tanked the issue because it wasn’t the solution his party wanted. He made a promise, he was handed a majority government as a result, a recommendation for reforms was made, and then he just went “lol nah.”
That’s what would happen to any electoral reform anywhere that might make things better, or make government more accountable, and certainly to any reform that would give the left any more influence. Electoral reform is a dead end, not because it can’t have an impact, but because for it to be effective, the existing power structure would have to cede some measure of control.
Theoretically: by electing politicians ideologically committed enough to risk not being re-elected and/or who believe a new system will make it even easier for them to get re-elected.
In reality: those politicians never win in the first place, if they’re even on the ballot.
It’s sort of like the thing where an individual politician isn’t necessarily being directly told what stances to have by their donors, but rather the donors select politicians that already have those stances.
It’s not that being elected makes them start supporting the system they got elected under, it’s that the only people who are elected already supported the system in the first place.
But electoral reform has happened and still does in the world. So it is possible to get electoral reform, even if it is just a less-worse form of bourgeois democracy.
it has only happened with a gun pointed at the head of the government
It isn't. What appears to be electoral reform only follows a mass movement, and acts not to carry out that movements will, but to diffuse and pacify that movement. Believing that "better politicians" now carry out their will, people return to their lives. Then the reforms are rolled back, again under the guide of a balanced democracy, and the cycle repeats.
Until a mass movement rejects the existing political structures and their supposed legitimizing role, and acts, never seeking it's approval, dispelling the illusion that it was ever necessary.
