I think the way that countries are governed is fundamentally broken. Political parties, presidents and elected officials might have made sense a hundred years ago, but it's now hopelessly inefficient.
For example, I am fiscially conservative and socially liberal. However, the party system requires you to vote for a complete package of policies; there's no way to "unbundle" them and vote just for the things you believe in.
This kind of bundling creates huge distortions in the political system, since a party can sometimes win an election simply due to a single divisive issue such as abortion or gay marriage. The idea that a country's fiscal or foreign policy can be decided based on whether a candidate believes in illegalizing abortion is ridiculous.
In the next part of the series I'll describe an alternative system of government that doesn't have this kind of problem.
Your proposal will be interesting, I'm sure!
It can be frustrating. Politically, I would be described as a progressive populist. The last progressive populist politician to have significant influence in the U.S. government was Theodore Roosevelt! So, even though I vote, I feel disenfranchised.
At least, here in the U.S., politicians will occasionally vote against their party's line, and the head of government is often not a member of the "ruling party" -- so that helps the U.S. a little bit. As I understand it, in your homeland, politicians almost never vote against their party, so voters are really voting for a party, not a person -- is that correct?
Posted by: Dave Jones | Oct 10, 2008 at 10:36 PM