(I have written some replies to certain of MO's posts, but I haven't
posted them. I'm currently having my share of "interesting times" and
there's lots of conflict around, so I don't feel the need to add to all
the complexity I have to manage by engaging in likely confrontational
threads. Therefore, let's go for something a little less divisive.)
-
Here's something I've thought about for a while, that seems to be an
interesting combination of majority and consensus reasoning:
You have a parliamentary system.
Forming a government requires a supermajority (say 60%).
However, all motions of no confidence have to be constructive, i.e. they
have to propose a new government and thus be subject to the
supermajority rule.
What kind of behavior would you see under such a system? One would
ordinarily consider parliamentary systems that require a supermajority
for forming a government to be very unstable, because it may take
forever to get the required majority, and in the meantime, a simple
majority can tear down the government that already exists.
But by insisting that all votes of no confidence are constructive, a
simple majority can't remove the government. Only a supermajority can,
and then only when it has a proposal for another government.
So what we would expect to happen is that the government can stay in
office for a much longer time than would otherwise be the case. This, in
turn, is offset by the supermajority requirement for getting your
particular government proposal into the executive in the first place.
Would that configuration weaken the consensus aspect of the system?
Perhaps a government that happened to have a supermajority at one point
"outstays their welcome" and gets increasingly unpopular until there's a
sufficient supermajority in the other direction, then that government
gets replaced by its opposite pole, and rinse and repeat. On the other
hand, the opposition might try to appeal more broadly so that, as the
government gets less popular and the centrists previously aligned with
the government starts abandoning it, the opposition almost immediately
has a variant of the centrist policy ready to catch them so their
alternative can get the required supermajority.
Or perhaps the power would move from the government itself, which is
subject to supermajority rules, to the bureaucracy, which is not (and is
unelected). Or the overlapping center that one needs to have to get 60%
in a left-right situation might become kingmakers.
What do you think would happen?
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