Actually, I’m pretty sure it is politics that’s the mind-killer. Most of the breakdown of reasoned discussion due to politics that I’ve seen was not due to party-loyalty in any explicit sense, but to a much broader ideology/in-group loyalty.
On the broader topic, taking your first two points in reverese order: political parties are important because one of the vital elements in a democracy is accountability. By grouping together people and approaches as a ‘party’ we allow the voters to judge their overall effectiveness and approach—and kick them out at elections. This is particularly important for the average not-that-committed voter, but even the most politically focused person can’t actually track and judge every individual standing for office. In a similar vein, parties make it harder for someone to campaign for more spending at the same time as less taxes and so on: they produce overall positions that can be tested in greater depth for consistency. The same point applies to governments: and if you had no political parties it’s difficult to see how a governing group could have enough solidity to be judged (this is less of an issue in the USA, where you have an elected executive, than in the UK where the PM is the leader of the party/coalition that controls the House of Commons).
This point about accountability is key, IMO, because I think that the ‘being able to replace rulers without war’ and the ‘rulers fear annoying too many people’ are probably more important elements of democracy than the idea that the voters are in the best position to guide a government towards good policy in any detail. So the idea that a system would encourage only the most informed to vote (if that’s what you imply) is both unrealistic and unattractive. Unrealistic because the uninformed would be campaigned at by the media/candidates and believe they were informed and unattractive because if you managed to convince most people that they were outside the political proccess, the stability of democracy would be deeply damaged.
I think you have an overly idealistic idea of the state that would exist without parties: I suspect people would vote based on local adverts/leaflets which provided a lower level of information than they currently get by at least seeing what parties do in power. So I don’t buy that as a disadvantage. There are disadvantages around the incentive structure for politicians being wrong (party focused rather than people focused) but I’m unconvinced there’s a system that would avoid this without major other problems.
From a UK point of view, the things we tend to assume would improve US politics would be a less biased and more challenging media, and a cap on spending by political parties. i.e. what we do… But ultiamtely, I suspect that institutions have to develop with culture, and if you don’t think the US political culture is working I don’t think reform of the political architecture will be the main thing. Doesn’t mean it’s not worth considering/doing… but I’m suspicious of magic bullets.
Interesting! You mean in general, or that the UK is particularly weak on that front. I think most politically interested people in the UK think that the UK media should/could be better in various ways, but regard it as superior to US media in terms of bias/challenge.
You mean in general, or that the UK is particularly weak on that front.
Depends on who you ask. Personally I think England may be somewhat better than continental Europe.
I think most politically interested people in the UK think that the UK media should/could be better in various ways, but regard it as superior to US media in terms of bias/challenge.
Yes, well I suspect everyone believes their media is the least biased because their media tells them so.
Very possibly! I think it’s a little deeper than that, though: I think other people’s sort of bias seems worse than yours, plus people enjoy identifying the examples of things that seem weird from elsewhere. So people will share Fox News clips a lot here, for instance. Don’t know what the UK equivalent is when seen from outside: though there are groups within the UK who see the BBC as very biased. And we have the murdoch thing of course
though there are groups within the UK who see the BBC as very biased.
I’m rather inclined to agree with them, but then again I general only here about something on the BBC when someone calls attention to their egregiously biased coverage of something.
Yep: I imagine most people generally hear the interesting and therefore usually bad news about foreign media—and to a degree politics.
To be honest, I think the BBC is biased, just in an accidental, cultural way, not a conspiracy or corruption as such. People in that sort of outfit in this country tend to be a certain sort of person, thinking in certain sort of ways.
You also have the problem of what counts as bias. Should an unbiased broadcaster sit in the middle of public opinion, avoid anything that can be taken as showing a side at all (impossible), treat all sides of every argument as equal or go with some sort of expert consensus? The BBC seems to flit between them, sometimes trying to show balance by giving an equal platform to scientific consensus and nutjobbery, and sometimes having quite a clear ‘these are the facts and the informed people know it whether the general public does or not’ approach.
Actually, I’m pretty sure it is politics that’s the mind-killer. Most of the breakdown of reasoned discussion due to politics that I’ve seen was not due to party-loyalty in any explicit sense, but to a much broader ideology/in-group loyalty.
On the broader topic, taking your first two points in reverese order: political parties are important because one of the vital elements in a democracy is accountability. By grouping together people and approaches as a ‘party’ we allow the voters to judge their overall effectiveness and approach—and kick them out at elections. This is particularly important for the average not-that-committed voter, but even the most politically focused person can’t actually track and judge every individual standing for office. In a similar vein, parties make it harder for someone to campaign for more spending at the same time as less taxes and so on: they produce overall positions that can be tested in greater depth for consistency. The same point applies to governments: and if you had no political parties it’s difficult to see how a governing group could have enough solidity to be judged (this is less of an issue in the USA, where you have an elected executive, than in the UK where the PM is the leader of the party/coalition that controls the House of Commons).
This point about accountability is key, IMO, because I think that the ‘being able to replace rulers without war’ and the ‘rulers fear annoying too many people’ are probably more important elements of democracy than the idea that the voters are in the best position to guide a government towards good policy in any detail. So the idea that a system would encourage only the most informed to vote (if that’s what you imply) is both unrealistic and unattractive. Unrealistic because the uninformed would be campaigned at by the media/candidates and believe they were informed and unattractive because if you managed to convince most people that they were outside the political proccess, the stability of democracy would be deeply damaged.
I think you have an overly idealistic idea of the state that would exist without parties: I suspect people would vote based on local adverts/leaflets which provided a lower level of information than they currently get by at least seeing what parties do in power. So I don’t buy that as a disadvantage. There are disadvantages around the incentive structure for politicians being wrong (party focused rather than people focused) but I’m unconvinced there’s a system that would avoid this without major other problems.
From a UK point of view, the things we tend to assume would improve US politics would be a less biased and more challenging media, and a cap on spending by political parties. i.e. what we do… But ultiamtely, I suspect that institutions have to develop with culture, and if you don’t think the US political culture is working I don’t think reform of the political architecture will be the main thing. Doesn’t mean it’s not worth considering/doing… but I’m suspicious of magic bullets.
Speaking from the US, that’s more or less what I think about UK politics.
Interesting! You mean in general, or that the UK is particularly weak on that front. I think most politically interested people in the UK think that the UK media should/could be better in various ways, but regard it as superior to US media in terms of bias/challenge.
Depends on who you ask. Personally I think England may be somewhat better than continental Europe.
Yes, well I suspect everyone believes their media is the least biased because their media tells them so.
Very possibly! I think it’s a little deeper than that, though: I think other people’s sort of bias seems worse than yours, plus people enjoy identifying the examples of things that seem weird from elsewhere. So people will share Fox News clips a lot here, for instance. Don’t know what the UK equivalent is when seen from outside: though there are groups within the UK who see the BBC as very biased. And we have the murdoch thing of course
I’m rather inclined to agree with them, but then again I general only here about something on the BBC when someone calls attention to their egregiously biased coverage of something.
Yep: I imagine most people generally hear the interesting and therefore usually bad news about foreign media—and to a degree politics.
To be honest, I think the BBC is biased, just in an accidental, cultural way, not a conspiracy or corruption as such. People in that sort of outfit in this country tend to be a certain sort of person, thinking in certain sort of ways.
You also have the problem of what counts as bias. Should an unbiased broadcaster sit in the middle of public opinion, avoid anything that can be taken as showing a side at all (impossible), treat all sides of every argument as equal or go with some sort of expert consensus? The BBC seems to flit between them, sometimes trying to show balance by giving an equal platform to scientific consensus and nutjobbery, and sometimes having quite a clear ‘these are the facts and the informed people know it whether the general public does or not’ approach.