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ways had a lesser number of willing coalition partners than labour and thus would prefer a return to fpp yes i maintained this belief despite john key s sincere utterings that most nzers want to stick with mmp which have been proved to be wrong but this result seems to indicate something a little deeper than that it is not just national but also labour supporters wanting to get rid of proportional representation the flip side of the 14 of people voting for smaller parties are the 79 of people voting for either labour or national as shown below as this graph makes visually clear if supporters of the two main parties decide that they no longer want proportional representation and would rather govern alone without coalition partners they will always be able to push this through this is of course a simple case of majority rules and exactly what mmp was brought in to prevent should the change to mmp therefore be regarded as an anomaly a short period where the majority were so disillusioned with politics that they were prepared to allow minorities a more significant say which has now passed of course we will have to see what the results of the actual referenda are but this initial poll result would suggest that supporters of both main parties are a little more cold blooded in their attitudes towards minorities than one might have expected posted in comparative politics nz electoral system nz political parties leave a comment tags democracy greens labour mmp national nz electoral system coalitions in germany and nz october 19 2009 three weeks after the bundestag election in germany and the discussions between cdu csu and fdp continue it is still not clear what the exact policy directions of the new coalition government will be or who will occupy which ministerial government posts i see an interesting difference in the coalition bargaining between the parties and what has gone on in nz after mmp elections since 1996 the german parties are driving hard bargains both the csu and fdp are sticking to their guns and placing demands on merkel s cdu that they make concessions so the smaller parties honour their pre election commitments there have been several examples of this as the discussions have gone on for the fdp most notably in measures protecting personal privacy but as predicted the big one sticking point is tax cuts both smaller parties want them the cdu knows they can t really afford them merkel doesn t want to be seen as fiscally irresponsible and run large deficits just to finance tax cuts and the csu will not allow this anyway the result is a sort of mexican stand off this has been going on for weeks it has finally been decided that there will be tax cuts the question is how big they will be the important point here compared to nz is that the coalition bargaining is very detailed and very contested i am not an expert on nz s coalition agreements but nz moved away from both these aspects after the first experience with coalition government in 1996 then winston peters and nz first undertook to draw up a coalition agreement which set out most important policy directions in writing peters drove such a hard bargain that he was seen to be holding the country to ransom and the discussions took so long that the country was without an effective government for two months nz first ended up going with national which was the opposite of what they had alluded to pre election the coalition didn t last very long and neither did nz first s or mmp s popularity since this negative experience with detailed drawn out coalition bargains nz has moved to a more flexible approach based on agreements on confidence and supply settling other issues on a more ad hoc basis which would seem to be more in keeping with the country s westminster common law tradition helen clark s labour did this with the greens in 1999 2002 and with nz first united future in 2005 john key has a similar confidence and supply agreement with act united future maori party the germans however seem happy to persist with longer more contested coalition bargaining phases in which major policy issues are hashed out in detail after the election this is more in line with the german tradition of constitutional consensual government and the german civil law posted in comparative politics german election 2009 nz electoral system nz political parties 1 comment tags bundestag cdu csu german election 2009 germany greens john key labour mmp national nz electoral system spd cdu csu and fdp win 2009 bundestag election september 27 2009 the first unofficial results for the election are in cdu csu 33 5 spd 23 3 fdp 14 6 left party 12 9 greens 10 2 this situation should be enough to give the conservative cdu csu and the liberal fdp enough seats to form a bourgeois government the results for the two big parties are their worst ever the fdp has its best result in a decade this election could also set records for another reason it seems approximately 5 less people cast their votes than at the last election which was the lowest rate ever neither the spd or cdu csu is impressed with its results both are blaming the grand coalition for their losing an independent profile and driving voters away or to smaller parties however the union has achieved its main goal to govern without the spd angela merkel s position is now very strong and this victory will cement her leadership credentials in the conservative union against the many ambitious potential challengers in her party an fdp union coalition should really bring about the pro market reforms that merkel campaigned for in 2005 but was not able to enact in the grand coalition however the shadow which hung over this year s election campaign huge budget deficits for years to come due to bank bailouts in the financial crisis will severely impede merkel s capacity to enact reform tax cuts in particular a favorite goal of the fdp do not look likely and were laughed off by spd finance minister peer steinbrueck during the campaign as simply impossible the spd is quite open about its result being a disaster the question is where the party goes from here which quite frankly no one can say at the moment there will be a lot of long faces in the spd where many had hoped that another grand coalition would allow the party to distribute a decent number of ministerial and state secretary positions a simple bundestag salary and position in the opposition pale in comparison posted in comparative politics german election 2009 2 comments tags bundestag cdu csu german election 2009 germany spd mmp what about politics september 25 2009 due to the upcoming referendum on the mmp electoral system in new zealand there have been a raft of blog postings on the performance of the present system what people would prefer in a new electoral system what the effect of the 5 threshold is and different types of electoral system these all make for interesting reading if you are interested in arcane electoral mechanics mundane spreadsheet calculations and the functioning of democracy in obscure countries like nz however they all miss one aspect of the debate around mmp and that is politics or who gets what when and how they seem to assume that nz politics will be solely defined by its electoral system and miss other things such as public opinion political parties interest groups political culture the list goes on it is therefore worthwhile asking would having a different electoral system change nz politics the answer is not very much the changes would be on the fringes with perhaps slightly higher representation for smaller parties in parliament and perhaps the creation and representation of a new party or two due to the inate tendency of party policy to tend to the middle it can be safely assumed that the majority of the votes cast will be gathered by two large parties who battle it out for the chance to form a government sound familiar yep it sounds like democracy pretty much all over the world that s the beauty of not examining an electoral system in isolation but in its context politics posted in comparative politics nz electoral system 4 comments tags democracy mmp nz electoral system mrs merkel who will it be september 23 2009 so five days out from the election to the german bundestag it is now fairly clear that there are only two possible results 1 another grand coalition 2 a cdu csu fdp coalition why firstly because the spd and greens do not have much of a chance of getting enough votes to form a coalition this has been clear since before the start of the election campaign and has not changed as of today s poll the spd is on about 24 and the greens 11 together 35 doesn t cut it also as before the spd rejects a coalition on the federal bundestag level with the left party not that that would be possible going by current polling because the left gets only 11 5 add that to the spd and greens and you still don t get a majority finally and most interestingly on sunday the fdp leader guido westerwelle came out and finally categorically rejected a so called traffic light coalition of greens spd and fdp so the question which has only be slightly narrowed since july is will chancellor merkel be able to form a bourgeois coalition with her preferred partner the fdp or will it be business as usual in a grand coalition come sunday the cdu csu has 35 and fdp 13 5 on current polling the word is that the overhang mandates direct mandates won in electorates exceeding the overall proportion won by the party in the country will tip the balance in favour of the cdu csu and fdp the spd are already complaining that this is a misrepresentation through the electoral system which some are seeing as a concession of defeat a reinstating of the grand coalition would certainly be a dull ending to a dull election campaign where neither of the larger parties has confronted the other on any substantial issues of policy or personality so maybe it would fit posted in comparative politics german election 2009 4 comments tags bundestag cdu csu germany spd duel or duet september 15 2009 this week we saw the much anticipated tv debate between cdu csu leader and chancellor angela merkel and her challenger frank walter steinmeier from the spd it was hoped that this would bring out the fighting spirit in both of them or at least one of them however it was alas a flop concerned more with patting themselves on the back for their fine work during their grand coalition of the past four years than attacking each others policies the two candidates avoided direct criticism of each other even during the debate the frustrated tv presenters were calling it more of a duet than a duel both major parties are predictably calling the debate a victory for themselves voters see it as a draw if anything steinmeier surprised viewers however one can assume their expectations were low he was rated in polls after the debate as more convincing apparently the greens fdp left party tv debate was much more entertaining but i haven t looked at it yet always good for a laugh the tabloid paper bild led an article on the duel with a hilarious pun playing on an obama campaign slogan yes we gähn yes we yawn public enthusiasm for the election so far has been low and german comedian harpe kerkeling has made good mileage out of his satire based on a fictional chancellor candidate horst schlemmer who is liberal conservative and left his election slogan is another interpretation of obama yes weekend posted in comparative politics german election 2009 2 comments tags bundestag cdu csu democracy german election 2009 germany spd key s labour lite and why parties move to the middle september 9 2009 remember back to before nz s november general election and the scrutiny of national s leader and future prime minister john key he was labeled as labour lite and centrist his party was careful not to wage war on some of helen clark s more popular policies the differences between the two main parties were small negligible even and for those who follow us politics you must have been struck by the partisan divide in both society and politics between the democrats and republicans it is in the words of a columnist the 50 50 nation heck the two camps even have their own separate news channels over in germany people ask themselves what is the spd doing in opposition oops sorry the election isn t for 2 weeks i meant grand coalition they could form a government with the greens and the left party tomorrow discussion of all these issues and some others which i have speculated upon here previously can be informed by a powerful but simple political science model originating in economics called the median voter theorem briefly the theorem is a model of majority decision making which states that the median voter s preferred policy will beat any alternative in a vote in a stronger form it also says that the median voter will almost always get his her most preferred policy the rationale behind it is too much for this blog and is explained briefly and clearly here but the consequences are far reaching if we apply the model to the left right spectrum above we can come to the following conclusions 1 if voters cast their vote for the candidate closest to their ideal policy then the candidate who stands nearest to the median voter will win in this case this would be candidate a who is closest to point m 2 if the candidates are free to choose their policies they will choose positions which will place them closest to the median voter s at m so candidates a and b will move in the directions of the arrows towards the middle of the graph and the median voter s preferences will be fulfilled the theory puts the median voter in the lucky position of always getting what they want but it also has other consequences many more than will be expanded on here but to go back to the examples above key vs clark in nz parties will choose policies which are moderate and middle of the road no wonder that they look so similar democrats vs republicans in the us if parties continue to act as above for many years they could create blocs each accounting for approximately half of the population see the column from mickey kraus the spd and the left party in germany parties will be very careful not to take extreme positions which could alienate voters closer to the median so there you have it a brief but hopefully not too incomplete rundown of the median voter theorem in five minutes a simple powerful analytical tool for analyzing party politics posted in comparative politics political parties 3 comments tags democracy democratic party germany john key labour mmp national nz electoral system republican party spd usa wahl watching september 2 2009 excuse my awful pun the german word for election is wahl i thought i might post on the federal election campaign over there seeing as i have neglected it for a couple of weeks as for how the parties stand in the polls the smaller parties fdp green and left are all loo...