Let’s say you are an opposition politician and your pet constitutional issue is to replace majority voting by proportional voting. You believe that FPTP has some genuinely detrimental consequences for the society and you are such a selfless person that you are willing to push for the change even against your best object level interests.
The party currently in power loves majority voting. They love it, however, on the object level: It gives them far larger representation in the parliament than would otherwise be reasonable. 55% voters vote for them, yet they get 80% of MPs. They don’t care about meta level and are not willing to sacrifice object-level interests for it.
The situation is stable for the time being. There’s no “political will” to enact proportional voting. So you wait.
At some point the voting patterns change and the ruling party suddenly faces defeat in the upcoming elections. Now they would do better with the proportional voting system.
They care only about the object level, that is, winning the election, and proportional voting is as good means to win as is majority voting.
You, on the other hand, care only about the meta level. You may lose the upcoming election if proportional system is adopted, but you think it’s still worth it.
Suddenly the two parties are aligned, each side prefers the proportional system, albeit for different reasons. The proportional voting gets adopted.
Let me try a different example:
Let’s say you are an opposition politician and your pet constitutional issue is to replace majority voting by proportional voting. You believe that FPTP has some genuinely detrimental consequences for the society and you are such a selfless person that you are willing to push for the change even against your best object level interests.
The party currently in power loves majority voting. They love it, however, on the object level: It gives them far larger representation in the parliament than would otherwise be reasonable. 55% voters vote for them, yet they get 80% of MPs. They don’t care about meta level and are not willing to sacrifice object-level interests for it.
The situation is stable for the time being. There’s no “political will” to enact proportional voting. So you wait.
At some point the voting patterns change and the ruling party suddenly faces defeat in the upcoming elections. Now they would do better with the proportional voting system.
They care only about the object level, that is, winning the election, and proportional voting is as good means to win as is majority voting.
You, on the other hand, care only about the meta level. You may lose the upcoming election if proportional system is adopted, but you think it’s still worth it.
Suddenly the two parties are aligned, each side prefers the proportional system, albeit for different reasons. The proportional voting gets adopted.