I ran into Bruce Guthrie the other day and had a short but insightful chat with him about the Libertarian Party’s struggles to break out of the low single digits in elections. One issue is around creating a ‘big tent’ for the party.
Libertarians divide themselves into two camps: ‘Anarchists’ and ‘Incrementalists’. Anarchists strive to bring about the wholesale destruction of the government. When Ron Paul talks about eliminating the IRS, he is speaking to the Anarchist wing of the party. Inside the Libertarian Party itself, Incrementalists view themselves as realists that will propose arguments such as ‘Although we all want to get rid of public schools, its part of the state constitution, so we should just aim for allowing school choice.’ The Anarchists form the core of the traditional party and the Incrementalists are what the party hopes to use to create big tent inclusion.
Unfortunately, these two groups are diametrically opposed. Incrementalists are simply Conservatives with a different name. They admit the world is the way it is and try to modify the state of affairs rather than destroy and rebuild. How can you ever expect Anarchists and Conservatives to agree on policy issues? How can a Libertarian Party found by Anarchists ever grow to include Conservatives?
I had a conversation with a Goldwater Republican that turned Libertarian after being disillusioned with Nixon’s protectionism. The individual surprised me with his description of the strong economic bent in the drive for his group of Anarchist members to join the Libertarian Party. The economic studies of the 70’s caused many people to believe ‘liberty’ was a better model for economic growth in the US than the state driven, protectionist approach advocated by both the left and parts of right. Reason drove them to become Libertarians, not belief.
This fascinated me because it provided a link between the Anarchist and Incrementalists. What if, rather than saying: ‘Individuals should be free to make choices for themselves and to accept responsibility for the consequences of the choices they make’, the party platform said something more like ‘Our understanding of economic systems implies the country would be better off if individuals were free to make choices for themselves and to accept the consequences’. Even though the statement leads to the same policy result, the discussion has now shifted from a shouting match about beliefs to reasoning about what is better for the country. Anarchists might think this approach makes sense because it harkens back to the reasons they joined the party, while the focus on logic would appeal to the Incrementalists.
This rational approach could also help the party succeed against competitors. The Democrats and Republicans are both belief-based institutions. The beliefs may have changed over time as the country has changed, but both parties try to position themselves to voters as representing their ‘values’. It is in their DNA to appeal to the emotions of citizens to get votes. Using beliefs to tug at the right emotions is a great tool for motivating voters, but the Libertarian Party is unlikely to win this game. The major parties have already perfected the art; why would the Libertarian Party be any better at it? If the Libertarian Party came across a belief system that was more successful at motivating voters, what would prevent the Democrats or Republicans from co-opting that belief system and using their size advantages to beat the Libertarians?
The trick would be to change the way politics operate in this country. Building a party based on reason might be the method to do this. Reason has already been successful in making gains in Washington State for the Libertarians; instant runoff voting did not flow from the traditional Libertarian principles but was a rational choice to improve the country’s democracy. Questions remain on when and how voters choose to vote with their minds rather than their emotions, but if executed properly, a rational campaign could beat the major parties by having voters dissect and discount belief based arguments.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Instant Runoff Voting is the second worst of the commonly discussed voting methods. A much better method is Range Voting - score all the candidates and elect the one with the highest average rating. It's simpler than IRV, and picks more satisfying winners, and is less susceptible to strategic voting, and can be used on all standard plurality voting machines, and eliminates the spoiler effect (whereas IRV only reduces it), and greatly reduces spoiled ballots (whereas IRV significantly increases their frequency), and it gives third parties a fair chance - whereas IRV strategically forces people to "vote for Gore instead of Nader so you don't get Bush" (or think of Perot if you're a conservative). No wonder IRV has historically led to two-party domination everywhere it's been used.
Get the facts at http://RangeVoting.org/IRV.html
You may be right. I'm not enough of an expert on voting systems to be able to rank IRV against alternative methods. I remember coming across an article once that layed out voter preference scenarios and outcomes for different voting systems. That methodology spelled out exactly when each system would produce less than ideal results. Some sort of worst case risk analayis combined with a general utility function would be an interesting read.
The bigger question that I don't have a good solution process for is how to get an alternative voting system in place.
Post a Comment