10mo ago

Macron names right-leaning French government under Michel Barnier

www.theguardian.com

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The lack of even the most basic understanding of parliamentary politics flying around in this thread is appalling, but certainly illustrates the reason why there are so many wild takes flying around on Lemmy.
To summarize:
The right got a 2/3rds majority in parliament. The united left had the most votes of any individual group, but that's only around 1/3 total.
The reason the left proclaimed they "won" is they came "first" and thought the center-right party would ally with them rather than the "hard right" (welp)
That, in isolation (!), isn't antidemoratic. A majority of French representatives (presumably) approve of the government. Simple maths. A government can only govern with the approval of parliament, it literally can't work otherwise.
However the French voting system very strongly relies on strategic voting, and the far-right came very close to having a parliamentary majority. Therefore the center-right party only got the seats they did because everybody left of the far-right made electoral agreements to pull out their candidates so only the candidate with the most chances to win against the far right would be running. This heavily benefited the center-right party who then allied with the hard right, which is being perceived as treason (for lots of reasons that I'm not going to get into). Strategic voting is a democratic failures and leads to suboptimal choices for representatives (thought that is still miles better than whatever the fuck the CCP is doing, since apparently that needs saying on here). Furthermore this whole shift to the right certainly isn't going to help with the socio-economic issues and is going to end up benefiting the far-right.
The left won a plurality, the right is in charge.
This is the counterargument to those who want multiparty democracy.
- This is a counter argument to having a constitution that allows the president to do what Macron did. There are basically nothing stopping him besides tradition and good will.
  
  Every multiparty system allows someone to do what Macron did, it's baked in. When no party has a majority, multiple coalitions are possible. Someone has to choose which of those possibilities gets the first opportunity to make a government.
- If I had £1 for every time the right had a mysterious unfair advantage in a democratic system, I'd buy myself a politician
- Nah nothing to do with multiparty, the problem is with the fith republic of France giving too much power to the president.
- Technically the left didn't win the majority of seat in the parliament. They have a relative majority as in they are the biggest group in parliament by a small margin but they don't have the majority needed to make a stable government.
  A majority vote from the parliament can oust the PM and his government.
  If you take all the right wing parties, they hold the majority of seats (2/3rd). A left leaning government would last 48 hours, so in spite of french leftists telling everyone they "won", they didn't.
  Our electoral system is very flawed though and the current make up of the parliament is not representative of what people want, there are much better voting system for plurality based political system that could be implemented.
  
  In every country the biggest party would be the one that would at least get a first shot at forming a government.
  
  That's my point. In a multiparty system, it's rare for a party to win a majority. So someone can win even though the majority prefers a different person.
  For example, suppose there are three candidates A,B, and C. It's possible for 60% to prefer A over B, 60% to prefer B over C, and 60% to prefer C over A. No matter who wins, a majority agrees that they are worse than another candidate.
- The prime minister of France is not an elected position but appointed by the president. This has nothing to do with multiparty democracy.
  
  What's the point of holding elections if the winner is an appointed position?
- looks at FPTP countries with two party systems yeah, they are doing grand.
  
  Italy and Israel are among the purest forms of multiparty democracy, and I'll take any FPTP government over those two.
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