Paul Dwerryhouse via luv-talk wrote:
On 6/12/19 3:43 pm, Trent W. Buck wrote:
Paul Dwerryhouse via luv-talk wrote:
Combine this with a far stricter party discipline system than either the UK or the US have, and we get a democracy that really isn't serving its people well at all.
Can you expand on this?
US and UK politicians cross the floor to vote against their party's wishes regularly.
Are you sure about that? I had a quick look and all I can find for the UK is conscience votes in 1976 (join the EEC?) and 2016 (leave the EU?). It does say "cabinet", though, so maybe that doesn't apply to backbenchers? Like, if this was the UK, when Abbott was booted out of cabinet and had no portfolio (i.e. he was an MP but not a minister), he'd be allowed to publicly criticize (and vote against) core party policies, without being kicked out of the party?
In Australia, the ALP will kick members out of the party if they cross the floor (excluding "conscience votes"). The Liberals claim to allow their MPs to vote freely, but over the last decade, members who have threatened to do so have been harassed.
Either way, it's incredibly rare for it to happen here.
Yeah, agreed. I'm not saying it's common here. I'm saying (I think) it's equally rare elsewhere in the anglosphere. https://www.parliament.nz/en/get-involved/features-pre-2016/document/00NZPHo... The New Zealand Parliament has a long history of MPs casting their votes along party lines. [...] Issues that have been treated as conscience issues include liquor licensing and gambling. [...] https://www.aspg.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/15-McKeown.pdf Since 1996 five bills have attracted a conscience vote. <got bored before I found a good citation for Harper/Trudeau> OK, here is a good cite agreeing with your claim that party voting is worse (more common) in Australia: https://www.psa.ac.uk/sites/default/files/conference/papers/2014/Marriage%20... Kam compared backbench dissent in four Westminster parliamentary systems during the post-war period and found that Australian MPs’ were the least likely to rebel against their party (Kam, 2009, p.8). Nevertheless, UK studies have revealed that even in free vote circumstances political party remains the best predictor of voting patterns and thus, conclude that more holds British political parties together than the whips. Based on a footnote in that, it seems I should be looking for "list of free votes" (or "unwhipped votes") rather than "list of conscience votes", since that term is apparently Australocentric.