Politics without party affiliation?

What if there was no party affiliation? What if elected officials were elected based on their positions on various issues rather than what party they belonged to? What would a county, province/state, county/district, or city/town look like that had such a system? Could anything be accomplished?

I've been wondering about this lately because it seems to me that many of the problems facing a country is made worse by all the political, ideological bickering that's been going on. I especially refer to the logjam that is the US government, but also can be applied to other countries such as Canada or the UK or Australia.

Without parties, there would be more political bickering and stalemates. The party system, while largely archaic, is a necessary evil in democracy based governments. Imagine if a measure was put to vote and there were a hundred different ideas of how to vote on it instead of four or five. Then there's the fact that most voters in these countries, especially the US, know so little about the individual politicians anyway, they may as well be flipping a coin as it is.

What's needed are better parties, ones that are actually different and representative of ideas based on solid foundations instead of existential or superstitious nonsense.

At first it sounds fantastic.

But really, even without parties the majority of politicians are still just going to slander there way to the top so they can perpetuate their own beliefs.

I dont think it will help much, since here, in the Netherlands we have people just making promises but they never seem to happen for real or just the opposite.

What I find very striking is that whenever a politician retires, we often hear how that person wished they could have voted a certain way on a particular issue, but didn't because they were made to toe the party line or face repercussions. How much had the potential to get done had that politician been able to vote according to what he or she thought was right? Instead, the politician, out of a need to continue to represent his or her constituents was made to toe the party line, thereby ensuring the status quo remained.

KittenKoder said:

Imagine if a measure was put to vote and there were a hundred different ideas of how to vote on it instead of four or five.

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I imagine why a politician votes is about as varied as the politicians themselves, party affiliation notwithstanding. Not all politicians vote according to what their party dictates. A good example of this is the U.S. Senate's recent vote to pass ENDA, the Employment Non Discrimination Act. The Republican Party does not support extending protections to gays and lesbians and transexuals in the work place or in public accommodations, and yet, a number of Republican senators went against the party to vote for the act. But had those senators voted with the Party, the act would not have passed in the Senate and the advocates for passing the act would have to start all over again. As it is, it is unlikely that the act will pass in the House, because the Speaker is refusing to allow the vote to occur.

Every country has different problems. The USA has too few parties, and no significant left-wing party. My country, on the other hand, has too many.

Right now, the UK is running with a 2-party Government coalition. Even that in itself creates problems as the Lib Dems (minority party) are having to give up election promises in order to keep in government and work with the Conservatives (majority party).

While the two are similar enough to agree on many issues, there are still a lot of arguements and heated discussions over certain issues.

Now imagine everyone in Government as part of one big coalition. There would probably be one of two outcomes; endless fighting, and either nothing would pass as everyone shoots everything down, or people would only supply bills which they want and everyone rejects. Also, there would be no coherent way forward, no long term plan, just individual bias.
The other outcome is people teaming up, based on the fact they share ideas, to ensure their ideas get voted through. A party system is reborn.

The scenario you depict is a very real possibility and on the surface would indeed look similar to what we have now, but with one slight distinction I think: the newly formed parties would not necessarily be a formally recognized one but rather a loose collection of like-minded politicians. In this scenario, politicians could very well leave one group for another (or go it alone) if a different issue causes there to be differing views within that group.

Jay_37040 said:

The scenario you depict is a very real possibility and on the surface would indeed look similar to what we have now, but with one slight distinction I think: the newly formed parties would not necessarily be a formally recognized one but rather a loose collection of like-minded politicians. In this scenario, politicians could very well leave one group for another (or go it alone) if a different issue causes there to be differing views within that group.

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Which could be a positive thing, if they're not tied down to a party but to what they think is right.

However, I still think MPs should reflect what their constituency wants, rather than what the party wants.

Whether or not a member of parliament of parliament toes the party line is dependent on party discipline. In the case of the United States, a member of Congress can vote pretty much however he or she wants without repercussions from party bigwigs (but not necessarily from their constituents, remember that).

There are instances of party-less politics in Canada, for example in municipal politics for the City of Toronto, as you very well know, Jay. When politicians are accountable to a party, they become associated with a platform. It's something that lets the voters know what they may and may not do when elected, which is better than being elected solely by popularity if they don't have to make their views as clear. Furthermore, our democracies are majoritarian, and a consequence of this is whoever gets more votes is considered more legitimate. Without parties, voters don't really know who to vote for, as the candidate list is likely to be longer, and whoever does end up winning the vote has a very small plurality, perhaps only obtaining a quarter to a third of the vote (and this problem is even more magnified with low turnout). What becomes clear is that most of the voting public /didn't/ vote for them, so what right do they have in the voters' mind to get much done?

There has to be a compromise between the millions of opinions and views in the electorate and the one set of decisions that actually occur when someone's in power, and party politics is one way to accomplish this. Bickering among a few should be easier to manage than bickering among many. I don't think parties cause the bickering so much as they represent the diversity of opinions at the grassroots level. While they make the divides easier to see, they're only one of the causes of political disagreement. I could be wrong, but it's something to consider.

I don't think taking the party system as the beginning of our analysis is very useful. Nothing in liberal democracies dictates how many parties there are and how powerful they are relative to one another, rather, that is influenced by the voting system, the political culture, and the characteristics of the parties themselves. The party system isn't something that can be manipulated directly, so we can't really do anything about it per se. It's something that's more in the realm of "what is" rather than "what ought to be".

There's nothing I hate more than voting solely based on party affiliation. When a person's party is your number one priority as a voter, it tends to cloud your judgement on certain issues.

BiS brings up a point that really makes me hesitant of the idea of no-parties politics - you may have no idea what a candidate will do once elected. Even with parties sometimes you get surprised, but at least you can reasonably expect certain things when you have someone running under a certain party. I would worry about accountability.

In Representative Democracy, you generally have the following systems:

One Party - This party honestly tells you face-to-face that it manipulates the government entirely.

Multi-Party - A few parties, by the test of time, have gained enough popularity to represent the majority of citizens, but third parties still exist.

No-Party - This is the iffy part. On the surface it seems that, because anyone can run regardless of their beliefs, an elitist group won't control the government. This is actually not the case. Because said group is not tied to any specific beliefs, they can manipulate who gets to the highest forms of government without making it look like they believe in one form of society over the other - they are silent rulers, a single party that controls everything from the shadows.

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In a Direct Democracy, you have these systems:

- Everyone votes on every or most issues. This normally works best with E-Democracy and other instantaneous voting mediums.

- Representatives are still elected but only do as the voters directly vote them to do on each issue, supposedly. In a machine-based society, representatives aren't needed as software and hardware work hand-in-hand to fill the quota.

- Laws become Thelemic in nature, only adhering to inalienable rights and not based on any specific party's ethical beliefs. This eventually happens slowly over time and allows a Direct Democracy to become an orderly Anarchy once these laws are fully established.


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If you really don't like the party system, you'd probably prefer Direct Democracy instead of Representative Democracy. You just have to make sure that the federal govt does not use its power to implement its own decision and that it only implements the decisions of the people - though this will be a recurring issue.