JJ what do you think of Klaus Schwab and Agenda 21 and the New World Order and links to Trudeau.... no ok I don't want to interrupt your leading the sheeple.
Hi JJ, in Germany parties have developed the habit of presenting in elections for the national parliament the so-called "Kanzlerkandidat". Even though the chancellor is not elected directly by the people, the people have an idea (not unlike Canada) about who a party's preferred candidate is. The more critical challenges result from a "tail wags the dog dilemma", the need to enter into coalitions with other parties if the winning party does not have the absolute majority of seats in the parliament. Entering into coalitions with smaller parties will oblige the party with the relative majority to make concessions to these smaller parties so as to get their vote for the chancellor. In such situations sometimes the party with the lowest percentage of votes gets to impose its minority view on the absolute majority of voters just because it has the few critical needed by another party. Hence the dog does not wag the tail, but the tail wags the whole dog.
Smaller parties entering coalitions also have to make just as many if not more concessions to the party with the most votes as that party has to make to the smaller ones, so at the end of the day the policies of this coalition should be a combination of those of all participating parties, with the bigger parties in the coalition able to enforce more of their policies in the coalition agreement. So overall I'd say that that is still pretty representative of what a majority of the people voted for.
Well this same situation happened in Canada as well. Trudeau has a confidence and supply deal with the social democratic NDP in return for introducing universal pharmacare and dentalcare.
@@Robogames05 I agree with this wholeheartedly. Germany 🇩🇪 should be proud of the Weimar Republic-era democratic traditions (I’m an actor like Jreg/ well aware of the Cabarets of Berlin ;), instead of “accidentally” or inadvertently reverting to Nazism. Don’t worry, German 🇩🇪 police arrested various *actual Neo-Nazis* who may have threatened to plot a real-life coup. Not a good thing during **WWIII**/ The war in 🇺🇦 Ukraine. Shoutout #NATO. 🇺🇦🇪🇺🇺🇸🇨🇦🇦🇺
@@ifeeltiredsleepy I’m mixed on *Trudeau* but he is an attractive actor, despite the *Trucker Protest* where he may have threatened to send actual Tanks, not just *RCMP Mounted Police* against the *pro-freedom protestors*. That being said, I have more respect for the *NDP*, especially the one in British Columbia. Shoutout *Jreg*, he’s probably too far-to-the-left of *Justin Trudeau.* 🇨🇦 🍁 🇲🇶
@@ellieflaggirl934 the political system of the weimar republic was so useless in its strive for equality that the parties rather had fistfights in the streets about who is right
I'm from PR China, whenever JJ asks his subscribers to think of their own country's democratic traditions or something like that, It will always be like well damn looks like I have nothing to contribute for this episode lol.
Well, since you're here, how does the leadership work in China? Even if it's a different system, it's interesting to hear how it functions from someone who's lived there.
@@SWProductions100 Non-chinese here but my understanding is that it kinda just works like a club (being a one-party state and all). You basically get more involved in local CCP activities and aim to move up the ranks as you would in a club (or company) in a Western state. Naturally, as with any large bureaucracy, you still have to deal with office politics and consider aligning with (or against) certain factions within the CCP.
My government teacher told me that being chosen by your party as an elector (for the electoral college in the US) is a great honor, it’s like a status symbol showing that your party trusts you. So not that important to the American people, but if you want a career in politics it’s a great thing to be.
A system that eliminates small parties access to have seats, are not a democracy. First we must count the total national to define the number of the seats per party, than we must choose by deputee territorial source. First the total national count, its the only way to not discriminate small parties, its the only way to be true democracy. About Belgium, you shown ignorance about the country. Its 1 country agaisnt people will. In fact, belgium are 3 diferent countries forced by monarchy to be 1. What happens in Israel its politicians guilty and not voters guilty. Voters must vite for ideology and not for government. Its the ideology based parties that needs to find a way to make coalition government. The french system are bad because the elected president at the second round, dont trully represent the majority of people votes, otherwise would have the same votes in the first round, and becausr its the elected president of the second round who defines government, its even less fair than the coalition parliament system to define government. USA are a 2 party autocracy, 2 elected wings full controled to the same not elected eagle.
@@ricardoxavier827 so all options sucks, is that your point? you know you are right let's delete all of this crap and put one person choose by god and when this person die let put his dinasty at power
Dude I'm literally in the middle of making a study guide for my civics class that is covering this topic. Did you read my mind or something? You always make the best videos at the best times
Australia has: - preferential voting in the House of Representatives; which means that every member of the House has at least 50% approval of their local electors). - proportional voting in the Senate; which means that we have a plurality of different voices.
A system that eliminates small parties access to have seats, are not a democracy. First we must count the total national to define the number of the seats per party, than we must choose by deputee territorial source. First the total national count, its the only way to not discriminate small parties, its the only way to be true democracy. About Belgium, you shown ignorance about the country. Its 1 country agaisnt people will. In fact, belgium are 3 diferent countries forced by monarchy to be 1. What happens in Israel its politicians guilty and not voters guilty. Voters must vite for ideology and not for government. Its the ideology based parties that needs to find a way to make coalition government. The french system are bad because the elected president at the second round, dont trully represent the majority of people votes, otherwise would have the same votes in the first round, and becausr its the elected president of the second round who defines government, its even less fair than the coalition parliament system to define government. USA are a 2 party autocracy, 2 elected wings full controled to the same not elected eagle.
JJ what do you think of Klaus Schwab and Agenda 21 and the New World Order and links to Trudeau.... no ok I don't want to interrupt your leading the sheeple.
It's funny because Churchill was an aristocrat, born in Blenham Palace. (Look the palace up. It's funny.) Aristocracy and democracy are antithetical. British politics is 100% class war. Democracy is the working class winning
A system that eliminates small parties access to have seats, are not a democracy. First we must count the total national to define the number of the seats per party, than we must choose by deputee territorial source. First the total national count, its the only way to not discriminate small parties, its the only way to be true democracy. About Belgium, you shown ignorance about the country. Its 1 country agaisnt people will. In fact, belgium are 3 diferent countries forced by monarchy to be 1. What happens in Israel its politicians guilty and not voters guilty. Voters must vite for ideology and not for government. Its the ideology based parties that needs to find a way to make coalition government. The french system are bad because the elected president at the second round, dont trully represent the majority of people votes, otherwise would have the same votes in the first round, and becausr its the elected president of the second round who defines government, its even less fair than the coalition parliament system to define government. USA are a 2 party autocracy, 2 elected wings full controled to the same not elected eagle.
On the question of whether Plurality should rule, I think this could be resolved with a kind of run-off system; especially ranked voting. For example, in the situation with the Democratic primary, registered Democratic voters should have been able to directly vote for their preferred nominee by ranking each candidate in order of preference. This is basically how the UK Conservative Party selects their nominee, except I would give the vote directly to the voters who are registered to that party instead of to delegates and party officials. It still has problems, but I find it to be the most democratic option.
The UK _Labour_ Party rank their candidates (using the Alternative Vote system with all members of the party getting a vote). The Conservatives hold multiple votes of just MPs with the lowest performing candidate being knocked out each round (although it's common for other poorly perfoming candidates to also withdraw) until there are only two candidates that the members get to vote on.
i prefer approval voting, where individuals can cast a vote for every candidate they approve to hold a particular office. whichever candidate has the most approval wins. it avoids the wasteful extra rounds of tallying that can often happen in ranked choice voting.
I wish to honor the founding fathers of my country (that my parents immigrated to), by suggesting an anti-populist measure. You know, to stick it to the plebs? Ranked-choice Voting, *BUT* slanted towards everyones secondary choices. Cause screw you for thinking the popular vote matters.
@@jasonbelstone3427 The founding fathers were not gods or prophets and they knew perfectly well that their plan for the country couldn't be perfect forever, which is why they allowed amendments. Originalism is as anti-American as loyalty to the British crown.
One thing I find amusing about the issue of faithless electors in the US is that the biggest movement I was aware of for electors to use their discretion in the states they were legally allowed to was when electors proposed a pact to vote for the winner of the national popular vote rather than their state's vote - arguably planning to use their indirect discretion to make the presidential election more direct.
I don't have an answer as to which system is "best." As you pointed out, democracy is quite messy. I think we should always be trying to make improvements, though even that is difficult. Great topic! Thanks, JJ.😊
Democracy is only messy when you have a system that is chaotic crap. The U.S. system is anything but democratic. You have politicians dictating the electoral boundaries and the number of polling places. Voter suppression is rampant in the Red states.
I agree however I think there is too much direct democracy as much of the public does not have the capacity to think long term. Also in the US the constitution is being treated too much like a religious text and the Supreme Court has too much power
A system that eliminates small parties access to have seats, are not a democracy. First we must count the total national to define the number of the seats per party, than we must choose by deputee territorial source. First the total national count, its the only way to not discriminate small parties, its the only way to be true democracy. About Belgium, you shown ignorance about the country. Its 1 country agaisnt people will. In fact, belgium are 3 diferent countries forced by monarchy to be 1. What happens in Israel its politicians guilty and not voters guilty. Voters must vite for ideology and not for government. Its the ideology based parties that needs to find a way to make coalition government. The french system are bad because the elected president at the second round, dont trully represent the majority of people votes, otherwise would have the same votes in the first round, and becausr its the elected president of the second round who defines government, its even less fair than the coalition parliament system to define government. USA are a 2 party autocracy, 2 elected wings full controled to the same not elected eagle.
It's fun to think about questions like this that really don't line up with modern left/right political alignment. I find myself weirdly torn; on the one hand I think contemporary populism shows exactly why too much direct democracy can be bad, and yet as an American I got a huge kick of pride when you said we were among the most anti-elite.
I don't understand why elitism is seen as a bad thing in the US? Don't you want an elite surgeon in charge of your surgery? Don't you want an elite fighting force in charge of an anti-terrorism operation? Saying something is bad just because it's 'elite' just becomes a brush to blindly tar something as bad without any critical look at the details or merits of the thing itself. Direct democracy can be good for very simple things like a starting point on police i.e. asking if people want marijuana or abortion legalized. Not so much for something super detailed and complicated like international trade deals or long-term foreign policy.
It's not really true though is it, given the existence of political dynastic families, the average wealth of American politicians, or the proven fact that public opinion has no statistically observable effect on legislative activity, or the causative relationship between large campaign contributions and policy decisions.
I always love your videos JJ 20-30 minutes is the perfect length to have enough interesting content whilst also not being too long and overbearing on the viewer
Hey JJ! Love your content! Some words on Germany, i was a candidate in the last federal Eletion for the Green Party, we are part of the Scholz Gouverment. Our System to apoint our candidates is in the Districts by a Party Vote (a bit Like a Caucus in Style). The second Option is by state List, the List is also voted on by a state convention of each Party. The convention is different in style from party to party, sometimes all atending party members can vote and sometimes delegates which are elected on the county level. At the end the candidates for parlament are elected by a combination of distric results end state results of the Party. If you win the most votes in the districts you are running you are elected, possible is also via state results this elects a number of peopel from the state list. To become a candidate for Chancellor is mostly symbolic and also different from party to party. Scholz got a "vote of confidence" by his partys board but was elected by the delegates of his partys federal convention. Its important to understand that this is vote by the party convention is not meaningless, these votes are often highly competetiv and holed the true power in every German party. Fun fact, like the speaker of the House, it is not guarenteed that the members of parlament vote to make the head of the strongest party chancellor. In the 70s and 80s the conservatives were the strongest party but the social democrats and the liberals head allways a majority to build a coalition gouverment which is normal in Germany. The Chancellor does not need to be e member of parlament, you just need to be a German citizen and get a majority. This also happend allready in the 60s. Hope to see more of your great videos and greetings from Germany!
The most important thing to understand the German system is that the government is formed by a coalition. We might not have so much direct control over who becomes chancellor but by having more than two choices on our ballots, we have much more control on the style of government we get under whatever chancellor.
@@thomasgoenner9320 Wait, isn’t your minister-president a Green? Then again, you are speaking of a district which could be more supportive of the CDU. Also despite your minister-president being part of the Green Party, isn’t he kind of a conservative himself?
Hey JJ! Thanks for the upload! I wanna say that though I don't dislike your cultural literacy videos, I really do enjoy this more political system type of educational video. They really are something else that I appreciate and very unique. Love your content!
He explains things so well, and I can say that as I am steeped in this political stuff. For that reason, I prefer his cultural analysis because I am not nearly as exposed to that sort of content.
I’m down for anything he puts out but you’re right this is a good format, but his knowledge is so vast and amazing it’s hard to corner him into talking about one thing since he’s so friggin’ smart.
Also, in primaries in the US, we have further complications. Some states are open primaries, where you can vote in either party’s primary regardless of your party affiliation. Others are semi-closed, in which independent/unaffiliated voters can vote for either party but those registered with a party must vote for that party’s primary. Other are closed, where you can only vote if you are registered for that particular party (independent/unaffiliated voters can only vote on nonpartisan races/ballot questions in such a primary system).
I live in Kevin McCarthy’s district (CA-20), the most Republican leaning district on the West Coast. Although he usually wins his seat with 60% of the vote, most Republicans are split on him, with the very right-wing Trumpers hating him but still voting for him anyway since he’s not the sacrificial lamb Democrat running.
“Very right-wing Trumpers” LOL. Obviously you don’t know what it means to be “right-wing”. Trump would’ve been liberal in 1995; Bill Clinton was further right FFS.
Huh, weird seeing someone else from my district who probably lives within a few miles of me in these comments. I hate McCarthy (primarily for his flip-flopping and eventual permissiveness towards the attempted insurrection) and vote blue on that seat no matter who, but the primary will indeed be interesting, especially considering how California does it now.
JJ what do you think of Klaus Schwab and Agenda 21 and the New World Order and links to Trudeau.... no ok I don't want to interrupt your leading the sheeple.
The smoke-and-mirrors style is only acceptable in a multiparty system where new parties can come and go. If you're stuck with two options that never go away, primary elections are necessary.
Thanks for the insightful video JJ! The only thing coming from Australia to Canada that really surprised me is that Canada doesn't use preferential voting... Which is an easy way to ensure that the people's will is accurately reflected in their vote, and 'strategic voting' and distorted results are minimised. Any word on why it's not a thing here? Oh also mandatory voting helps too. Keep up the good work!
The US is interesting here. Each state decides for itself, how to elect its members of Congress. So Alaska and Maine now use "single transferrable vote" and Louisiana has FPTP but (French-style) it demands an outright majority and might need another round to get it, with only the top few still competing. The rest are FPPT and accept plurality outcomes on a per-seat basis. So that's THREE different systems, as each state has decided to do it. (And probably if looked at them closely, each of the 50 systems differs in smaller ways.) And yes, they are all perfectly Constitutional under the Federal Constitution. And yes, that's how they send people to the Federal Congress. (It's also how they choose in-state officeholders too.) If a state decided to use party lists, or multi-seat districts, or who knows what-all, they probably could. I suppose you could invent a system that isn't Constitutional, but you'd probably have to violate equal representation to manage that. You'd pretty much have to bring back some form of segregation, to make it actually unconstitutional.
I wish. In Canada we don't have it because not enough people care, and those care don't all agree which electoral system is best. There's also a sense that preferential voting systems favor centrist party, which is why the Liberal party somewhat supports it, and no other party does.
Voting methods are a very fascinating and complicated Field. It seems like each system, from Instant Runoff to Approval voting has major issues but the one we most commonly used (plurality voting) is definitely the worst.
In the Latvian system, the parties get to pick who to put on the ballot, but the lists of candidates are fairly long, and you can vote both for and against someone. This always leads to some dumbasses hate-voting and crossing everybody out, not realizing that that still counts as a vote for the party itself, but generally this system offers a lot of customization. The ballots and lists are also different in each of the five large regions of the country. So in the end, it's counted how many seats each party gets in each region, and the most popular people from their list for that region get to be in parliament.
Hi JJ, the system we have in Italy is more complex actually. It is not the parliament who chooses the prime minister, but it is the president of republic who nominates someone prime minister who in turns has to get a majority confidence motion by both parliament houses. When a prime minister get a no confidence motion or resigns, it is again the turn of the president of the republic who have to try finding a new name for prime minister and only if not possibile dissolve both houses and call new election (this happens quite rarely). Some of this procedure is not written in the costitution but has become in decades a constitutional convention.
The presidents role doesn’t seem that significant since it is ultimately the parliament that has to affirm the nominee, and the president doesn’t pick a nominee unless he knows the parliament wants him. So it seems to me that it is possible to imagine the system working without a president at all.
This is pretty standard in most parliamentary systems. The head of state (be it president or king or what have you) will designate a person as prime minister, if they are satisfied they can hold majority support in parliament. Some countries will then have an investiture vote, where parliament formally votes to confirm the designation (Italy, Spain, Sweden), or they don’t, and the appointment is simply official until a vote of no confidence is filed in parliament and won by the opposition (UK, Canada, Norway)
@@JJMcCullough all the non-politician prime ministers in the last 15 years has been picked by the president of the republic often against the will of the leaders of the political parties in the parliament. The president of the republic, with an high popularity and authority, kinda said selecting those names that he was acting in the best interest of the country contrary to the party leaders and the parliament and that they had to accept his will. And so they did. At the end of the last president's term his role had grown so much that he was nicknamed "King George" and many political scientists believed Italy had become a semi presidential republic de facto. The current president has streched his consitutional prerogatives quite less, but still when was forming a new cabinet a few years ago he refused to nominate minister of economy a guy proposed by the appointed prime minister because of his political views. And the constitution does not say he has this power; for sure is not the excercise of a cerimonial role.
@@JJMcCullough The symbolic role of the head of state is not just to exist. They do have a limited scope of powers, very important in order to balance out the the other branches of government. In today's system, where the executive branch takes all the lead, a state without a head of state 1) leaves too much space for confusion of powers, and subsequently leads to a de facto dictatorship of the executive aka the government 2) leaves the country headless, as it no longer has a person to represent the state. A system without a head of state de facto establishes a presidential system, but without separation of powers. It's called "confusion of powers" for a reason.
@@italiano120 what you've said is wrong. The President of the Republic in Italy actually has the full and autonomous power to appoint whoever "Prime Minister" (whose correct name is "President of the Council of Ministers") and to refuse to nominate whatever Minister proposed by the President of the Council of Ministers. The powers of the President of the Republic in Italy is checked and balances by the Parliament, as in every Parliamentary System. I.e. the Government is full in office only after a confiance vote of the Parliament. Whenever Italian people choose a strong Parliamentary majority (such as in 2022), the President of the Republic knows his powers are to be harshly counter-balanced. Whenever Parliamentary majorities are weak post-electoral coalitions (such as in 2018, 2019 and 2021), the powers of the President of the Republic may extend because they are not supposed to be counter-balanced
i feel like American society has gone to two different extremes here, in the modern era: on the one hand, day to day life seemingly requires experts for Everything. from cleaning windows to delivering food to plumbing to whatever other profession. on the other hand, we no longer believe in professionalism in politics.
It's because professionalism in politics is seen as interchangeable with corruption. The assumption is that if you get someone from outside the system, they have no connections to exploit when voting on leigslation that influence their voting against the system.
@@Powerman293 Except, of course, we just had a president who had never previously held political office, but he had plenty of business contacts and yes, he used them corruptly. The vast majority of corruption happens in the private sector; public servants are actually less likely to be corrupt.
Combine that with the fact that "expert" is a lower standard than ever before now that a bachelor's degree is more or less the bare minimum in most fields for new workers, and that these "experts" are contradictorily blindly trusted more than ever, and you get the worst political catastrophe in American history since the Civil War. We might even get another one of those soon.
Another argument here is the idea of a United government. The USA famously regularly ends up with a Congress majority that’s opposed to the president, which often leads to tension and gridlock. Letting a parliament elect a prime minister at the very least guarantees that a workable relationship exists and the country is governed. I also think it has a lot to do with options a voter has at Election Day. Americans are used to have two viable candidates and therefore everything that happens before Election Day becomes quite important. Germany is a good example of the opposite, because even though the parties are quite autonomous, German voters have 6 (or 7 depending on where you live) parties to choose from that will likely be represented in parliament (and therefore keep their vote from being ‚wasted‘). Germans care far less about the nomination process, because if they don’t like the nominee, they aren’t stuck with it at Election Day.
I've thought something similar; that our primary system in the US sort of simulates a multi-party election with a final runoff at the end. Not perfectly of course, since the actual 3rd parties are still there and can have a spoiler effect.
One problem is that this isn´t necessarily inherent. The US does not proportionally elect their legislature, and if they did, the Democrats would have had more seats in 2012 and 1996, during Democratic presidencies, and there are other examples for Republican presidents (who won the largest number of votes). Also, the presidential elections are not direct in fact and don´t use runoffs if nobody has a majority. The US also does not have a harmonized system to determine eligibility and the conduct of elections like most countries do, so it is hard to know whether a party does enjoy confidence. I also add that the Senate has a lot of power over legislation even where the matter does not concern states and their autonomy, like passing a federal budget, this is a major contrast to many other countries, even federations. Plus, the US has midterm elections, amplifying the chance of the Congress being opposed to the president as opposed to if they were elected for four year terms in each house just as the president is. It would be very interesting what would happen if the US didn´t do federal midterms but harmonized the elections.
@@robertjarman3703 I do wonder if non-proportional systems are common in countries with lots of low density rural areas, which argue that their voting base is so small as to be effectively powerless, therefore they need a system which favours them over urban areas.
@@shorewall The US isn't at the point of Congress merely being a check on the president but to the point where immensely critical legislation is not even being voted on despite opinion polls being so overwhelmingly in favour of certain policies. The Congress is not supposed to be this hapless. It has immense constitutional power. In order for Congress to be a check it must be coherent and relatively unified and not too much so preoccupied for the better part of a decade or even more than one decade on ideas that gained majority support 20 years ago. And Congress has immense difficulty with passing things that remain popular election after election. The state legislatures are similarly designed to be checks and balances but pass far more critical legislation, even if the party balance between legislature and governor or the house and senate in the state are incongruent, they still pass huge numbers of bills. The Book of the States goes into detail about how many bills are passed per state, also tracking vetoes. The state senate would be unlikely to do something like delay an important nomination, knowing that they themselves must be reelected come November and that a governor must have the largest number of votes to win. The ideas I have aren't just about the balance of power between the two branches either but the basic legitimacy of the government of the US, like how judges of federal courts can only be legitimate if the president who named them is more popular than any other rivals in the election, and won because they clearly got a majority of votes and not by any kind of arcane and byzantine rules people don't intuitively understand, and that the president can only have constitutional power to check a democratically elected legislature if they themselves are just as legitimate via the electoral process, things like the sole right to nominate so many federal officials and decide on their dismissal or to use a veto power, or to have the right to not be dismissed from office except by impeachment and conviction, or to pardon people for serious crimes against society and their particular victims. The Congress likewise cannot have legitimate powers to do things like control the budget or to pass laws or to decide fo give something the people own away without being fairly and freely chosen by that population in a harmonious manner that likewise is not byzantine or unintuitive and gives equal chances to all candidates differentiated only by the degree to which they abide by the constitution and serve the needs and desires of the people, otherwise they give away the legitimacy to the president even over matters a president should not have like to direct so much of America's military or foreign policy strength alone.
Here in Australia we have a parliamentary system similar to Canada and Germany. However, because we don't use the 'first past the post' model, the parties and candidates we elect don't usually have this issue. At the ballot, we number our representatives by preference (hence why it's called preferential voting), and this means that a candidate/party/etc can always have a true majority of the vote. If I number my ballot as Greens [1], Labor [2], etc, then even if the Greens don't get a majority, I can still count on Labor getting my run-off vote, which frees me from worrying about 'taking votes away' from Labor. I seriously think switching to preferential voting would help so many other countries immensely. I could also talk about how mandatory voting (another thing other nations should adopt) affects this, and how the Hare-Clark voting model Tasmania uses is even better than preferential, but I feel like this comment is long enough already lol.
When Trudeau was first elected in 2015 he promised to implement electoral reform, and it was pretty clear he wanted to Implement Preferential Voting (or as we call it in the US and Canada “Ranked Choice voting”). When he set up an all party parliamentary committee to recommend an electoral reform system, it recommended proportional representation instead (A system like the Single Tranferable vote like Australia uses in the Senate, Hare-Clark, or New Zealand’s MMP where the % of seats in parliament is correlated to the % of the vote a party receives). Trudeau then stated there was “No consensus” and dumped electoral reform from his platform.
Germany isn't FPTP either. People get two votes, one for a person and one for a party. Half of parliamentary seats are given to the people directly elected to represent their district, and the other half is filled up with people from party lists so parliament overall matches the proportional outcome of the party vote. Which is the reason our parliament is so big. So the party vote usually is much more important. Parties need a minimum of 5% of the votes or three directly elected candidates to have their party votes count, to avoid the Weimar republic's problem of too many parties, and this is a point if contention. The other is, what happens when a small party gets many direct seats. Currently, the other parties get more seats until the balance is reestablished, but this has become increasingly problematic with people consciously splitting their vote, because we started facing a parliament with 800 delegates for 299 districts. So they changed things up for the next election to stay within the nominal 598 seats. We'll see how this goes.
This is by far the best explanation of the electoral college I've ever seen and ice legitimately looked hard into this every election for years. Thank you jj
I think that it is a bit weird that you did not focus more on the number and diversity of political parties in relation to these issues. I do at least think that having a system where multiple parties represent broadly similar political factions, as we have in my home country of Norway, legitimizes a more "smoke-filed room" kind of electoral prosess as people have the opportunity to change parties based on their actions without needing to vote for a completely different political platform.
you made this video at such a perfect time. being from Israel, the political situation in this country is so messy, exactly because of what you described. all those elections caused people to just give up and burn out, and the new coalition that was formed is a far-right coalition that is starting to pass many problematic rules, and is not actually representative of the will of the people (as is demonstrated by various public surveys). personally i work with teenagers in the education system, and this video will be super helpful in my efforts of talking about democracy with them! thank you.
8:30 Not really though. While it is true for the traditional parties (Parti Socialiste and Les Républicains) and the Greens, these parties either drastically fell off in the last couple of years or were never that big in the first place. In the 2022 election for example, the four most successful candidates in the first round (Macron, Le Pen, Mélenchon and Zemmour) totalizing 80% of the vote were not designated to be their party's candidate through a primary election.
One thing I find interesting about the French party system is how it drastically changed with the 2017 presidentials, and how there now seems to be an entire different set of parties that do well in presidentials (LREM RN and LFI), as opposed to the "traditional" ones who now mostly do well at the local level (PS LR and sometimes EELV). And yeah, meanwhile you have Zemmour, who is good at shock value but just not enough to break into any kind of electoral success.
When I as younger I naïvely assumed that candidates had gone through some sort of vetting process that could ensure that they had a skill set which would make them at least likely to succeed. My expectations have been dashed by the overt and obvious way that money and celebrity now dole out candidates for us in the last 10 years. I’m also saddened by the sentiment that people don’t want to elect officials who are *gasp* smarter than they are.
Great video J.J. The first country i think of when you talk about direct democracy is Switzerland. From what i understand they get to vote on most if not all their laws and who the elected officials are doesn't matter too much. I'm from Norway so i know next to nothing about swiss politics, but that's my understanding of their system. Anyways that might be a topic to explore in a video.
It's more along the line of if enough signatures are collected in the three months after a law has passed, the people can vote on if the law should exist
@@ShadowSkryba after the law is passed by congress you need to collect 50000 votes in 100 days for a referendum. So it is usually not too hard if the law is somewhat controversial
I think people see the recent speaker voting as the government not working, when that was exactly what it was doing. The parties have just been so split down party lines recently that we don't see the internal politics of either party that should slow down the government. The US system of governance is interesting because its basically built to stop officials from doing their jobs at every turn, especially with the splitting of the Executive and Legislature branches even though they are both needed to do anything meaningful.
As an Australian, I do wish that we had a more direct say over who our representatives and leaders are. We changed prime ministers twice without any say from the voters.
Oh yeah. Parties here are like hive minds for the rich and powerful. Both major parties get millions every year from corporate donors *cough* the fossil fuel industry
As a Canadian, I find it interesting that the political parties basically use a ranked voting system to elect their leaders and yet they think the public too stupid to use a ranked voting system in the ridings.
I don't think that's the reason. The reason is that different voting systems favor different kinds of parties. Preferential voting systems tend to favor centrist parties, which is why the Liberal party supports it but other parties don't.
@@jsnrvst They support it when they're not in power. If I remember correctly it's been about 100 years since the Liberal party first suggested a change from FPTP, but magically forget about it every whenever they win power through FPTP.
@@MrNicholasAaron I think a big reason why they don't follow through with it is because it wouldn't be able to get passed. The Conservatives, for one, always spread the lie about some people voting more than once. With the disinformation and the resistance to change, it is doubtful that it would become law. That is what I am referring to. The Conservatives, for one, use it to elect their own leader but then refuse when it comes to the public because they know a majority of the public would not vote for them. Slightly hypocritical.
@@MrNicholasAaron I'm still salty af about the libs just dropping electoral reform from their campaign promise. My riding is super liberal though so any vote (esp for NDP) just ends up being wasted and not really reflected in parliament.
Apart from the populism/elitism angle of indirect democracy, there's also the time/effort angle: one can argue that ordinary voters simply don't have time to learn about the deeper details of policy and statecraft since they are usually busy not being politicians.
16:45 - Although European style majority coalition building is starting to feel a bit more normalized in canada, especially recently, we’ve had two provincial Governments be formed (BC in 2017 and Yukon in 2021) by the party who finished second forming an alliance with a smaller party to form a majority, as well as the current liberal and NDP alliance federally.
I have been living in Canada for 22 years but I am originally from Switzerland and I still think the Swiss system does have some advantages. The lower house features a variety of parties of which none have a majority, the upper house is similar to the US senate with 2 politicians per Canton (1 per half canton). The government is a group of 7 ministers which are elected by a historically grow agreement that provides two seats each for the 3 largest parties and 1 seat for the 4th largest party. candidates are elected by the individual party caucus and can be politicians from amongst their own ranks or any other eligible citizen. Typically two candidates are nominated by the party coming up for filling a seat. the combined house (lower house and senate combined as a single chamber) elect the candidate for 4 years, after 4 years candidates are usually re-elected except if they choose to retire or in rarest circumstances they are not reelected. Sometimes the candidates proposed by the party are not acceptable to the house and another candidate is elected (still from that specific party) which has led to crisis as the candidate does not have the support of the party; such candidates my accept the election or they may refuse acceptance... it is all very complicated.... but fascinating (I hope I got it all right)
@@JJMcCullough about the swiss system? It’s main shortcoming is that consensus is slow and has a hard time of dealing with pressing issues in a decisive manner. On the other hand, the canadian system can act fast and decisively, and make many missteps in the process. I wish for an intermediate version that retains the consensus based legislative branch of switzerland and the efficient executive branch of canada (i don’t mean to say that the canadian public service is particularly efficient) What I mean is that the executive should be given maximum freedom to act within broadly set legislative boundaries. But then; I live in a dream world ;-)
JJ what do you think of Klaus Schwab and Agenda 21 and the New World Order and links to Trudeau.... no ok I don't want to interrupt your leading the sheeple.
This is a great video because I've thought about what an ideal democratic system might look like. Maybe something like the American system with the congress functioning more like a parliament. I like Italy's system of keeping the position of leadership open to anybody, only I think it would be better if the parliament picked the candidates, and then the people voted for who becomes Prime Minister. Btw, ranked voting fixes most of those plurality problems.
I think that the amount of power being trusted to the public in elections heavily depends on the quality of the public's education. A democracy with a broken education system could be a broken democracy.
In the State of South Australia we had a weird situation a few years ago where the government effectively lost control of the state Parliament but rather than voting no confidence, the opposition and independents pushed through a change to the state constitution so now the Speaker of the House has to legally resign any party membership and become independent upon election. So now only really those already elected as independent want to become Speaker! Of course this is a Parliamentary system where the Speaker just chairs the debate but I thought it was interesting.
It feels like direct democracy makes voters more responsible for their choices, because they have no one to blame for the "misrepresentation" but themselves then
In a small community, yes. But imagine 300 million US citizens voting for every piece of legislative or executive action...it's a logistical nightmare.
In the United States there is a general sense that politicians when behind closed doors can’t be entirely trusted, I’ve heard that in Canada that can also be the case, I think before we create the perfect political system or even try to determine it we need to do as much as possible to insure politicians have the peoples best interests in mind, that could involve restricting campaign financing laws, lobbying groups, and generally brining more transparency to the committee as well as accountability to decisions being made.
In the USA, at least if you were just paying attention to what all the party heads were saying on both standard news media and social media, the whole debacle around McCarthy was unprecedented in history. Knowing what we know about other similar government stoppages due to similar problems of negotiation, I think anyone of any political lineage can easily say that it could have been much worse.
Fairly unpredecented yeah but not "unprecedented in history", there was this trivia going around of the time before the civil war there were over 100 rounds without someone becoming speaker.
@@vibhav_m the correlation between many rounds of voting for a speaker and civil war or economic depression is both certainly not a causal link yet it is disturbing
One other problem with all these systems is that many of them are "first past the post" systems, whereas other voting systems might make the process both smoother and more representative. Something like ranked-choice voting (both at the level of the public and then again at the level of indirect democracy) could potentially get people out of gridlock while still maintaining their preferences.
JJ what do you think of Klaus Schwab and Agenda 21 and the New World Order and links to Trudeau.... no ok I don't want to interrupt your leading the sheeple.
JJ, have you ever looked at the politics of school boards? interesting how they are elected officials and work every day jobs a lot of them or are retired. I work in a school system and it is a gateway into politics for some too. there was also that insane story about that guy in California who trolled the school board after he got elected. some places are getting rid of the school board election systems and school boards all together in the USA. I am also curious about "school boards" in other places like canada or europe. the education systems and politics of education vary from place to place incredibly, yet are so critical to the infrastructure of a healthy public.
In Brazil, candidates for executive office are chosen conventions. Important to note that parties also do that to chose to join together for a 4 for year fedaration. In Brazil, one is not allowed to run as an independent. As for the legislatures basically any party member can run for anything since it's a proportional vote, open list. Within our legislatures we use a runoff sistem for the presidency of the upper and lower houses.
And then there's Switzerland, whose leaders aren't determined by a national election at all. The same four parties are basically guaranteed the same level of power, no matter the outcome of an election. Coming from a fairly competitive democracy, that seems absolutely crazy to me. I can't wrap my head around how that's supposed to be legitimate. But whenever I talk to a Swiss person about it, they seem surprisingly chill and instead proudly tell me about all their forms of direct participation. Switzerland has a very weird and unique mix between elitist executive politicians, but direct democratic law making. Very weird, very unique.
I get the impression that Swiss people are also used to being constantly praised for their unique system, and have a patriotic culture that puts the system at the center of their identity. So I feel like Swiss culture isn’t super self critical of Swiss democracy.
There is no perfect system and we swiss acknowledge that... but our system has worked rather well for us so we tend to look at it fondly. As for the same parties being in power, it's something we call the magic formula to form the federal council (no PM or president). 7 seats divided between the 4 parties with the most representatives in a 2-2-2-1 distribution. That can change if other parties gain power. We might someday have 6 or 7 parties of similar strength to form the federal council.
@@Nl0R I do get that and I'm not saying it's necessarily bad. But it does seem very weird to me, that a parliamentary election in Switzerland will not change the composition of the government. For instance, the Greens now hold more seats than the Center party, right? And yet, there's no Green member of the Bundesrat council. That way, the magic formula seems very rigid and in a way... not legitimate.
In Australia it doesn't matter who you vote for because the elected people are found ineligible to sit by courts or resign only to be replaced by someone else anyway.
I feel like there's an obvious solution to the problem JJ describes at 19:55: make the politicians rank all the nominees, and then chose the winner with an instant runoff system.
@@JJMcCullough That's a reasonable concern, but like, at this point I've given up on "happy" and I'm mostly focusing on "not worth trying to start a civil war over." (Great video btw!)
@@user-be1jx7ty7n That's a good point, but I also think instant runoff is the most democratic option. All the other options give disproportionate power to whoever's willing to dig their heals in and make the biggest fuss.
In Ireland, if we had gone by 'Plurality Rules' Fianna Fáil would've been in power for 82 of the last 102 years since the first elected Dáil, with them in power continously between 1932 and 2011, so I can't imagine if we had that system
That’s assuming that the voters would of voted the same way if we went with Plurality Rules. Which obviously they wouldn’t, so you’re argument is flawed
@@Jenkowelten as an Irishman there's only some slight difference between them as both parties are pretty much centrists if not centre-left when it comes to governing with a healthy dose of liberal economics. P.s. anyone telling you they are right wing are definitely extremists.
@@Jenkowelten Theres NONE, Ireland has no opositon,, ALL partys support LGBT,Pro Abortion, pro Green policies, Black diversity over whites, Immigrantion with no restrictions du to the EU and every woke policy u can think off, we have No TRUE Opposition in Ireland, all partys support EVERYTHING Liberal so u may as well just merge to form one giant party last time thre was a real devide was 1996
From New Zealand here. We use the MMP system (Mixed Member Proportional). I find it hard to keep track of how these systems work, but I've heard that it seems to give the smaller parties a better chance to have a say in politics. We used to use the First Past the Post system until the 90's when they changed it over. As for what determines the new Prime Minister, it's whoever the current leader of the party who gets the majority of the vote happens to be.
@@faldovifendi6878 Germany has a upper house, it's called the Federal Council, and it is made up of members of the governments of the 16 states in Germany. But they can only really block things if it relates to state affairs or state finances. They recently blocked a bill passed by the lower house which reformed unemployment benefits, but it is tradition that the Fed. Government and the states reach a compromise and pass something, usually a watered down version of the original law
I tend to think the public should have as much say as possible (within reason, obviously every decision can’t be done through direct democracy) . But it is frustrating how so many people prioritize culture war, personality issues over the actual policies and platforms. Feels like the conservatives here in Canada often barely have a platform beyond vague notions of lower taxes yet they still get votes.
Exhaustive voting is used in the EU parliament and the Scottish parliament. The candidate who got least votes is dropped on every round until someone gets over 50%
Hey JJ! I'm a long-time fan from Belgium🇧🇪. Great video!👍 About our 2 years long crisis (at 20:42 ), I want to add this: part of the reason why it took us from December 2018 until September 2020 to appoint a full-powered government, was also due a government crisis, prior to elections that came months later. The the largest party in PM Charles Michel's coalition left the federal government in Dec 2018, because of disagreements about the UN Marrakech Migration Pact. It stripped them of a parliamentary majority and effectively nerfed Michel's government. However, he still tried to continue with a minority government. But that didn't work out... so Michel's govt. resigned. However, they stayed in place, as a de-powered federal government (meaning that they could only take care of "current affairs", "lopende zaken" as it's called in Dutch). The remaining parties preferred to sit the remaining 4 to 5 months out until the elections, instead of organising early ones. After the May 2019 elections, that's when the arduous formation process started, lasting until September 2020. All while still having that de-powered minority government. But then with Sofie Wilmès as PM, because Michel got a new job as President of the European Council. Fun fact about Wilmès: she was our first female prime minister.
@@natanphuatinzita8047 Why is Leopold the opposite of the best king? Who do you think is the best king of the belgians? Leopold II was the only one with real power. Albert I changed the constitution to give more power to the parliament. Leopold II helped build Belgium’s legitimacy and prestige and was able to get the Congo Free State as a colony. Sounds great to me
@@night6724 Few things are purely negative or purely positive. The world is not that simple, and its history should not be treated as such. However (and I hope your not intentionally doing this), you cannot just ignore the human suffering that happened under his rule over the Congo Free State, not to mention the millions of local people that perished because of it. If you cause such tragedy, as someone who is personally in charge, I don't think you can be called the "greatest". Especially when you know that kings like Albert I or Baudoin/Boudewijn are more positively remembered in the Belgian collective memory. And to answer you: Since our monarchs don't have real political power, it's hard to point at the best, so I'll go with the one who, in my opinion, meant the most for his people during his reign, and that is Albert I, who's also nicknamed the "king-soldier" (Koning-soldaat). I'll leave it at that because it's nowhere near the point of my original comment or the topic of the video. Good day to you 👋
@@natanphuatinzita8047 Leopold wasn’t responsible for the deaths in the congo. An independent commission was convened that reported that the reported atrocities were because of the force publique (who were african conscripts and volunteers) going against orders since in the congo it was common to collect hands as a trophy. There was never any order to cut off people’s limbs. The Belgian high command either wasn’t aware of it or began to permit it. Basically you’re upset that leopold II wasn’t more of a tyrant over the black africans. You also ignore Leopold built schools and hospitals for the natives and abolished the slave trade even going to war with arab slave raiders in the east to drive them out of the congo. In the congo most congolese admire Leopold II Even by that logic Belgium still controlled the congo after Leopold sold it to Belgium parliament and there was more suffer afterwords which was directly ordered by Belgium and yet Albert and Baudoin did nothing so why are their hands clean? Belgium controlled the congo until the 1960s. Did they do anything to denounce the tyranny?
In Malaysia, our system is basically the same as Canada. Basically the PM candidate needs a majority of MPs in order to hold the office of PM. However, we also have a middle ground because political parties make it clear that if you vote for their party, this is who you'll get for PM. For example, Pakatan Harapan supporters are very clear that they will get Anwar as PM, Perikatan Nasional supporters will get Muhyiddin, and Barisan Nasional supporters will get Ismail Sabri (although everyone knows that Zahid, who is charged in court for corruption, is the actual candidate and Ismail Sabri is just being used as the "poster boy" so that voters won't perceive BN yo be corrupt). Last time, our political parties win a clear majority, but this has changed in 2022 when no coalition has a majority of 112 seats to govern the country. Eventually, Anwar from Pakatan Harapan (which had a plurality of 82 seats) emerged as the PM and led a unity government of 148 seats, consisting of PH, BN and East Malaysian parties. In this situation, the guy with the plurality got to be the PM, but things weren't as certain when the election results first came out, as there were concerns that Muhyiddin with 74 seats might actually be PM. I hope it will be a tradition in the future for the guy with the plurality to be PM
Insightful video! I believe we tend to view the politics from a different country solely under the prism of our own system. A parliamentary approach just feels natural for me, as I live in Austria. I guess for a Canadian or for someone from the US, their system must be the „normal“ one.
People should think more critically about the logic of their system. Americans do this a lot, but I find Europeans are pretty complacent about their democracy.
@@JJMcCullough completely agree. But would you say the reason behind this attitude is the US educational system or the current turmoil of US politics? The last few years were quite instable in domestic Austrian politics and I feel since that we have discussed more about our constitution, the role of the president and our „system“ than let’s say 20-30 years ago.
Not sure if someone else has mentioned this already, but I think it's worth noting that the Electoral College remains controversial here because our presidents are still ultimately decided by how many electoral votes they earn and not the actual popular vote. Also relevant is that different states are allotted different numbers of electors in proportion (allegedly) to their population. Doing the math will reveal that even though the electors only ever vote in accordance with the popular vote results of their state, a candidate can actually lose the national popular vote but still win the presidency provided they get even the slightest majority in the right combination of states. This is not merely a hypothetical problem but has in fact happened a handful of times in US history.
Gaddafi was very clear on this issue in the green book. Idk why we are still struggling with these questions when he was very clear in his third universal theory
@@Jenkowelten Chapter 1 The Solution of the Problem of Democracy: The Authority of the People “Parliament is a misrepresentation of the people, and parliamentary systems are a false solution to the problem of democracy. A parliament is originally founded to represent the people, but this in itself is undemocratic as democracy means the authority of the people and not an authority acting on their behalf. The mere existence of a parliament means the absence of the people. True democracy exists only through the direct participation of the people, and not through the activity of their representatives. Parliaments have been a legal barrier between the people and the exercise of authority, excluding the masses from meaningful politics and monopolizing sovereignty in their place. People are left with only a facade of democracy, manifested in long queues to cast their election ballots.”
Hi JJ, great video! I found it super interesting that alot of the problems you discussed can boil down to if politicians should make judgments themselves or if they should follow what the population that elected them to do to a tee. I feel alot of that is downstream of if a nation has civil law or common law. I would love to hear your take on these two systems of law. Just a video idea, hint hint.
As a Swiss voter, I don‘t get to vote for any executive position. They are all elected by both legislative chambers assembled together. I do get to vote on controversial Policies and any constitutional change though. I would consider that a unique combination of direct and indirect democracy.
I’m a fan of representative democracy with those representatives being elected by as wide a swath of the population as is reasonably possible. I’ve been a fan of ranked choice for that reason lately. Do I trust the general population to make the best decision? I go back and forth on it. But the solution to that issue to me is better civics education, rather than voter restriction.
J.J.M. I really enjoy your cogent and effective summary of topics. I enjoy learning more about these things. But, goodness, your accent just turns it into pure candy. Thank you very much. Please keep it up.
Kevin McCarthy speaker of the house vote was HILARIOUS it reminded me of the Suez Canal in terms of hilariously dumb things greatly affecting the world. on tumblr someone said “Nancy Pelosi saw her shadow which means 6 more weeks of no speaker of the house” which I found very funny.
I still don’t understand how it’s also bad to make a slow informed decision on a house of speaker. Especially when it’s someone like McCarthey, who did a terrible job of funding and running the Republican Party in 2022.
@@NA.NA.. Suez Canal impacted the economy and delay in electing speaker of the house basically halted congress who votes on foreign policy and economic things
@@deafleppard1812 it’s not a slow informed decision when your basically saying “I will vote for any living breathing person over McCarthy,” someone voted trump for speaker ffs.
A two party system is a complete joke of a democracy. And so is the 'winner takes all' on a state level. The Netherlands has 17.5 million inhabitants. 13.6 are old enough to vote. We have 150 seats in parliament. If you have 90667 people nationwide voting for you: you get one seat. We mostly vote for parties. We had 41 parties attempting to gain a seat. 17 got in parliament. There is no majority party. For each decision, or, more likely, a large volume of decisions, parties have to form coalitions. We have 4 parties in a coalition now that have a majority (and can thus negotiate and push their agenda). This creates a much more vibrant political landscape. A two party system is a complete joke in our eyes. Winner gets it all is the opposite of democracy: its the disfranchisement of all minority political groups. It creates a two party system that in the end is a one party system with two branches. Like in the USA now and before Trump. Then there is the fact that your political system is infested with lobbyists, that pay big money and is in bed with Big Tech, creating actual fascism according to Benito's definition (the merger of state and corporation), with propaganda, censorship, endless wars for profit, inflation, etc. To call the USA a democracy is reaching.
Fellow Canadian here, I'll speak to the system in Canada as that's what I'm most familiar with: I think overall it is very close to being "good". The whole idea that we technically don't have a parliament to pick a PM is not that important to me - I care less about the party leader and more about the actual policies to be enacted. The big piece it's missing is some form of proportional rep or preferential voting. As seen here in BC twice in the last 10ish years and the lack of willingness from the Federal Libs, it's always seen as the right thing to do but difficult for anyone in power to do (who wants to stop winning?). As much as current governments in power hate it, provincial and federal, it will ultimately be the healthiest thing going forward. Canadians have rarely given a party popular majority in the modern era, last time being Mulroney's 1984 landslide where by popular vote he actually "only" got 50.03% (with about 2/3 of seats). Creating an environment where no party can receive a majority of seats easily could lead to healthier coalition governments in the future as seen in some European countries. Lastly a slight rant on the Senate, either get rid of it completely or takeaway its ability to introduce & deny bills. You get to be a senator by being the best c*cksucker to the political party of your choosing AND get to serve until you're 75 (used to be for life). Yet, these people have the ability, albeit rarely, to change the course of certain bills in parliament, which is absolutely bonkers.
Canada needs proportional representation. Like the US, we have a first past the post system. This breaks the politics in any country into dominant left and right parties. Those parties play regional games to build the big winning party tent. Now that everyone can limit their news feed to hear only one side, there is no longer the slightest attempt to negotiate or recognize that the half of the population on the other side of center has even a single point that should be respected. This is extremely dangerous for Canada in particular. We have a 1000 mile stretch of nearly unoccupied rock in the middle of the country. We have two cultures (the west and east, far more than English and French). We have two separate economies, resource extraction vs industrial, both for export and mostly not to each other. The money does not circulate between the two, not with only a single highway running east out of Manitoba. It makes more economic sense for each side to trade across the oceans or with the nearest US states than to try shipping over the Canadian Shield. The politics in the two halves is just as divided as if between competing nations, with much explicit contempt. The potential for political crisis here is enormous.
Israel actually had direct elections for prime minister exactly 3 times from 1996 until 2001. It didn't last long as the prime ministers and their parties had supposedly very little actual power inside a parliament that didn't elect them nor did they have any kind of a deal for basic legislative agreements with other parties. Although there have been a few attempts to recreate that system in recent years as a suggestion to solve the political crisis JJ mentioned, it never progressed anywhere.
Israel has been so ineffective informing governments that they allowed Benjamin Netanyahu to come back as a leader of one of their parties and as I'm sure you're aware he nvestigated for corruption
In Germany it is the same as in Canada. The parties nominate a candidate for chancellor and the person is the center of the campaign, rather than political ideas. In the last election, the Green candidate led in the polls, but after she published a book which had a lot of plagiarized sections, her numbers fell and the Christian Democratic candidate then led the polls quite comfortably, until he laughed during an emotional speech by the President at a town which was hit by a flood where over 100 people died. His poll rates fell and the Social Democratic candidate got ahead, even though nobody thought a year before that the Social Democrats could win an election because they were at 15% at the beginning of the campaign and at the end they won because of personal mistakes by the other candidates and Olaf Scholz pretty much did nothing during the campaign and waited for the others to do something wrong, instead of offering better ideas. So people don't really care as much for politics as they do for personalities. And also there is the point of "tactical voting" where people don't vote for the party they like the most, but for parties which would prevent the opposing party from forming a government by not wanting to go into a coalition with it.
Good video but I think you kinda missed an oppurtunity here to talk about switzerlands democracy, it's basically a mixture of direct and indirect democracy without one but seven heads of government (think 7 prime ministers or presidents) that is unique in the world and if you look at the results in tearms of wealth, security, freedom, happiness etc. definitely a country and system worth looking into.
From now on when there are multiple votes to elect someone we should play Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies over it the way JJ did in this video and as the votes go longer and longer the song should get faster and faster like it does in a game of Tetris
8:28 in fact this had become highly controvertial inside the partys since non of all the candidate elected by a primary had reach the second turn of a presidential election, LR the most important party that practiced primaries had say that they doesnt want to do that anymore since their last deafeat. And for local elections, from almost all the partys, the smoke filled room method is still the only methode. Having a system of numerous party and two turn elections made the systeme of party primaries not as important even if personaly I think it remain a good option worth trying especially when we are not satisfied with our local politician that seems unremovable.
i think it’d be nice if during an election you were presented with the different parties/candidates you could vote for as well as list of different policy areas (economy, foreign policy, education etc) and you would then be able to say which party you agree with the most in each area and rate how important each area is to you so that it would be more clear which party really had the mandate of the people for different issues if a coalition government needs to be formed
JJ what do you think of Klaus Schwab and Agenda 21 and the New World Order and links to Trudeau.... no ok I don't want to interrupt your leading the sheeple.
The central problem to all of this is that in any of these systems, the options presented to the people, in my life time anyway, fall within a very narrow window of political possibilities. In countries like the US and Canada, policies which are broadly popular (such as healthcare, or legalizing of marijuana, etc.) can go decades without even symbolic gestures towards them. And people recognize that corporate influence plays a huge role in this problem (whether the candidates are voted directly or indirectly) and as a result there's mass alienation and only half to 3/4s of people bother to vote.
Truly an award winning video. It actually made me do nothing but watch the video for a whole 25 minutes.
I love to hear it!
I agree. One of JJ's best.
JJ what do you think of Klaus Schwab and Agenda 21 and the New World Order and links to Trudeau.... no ok I don't want to interrupt your leading the sheeple.
U are just a sheep.
I often say I'll only watch the first 5 or something since I have to get back to work or whatever, but here we are.
Hi JJ, in Germany parties have developed the habit of presenting in elections for the national parliament the so-called "Kanzlerkandidat". Even though the chancellor is not elected directly by the people, the people have an idea (not unlike Canada) about who a party's preferred candidate is.
The more critical challenges result from a "tail wags the dog dilemma", the need to enter into coalitions with other parties if the winning party does not have the absolute majority of seats in the parliament. Entering into coalitions with smaller parties will oblige the party with the relative majority to make concessions to these smaller parties so as to get their vote for the chancellor. In such situations sometimes the party with the lowest percentage of votes gets to impose its minority view on the absolute majority of voters just because it has the few critical needed by another party. Hence the dog does not wag the tail, but the tail wags the whole dog.
Smaller parties entering coalitions also have to make just as many if not more concessions to the party with the most votes as that party has to make to the smaller ones, so at the end of the day the policies of this coalition should be a combination of those of all participating parties, with the bigger parties in the coalition able to enforce more of their policies in the coalition agreement. So overall I'd say that that is still pretty representative of what a majority of the people voted for.
Well this same situation happened in Canada as well. Trudeau has a confidence and supply deal with the social democratic NDP in return for introducing universal pharmacare and dentalcare.
@@Robogames05 I agree with this wholeheartedly. Germany 🇩🇪 should be proud of the Weimar Republic-era democratic traditions (I’m an actor like Jreg/ well aware of the Cabarets of Berlin ;), instead of “accidentally” or inadvertently reverting to Nazism.
Don’t worry, German 🇩🇪 police arrested various *actual Neo-Nazis* who may have threatened to plot a real-life coup.
Not a good thing during **WWIII**/ The war in 🇺🇦 Ukraine.
Shoutout #NATO.
🇺🇦🇪🇺🇺🇸🇨🇦🇦🇺
@@ifeeltiredsleepy I’m mixed on *Trudeau* but he is an attractive actor, despite the *Trucker Protest* where he may have threatened to send actual Tanks, not just *RCMP Mounted Police* against the *pro-freedom protestors*.
That being said, I have more respect for the *NDP*, especially the one in British Columbia.
Shoutout *Jreg*, he’s probably too far-to-the-left of *Justin Trudeau.* 🇨🇦 🍁 🇲🇶
@@ellieflaggirl934 the political system of the weimar republic was so useless in its strive for equality that the parties rather had fistfights in the streets about who is right
I'm from PR China, whenever JJ asks his subscribers to think of their own country's democratic traditions or something like that, It will always be like well damn looks like I have nothing to contribute for this episode lol.
Well, since you're here, how does the leadership work in China? Even if it's a different system, it's interesting to hear how it functions from someone who's lived there.
how are delegates chosen for cpc party congresses?
do you vote in local elections with secret ballots with the option to vote for or against the candidates?
@@SWProductions100 Non-chinese here but my understanding is that it kinda just works like a club (being a one-party state and all). You basically get more involved in local CCP activities and aim to move up the ranks as you would in a club (or company) in a Western state. Naturally, as with any large bureaucracy, you still have to deal with office politics and consider aligning with (or against) certain factions within the CCP.
@@SWProductions100 The thing is we don’t even know unless one is a part of the communist bureaucratic machine
My government teacher told me that being chosen by your party as an elector (for the electoral college in the US) is a great honor, it’s like a status symbol showing that your party trusts you. So not that important to the American people, but if you want a career in politics it’s a great thing to be.
Most electors don't have more of a political career than that and being involved at the local level.
Same thing for delegates at party conventions. Being a party delegate is a reward for party loyalty.
A system that eliminates small parties access to have seats, are not a democracy.
First we must count the total national to define the number of the seats per party, than we must choose by deputee territorial source.
First the total national count, its the only way to not discriminate small parties, its the only way to be true democracy.
About Belgium, you shown ignorance about the country. Its 1 country agaisnt people will. In fact, belgium are 3 diferent countries forced by monarchy to be 1.
What happens in Israel its politicians guilty and not voters guilty. Voters must vite for ideology and not for government.
Its the ideology based parties that needs to find a way to make coalition government.
The french system are bad because the elected president at the second round, dont trully represent the majority of people votes, otherwise would have the same votes in the first round, and becausr its the elected president of the second round who defines government, its even less fair than the coalition parliament system to define government.
USA are a 2 party autocracy, 2 elected wings full controled to the same not elected eagle.
@@ricardoxavier827 so all options sucks, is that your point? you know you are right let's delete all of this crap and put one person choose by god and when this person die let put his dinasty at power
@@fabriziovignati383 Lets go, establishing the Absolute Monarchy of the United States of America.
Dude I'm literally in the middle of making a study guide for my civics class that is covering this topic. Did you read my mind or something? You always make the best videos at the best times
@@cadejust6777 lol
Australia has:
- preferential voting in the House of Representatives; which means that every member of the House has at least 50% approval of their local electors).
- proportional voting in the Senate; which means that we have a plurality of different voices.
A system that eliminates small parties access to have seats, are not a democracy.
First we must count the total national to define the number of the seats per party, than we must choose by deputee territorial source.
First the total national count, its the only way to not discriminate small parties, its the only way to be true democracy.
About Belgium, you shown ignorance about the country. Its 1 country agaisnt people will. In fact, belgium are 3 diferent countries forced by monarchy to be 1.
What happens in Israel its politicians guilty and not voters guilty. Voters must vite for ideology and not for government.
Its the ideology based parties that needs to find a way to make coalition government.
The french system are bad because the elected president at the second round, dont trully represent the majority of people votes, otherwise would have the same votes in the first round, and becausr its the elected president of the second round who defines government, its even less fair than the coalition parliament system to define government.
USA are a 2 party autocracy, 2 elected wings full controled to the same not elected eagle.
Consider this part of your course haha
JJ what do you think of Klaus Schwab and Agenda 21 and the New World Order and links to Trudeau.... no ok I don't want to interrupt your leading the sheeple.
"Democracy is the worst form of government ever conceived except for all other forms that have been tried." - Winston Churchill
“rEaL cOmMuNiSm HaS nEvEr BeEn TrIeD” - Twitter Communists
Underedieraidiradoodoo
-Winston Churchill
It's funny because Churchill was an aristocrat, born in Blenham Palace. (Look the palace up. It's funny.) Aristocracy and democracy are antithetical. British politics is 100% class war. Democracy is the working class winning
A system that eliminates small parties access to have seats, are not a democracy.
First we must count the total national to define the number of the seats per party, than we must choose by deputee territorial source.
First the total national count, its the only way to not discriminate small parties, its the only way to be true democracy.
About Belgium, you shown ignorance about the country. Its 1 country agaisnt people will. In fact, belgium are 3 diferent countries forced by monarchy to be 1.
What happens in Israel its politicians guilty and not voters guilty. Voters must vite for ideology and not for government.
Its the ideology based parties that needs to find a way to make coalition government.
The french system are bad because the elected president at the second round, dont trully represent the majority of people votes, otherwise would have the same votes in the first round, and becausr its the elected president of the second round who defines government, its even less fair than the coalition parliament system to define government.
USA are a 2 party autocracy, 2 elected wings full controled to the same not elected eagle.
Good thing america isnt and never was meant to be a democracy
On the question of whether Plurality should rule, I think this could be resolved with a kind of run-off system; especially ranked voting. For example, in the situation with the Democratic primary, registered Democratic voters should have been able to directly vote for their preferred nominee by ranking each candidate in order of preference. This is basically how the UK Conservative Party selects their nominee, except I would give the vote directly to the voters who are registered to that party instead of to delegates and party officials. It still has problems, but I find it to be the most democratic option.
But then they wouldn’t be able to use their smoke-filled room to decide 😅
The UK _Labour_ Party rank their candidates (using the Alternative Vote system with all members of the party getting a vote). The Conservatives hold multiple votes of just MPs with the lowest performing candidate being knocked out each round (although it's common for other poorly perfoming candidates to also withdraw) until there are only two candidates that the members get to vote on.
i prefer approval voting, where individuals can cast a vote for every candidate they approve to hold a particular office. whichever candidate has the most approval wins. it avoids the wasteful extra rounds of tallying that can often happen in ranked choice voting.
I wish to honor the founding fathers of my country (that my parents immigrated to), by suggesting an anti-populist measure. You know, to stick it to the plebs?
Ranked-choice Voting, *BUT* slanted towards everyones secondary choices.
Cause screw you for thinking the popular vote matters.
@@jasonbelstone3427 The founding fathers were not gods or prophets and they knew perfectly well that their plan for the country couldn't be perfect forever, which is why they allowed amendments. Originalism is as anti-American as loyalty to the British crown.
One thing I find amusing about the issue of faithless electors in the US is that the biggest movement I was aware of for electors to use their discretion in the states they were legally allowed to was when electors proposed a pact to vote for the winner of the national popular vote rather than their state's vote - arguably planning to use their indirect discretion to make the presidential election more direct.
I don't have an answer as to which system is "best." As you pointed out, democracy is quite messy. I think we should always be trying to make improvements, though even that is difficult. Great topic! Thanks, JJ.😊
I'm reminded of the old quip about "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the other ones."
Democracy is only messy when you have a system that is chaotic crap. The U.S. system is anything but democratic.
You have politicians dictating the electoral boundaries and the number of polling places. Voter suppression is rampant in the Red states.
thexalon Churchill, I think.
I agree however I think there is too much direct democracy as much of the public does not have the capacity to think long term. Also in the US the constitution is being treated too much like a religious text and the Supreme Court has too much power
A system that eliminates small parties access to have seats, are not a democracy.
First we must count the total national to define the number of the seats per party, than we must choose by deputee territorial source.
First the total national count, its the only way to not discriminate small parties, its the only way to be true democracy.
About Belgium, you shown ignorance about the country. Its 1 country agaisnt people will. In fact, belgium are 3 diferent countries forced by monarchy to be 1.
What happens in Israel its politicians guilty and not voters guilty. Voters must vite for ideology and not for government.
Its the ideology based parties that needs to find a way to make coalition government.
The french system are bad because the elected president at the second round, dont trully represent the majority of people votes, otherwise would have the same votes in the first round, and becausr its the elected president of the second round who defines government, its even less fair than the coalition parliament system to define government.
USA are a 2 party autocracy, 2 elected wings full controled to the same not elected eagle.
It's fun to think about questions like this that really don't line up with modern left/right political alignment. I find myself weirdly torn; on the one hand I think contemporary populism shows exactly why too much direct democracy can be bad, and yet as an American I got a huge kick of pride when you said we were among the most anti-elite.
I don't understand why elitism is seen as a bad thing in the US? Don't you want an elite surgeon in charge of your surgery? Don't you want an elite fighting force in charge of an anti-terrorism operation? Saying something is bad just because it's 'elite' just becomes a brush to blindly tar something as bad without any critical look at the details or merits of the thing itself.
Direct democracy can be good for very simple things like a starting point on police i.e. asking if people want marijuana or abortion legalized. Not so much for something super detailed and complicated like international trade deals or long-term foreign policy.
It's not really true though is it, given the existence of political dynastic families, the average wealth of American politicians, or the proven fact that public opinion has no statistically observable effect on legislative activity, or the causative relationship between large campaign contributions and policy decisions.
@@chickenfishhybrid44 How does that help?
@@chickenfishhybrid44 well, lobbying does tend to be particularly bad in the US, increasing the amount of influence being rich has.
@@chickenfishhybrid44 No, measuring yourself by the worse, makes yourself worse. Avoid that, even if it's uncomfortable.
I always love your videos JJ 20-30 minutes is the perfect length to have enough interesting content whilst also not being too long and overbearing on the viewer
My day always brightens up when I see you've posted a new video. Thanks JJ. 💙
Thank YOU for being such a loyal watcher!
@@JJMcCullough 💙💙💙
Hey JJ! Love your content!
Some words on Germany, i was a candidate in the last federal Eletion for the Green Party, we are part of the Scholz Gouverment.
Our System to apoint our candidates is in the Districts by a Party Vote (a bit Like a Caucus in Style). The second Option is by state List, the List is also voted on by a state convention of each Party. The convention is different in style from party to party, sometimes all atending party members can vote and sometimes delegates which are elected on the county level. At the end the candidates for parlament are elected by a combination of distric results end state results of the Party. If you win the most votes in the districts you are running you are elected, possible is also via state results this elects a number of peopel from the state list.
To become a candidate for Chancellor is mostly symbolic and also different from party to party.
Scholz got a "vote of confidence" by his partys board but was elected by the delegates of his partys federal convention. Its important to understand that this is vote by the party convention is not meaningless, these votes are often highly competetiv and holed the true power in every German party.
Fun fact, like the speaker of the House, it is not guarenteed that the members of parlament vote to make the head of the strongest party chancellor. In the 70s and 80s the conservatives were the strongest party but the social democrats and the liberals head allways a majority to build a coalition gouverment which is normal in Germany. The Chancellor does not need to be e member of parlament, you just need to be a German citizen and get a majority. This also happend allready in the 60s.
Hope to see more of your great videos and greetings from Germany!
My dog was a candidate for the green party
Did you win your District
The most important thing to understand the German system is that the government is formed by a coalition. We might not have so much direct control over who becomes chancellor but by having more than two choices on our ballots, we have much more control on the style of government we get under whatever chancellor.
@@globalpoliticsman9523 nope, my district is in Baden-Württemberg and pretty Conservative.
@@thomasgoenner9320 Wait, isn’t your minister-president a Green? Then again, you are speaking of a district which could be more supportive of the CDU. Also despite your minister-president being part of the Green Party, isn’t he kind of a conservative himself?
Hey JJ! Thanks for the upload! I wanna say that though I don't dislike your cultural literacy videos, I really do enjoy this more political system type of educational video. They really are something else that I appreciate and very unique. Love your content!
He explains things so well, and I can say that as I am steeped in this political stuff. For that reason, I prefer his cultural analysis because I am not nearly as exposed to that sort of content.
I’m down for anything he puts out but you’re right this is a good format, but his knowledge is so vast and amazing it’s hard to corner him into talking about one thing since he’s so friggin’ smart.
Also, in primaries in the US, we have further complications. Some states are open primaries, where you can vote in either party’s primary regardless of your party affiliation. Others are semi-closed, in which independent/unaffiliated voters can vote for either party but those registered with a party must vote for that party’s primary. Other are closed, where you can only vote if you are registered for that particular party (independent/unaffiliated voters can only vote on nonpartisan races/ballot questions in such a primary system).
Also, for president, you are actually electing DELEGATES to the convention. Essentially, electors for the nomination.
I live in Kevin McCarthy’s district (CA-20), the most Republican leaning district on the West Coast. Although he usually wins his seat with 60% of the vote, most Republicans are split on him, with the very right-wing Trumpers hating him but still voting for him anyway since he’s not the sacrificial lamb Democrat running.
i find it funny that both house reps have been californians. Maybe because it is the biggest state (by pop)
Is he as dim in person as he is on TV? Sometimes I've found that not to be the case.
“Very right-wing Trumpers” LOL. Obviously you don’t know what it means to be “right-wing”. Trump would’ve been liberal in 1995; Bill Clinton was further right FFS.
Huh, weird seeing someone else from my district who probably lives within a few miles of me in these comments. I hate McCarthy (primarily for his flip-flopping and eventual permissiveness towards the attempted insurrection) and vote blue on that seat no matter who, but the primary will indeed be interesting, especially considering how California does it now.
JJ what do you think of Klaus Schwab and Agenda 21 and the New World Order and links to Trudeau.... no ok I don't want to interrupt your leading the sheeple.
As a former RNC Delegate, I can say first hand how delegates were chosen had a huge effect on what type of people were at the convention.
Could you elaborate?
Interesting you didn't mention Switzerland when it comes to direct democracy. That generally tends to be the go to example.
The smoke-and-mirrors style is only acceptable in a multiparty system where new parties can come and go.
If you're stuck with two options that never go away, primary elections are necessary.
Thanks for the insightful video JJ! The only thing coming from Australia to Canada that really surprised me is that Canada doesn't use preferential voting... Which is an easy way to ensure that the people's will is accurately reflected in their vote, and 'strategic voting' and distorted results are minimised. Any word on why it's not a thing here? Oh also mandatory voting helps too. Keep up the good work!
I wish we had the Australian electoral system over here in the U.K.
The US is interesting here. Each state decides for itself, how to elect its members of Congress. So Alaska and Maine now use "single transferrable vote" and Louisiana has FPTP but (French-style) it demands an outright majority and might need another round to get it, with only the top few still competing. The rest are FPPT and accept plurality outcomes on a per-seat basis. So that's THREE different systems, as each state has decided to do it. (And probably if looked at them closely, each of the 50 systems differs in smaller ways.) And yes, they are all perfectly Constitutional under the Federal Constitution. And yes, that's how they send people to the Federal Congress. (It's also how they choose in-state officeholders too.)
If a state decided to use party lists, or multi-seat districts, or who knows what-all, they probably could. I suppose you could invent a system that isn't Constitutional, but you'd probably have to violate equal representation to manage that. You'd pretty much have to bring back some form of segregation, to make it actually unconstitutional.
@@metsfan1873 Isn't Georgia majority, at least for governor?
I wish. In Canada we don't have it because not enough people care, and those care don't all agree which electoral system is best. There's also a sense that preferential voting systems favor centrist party, which is why the Liberal party somewhat supports it, and no other party does.
@@jacobcooper5514 I assume you have to a point to make hidden in there someplace?
Voting methods are a very fascinating and complicated Field. It seems like each system, from Instant Runoff to Approval voting has major issues but the one we most commonly used (plurality voting) is definitely the worst.
IRV which is what we use in Australia, means that every single member of the House has the consent of at least 50% of their electorate.
What major issues do you see with approval voting?
@@SolomonUcko Approval voting is just slightly fancier FPTP and doesn't address the question of consent.
@@andrewrollason4963 This is not accurate at all. See my link for an explanation.
My mom walked by the tv as this video was playing and simply said “love his hair!” and moved on
In the Latvian system, the parties get to pick who to put on the ballot, but the lists of candidates are fairly long, and you can vote both for and against someone. This always leads to some dumbasses hate-voting and crossing everybody out, not realizing that that still counts as a vote for the party itself, but generally this system offers a lot of customization. The ballots and lists are also different in each of the five large regions of the country. So in the end, it's counted how many seats each party gets in each region, and the most popular people from their list for that region get to be in parliament.
Hi JJ, the system we have in Italy is more complex actually. It is not the parliament who chooses the prime minister, but it is the president of republic who nominates someone prime minister who in turns has to get a majority confidence motion by both parliament houses. When a prime minister get a no confidence motion or resigns, it is again the turn of the president of the republic who have to try finding a new name for prime minister and only if not possibile dissolve both houses and call new election (this happens quite rarely). Some of this procedure is not written in the costitution but has become in decades a constitutional convention.
The presidents role doesn’t seem that significant since it is ultimately the parliament that has to affirm the nominee, and the president doesn’t pick a nominee unless he knows the parliament wants him. So it seems to me that it is possible to imagine the system working without a president at all.
This is pretty standard in most parliamentary systems. The head of state (be it president or king or what have you) will designate a person as prime minister, if they are satisfied they can hold majority support in parliament. Some countries will then have an investiture vote, where parliament formally votes to confirm the designation (Italy, Spain, Sweden), or they don’t, and the appointment is simply official until a vote of no confidence is filed in parliament and won by the opposition (UK, Canada, Norway)
@@JJMcCullough all the non-politician prime ministers in the last 15 years has been picked by the president of the republic often against the will of the leaders of the political parties in the parliament. The president of the republic, with an high popularity and authority, kinda said selecting those names that he was acting in the best interest of the country contrary to the party leaders and the parliament and that they had to accept his will. And so they did. At the end of the last president's term his role had grown so much that he was nicknamed "King George" and many political scientists believed Italy had become a semi presidential republic de facto. The current president has streched his consitutional prerogatives quite less, but still when was forming a new cabinet a few years ago he refused to nominate minister of economy a guy proposed by the appointed prime minister because of his political views. And the constitution does not say he has this power; for sure is not the excercise of a cerimonial role.
@@JJMcCullough The symbolic role of the head of state is not just to exist. They do have a limited scope of powers, very important in order to balance out the the other branches of government. In today's system, where the executive branch takes all the lead, a state without a head of state 1) leaves too much space for confusion of powers, and subsequently leads to a de facto dictatorship of the executive aka the government 2) leaves the country headless, as it no longer has a person to represent the state. A system without a head of state de facto establishes a presidential system, but without separation of powers. It's called "confusion of powers" for a reason.
@@italiano120 what you've said is wrong. The President of the Republic in Italy actually has the full and autonomous power to appoint whoever "Prime Minister" (whose correct name is "President of the Council of Ministers") and to refuse to nominate whatever Minister proposed by the President of the Council of Ministers.
The powers of the President of the Republic in Italy is checked and balances by the Parliament, as in every Parliamentary System. I.e. the Government is full in office only after a confiance vote of the Parliament.
Whenever Italian people choose a strong Parliamentary majority (such as in 2022), the President of the Republic knows his powers are to be harshly counter-balanced. Whenever Parliamentary majorities are weak post-electoral coalitions (such as in 2018, 2019 and 2021), the powers of the President of the Republic may extend because they are not supposed to be counter-balanced
i feel like American society has gone to two different extremes here, in the modern era: on the one hand, day to day life seemingly requires experts for Everything. from cleaning windows to delivering food to plumbing to whatever other profession. on the other hand, we no longer believe in professionalism in politics.
That's a really interesting observation that I haven't heard before.
It's because professionalism in politics is seen as interchangeable with corruption. The assumption is that if you get someone from outside the system, they have no connections to exploit when voting on leigslation that influence their voting against the system.
@@Powerman293 Except, of course, we just had a president who had never previously held political office, but he had plenty of business contacts and yes, he used them corruptly. The vast majority of corruption happens in the private sector; public servants are actually less likely to be corrupt.
@@alexpotts6520 That's why I said "Assumption"
Combine that with the fact that "expert" is a lower standard than ever before now that a bachelor's degree is more or less the bare minimum in most fields for new workers, and that these "experts" are contradictorily blindly trusted more than ever, and you get the worst political catastrophe in American history since the Civil War. We might even get another one of those soon.
Another argument here is the idea of a United government. The USA famously regularly ends up with a Congress majority that’s opposed to the president, which often leads to tension and gridlock. Letting a parliament elect a prime minister at the very least guarantees that a workable relationship exists and the country is governed.
I also think it has a lot to do with options a voter has at Election Day. Americans are used to have two viable candidates and therefore everything that happens before Election Day becomes quite important. Germany is a good example of the opposite, because even though the parties are quite autonomous, German voters have 6 (or 7 depending on where you live) parties to choose from that will likely be represented in parliament (and therefore keep their vote from being ‚wasted‘). Germans care far less about the nomination process, because if they don’t like the nominee, they aren’t stuck with it at Election Day.
I've thought something similar; that our primary system in the US sort of simulates a multi-party election with a final runoff at the end. Not perfectly of course, since the actual 3rd parties are still there and can have a spoiler effect.
One problem is that this isn´t necessarily inherent. The US does not proportionally elect their legislature, and if they did, the Democrats would have had more seats in 2012 and 1996, during Democratic presidencies, and there are other examples for Republican presidents (who won the largest number of votes). Also, the presidential elections are not direct in fact and don´t use runoffs if nobody has a majority. The US also does not have a harmonized system to determine eligibility and the conduct of elections like most countries do, so it is hard to know whether a party does enjoy confidence.
I also add that the Senate has a lot of power over legislation even where the matter does not concern states and their autonomy, like passing a federal budget, this is a major contrast to many other countries, even federations.
Plus, the US has midterm elections, amplifying the chance of the Congress being opposed to the president as opposed to if they were elected for four year terms in each house just as the president is. It would be very interesting what would happen if the US didn´t do federal midterms but harmonized the elections.
@@robertjarman3703 I do wonder if non-proportional systems are common in countries with lots of low density rural areas, which argue that their voting base is so small as to be effectively powerless, therefore they need a system which favours them over urban areas.
@@Croz89 Not really. Brazil is not very dense by world standards, but uses PR. India is very dense and uses plurality.
@@shorewall The US isn't at the point of Congress merely being a check on the president but to the point where immensely critical legislation is not even being voted on despite opinion polls being so overwhelmingly in favour of certain policies.
The Congress is not supposed to be this hapless. It has immense constitutional power. In order for Congress to be a check it must be coherent and relatively unified and not too much so preoccupied for the better part of a decade or even more than one decade on ideas that gained majority support 20 years ago. And Congress has immense difficulty with passing things that remain popular election after election.
The state legislatures are similarly designed to be checks and balances but pass far more critical legislation, even if the party balance between legislature and governor or the house and senate in the state are incongruent, they still pass huge numbers of bills. The Book of the States goes into detail about how many bills are passed per state, also tracking vetoes. The state senate would be unlikely to do something like delay an important nomination, knowing that they themselves must be reelected come November and that a governor must have the largest number of votes to win.
The ideas I have aren't just about the balance of power between the two branches either but the basic legitimacy of the government of the US, like how judges of federal courts can only be legitimate if the president who named them is more popular than any other rivals in the election, and won because they clearly got a majority of votes and not by any kind of arcane and byzantine rules people don't intuitively understand, and that the president can only have constitutional power to check a democratically elected legislature if they themselves are just as legitimate via the electoral process, things like the sole right to nominate so many federal officials and decide on their dismissal or to use a veto power, or to have the right to not be dismissed from office except by impeachment and conviction, or to pardon people for serious crimes against society and their particular victims.
The Congress likewise cannot have legitimate powers to do things like control the budget or to pass laws or to decide fo give something the people own away without being fairly and freely chosen by that population in a harmonious manner that likewise is not byzantine or unintuitive and gives equal chances to all candidates differentiated only by the degree to which they abide by the constitution and serve the needs and desires of the people, otherwise they give away the legitimacy to the president even over matters a president should not have like to direct so much of America's military or foreign policy strength alone.
Here in Australia we have a parliamentary system similar to Canada and Germany. However, because we don't use the 'first past the post' model, the parties and candidates we elect don't usually have this issue. At the ballot, we number our representatives by preference (hence why it's called preferential voting), and this means that a candidate/party/etc can always have a true majority of the vote. If I number my ballot as Greens [1], Labor [2], etc, then even if the Greens don't get a majority, I can still count on Labor getting my run-off vote, which frees me from worrying about 'taking votes away' from Labor. I seriously think switching to preferential voting would help so many other countries immensely. I could also talk about how mandatory voting (another thing other nations should adopt) affects this, and how the Hare-Clark voting model Tasmania uses is even better than preferential, but I feel like this comment is long enough already lol.
But still you don't vote for a prime minister or at least not directly (prefering one candidat not for the candidat but for the leader of that party)
@@romainsavioz5466 Aye, that's why I described it as a parliamentary system (which it is). He mentioned this in the video.
When Trudeau was first elected in 2015 he promised to implement electoral reform, and it was pretty clear he wanted to Implement Preferential Voting (or as we call it in the US and Canada “Ranked Choice voting”).
When he set up an all party parliamentary committee to recommend an electoral reform system, it recommended proportional representation instead (A system like the Single Tranferable vote like Australia uses in the Senate, Hare-Clark, or New Zealand’s MMP where the % of seats in parliament is correlated to the % of the vote a party receives).
Trudeau then stated there was “No consensus” and dumped electoral reform from his platform.
Germany isn't FPTP either. People get two votes, one for a person and one for a party. Half of parliamentary seats are given to the people directly elected to represent their district, and the other half is filled up with people from party lists so parliament overall matches the proportional outcome of the party vote. Which is the reason our parliament is so big.
So the party vote usually is much more important. Parties need a minimum of 5% of the votes or three directly elected candidates to have their party votes count, to avoid the Weimar republic's problem of too many parties, and this is a point if contention.
The other is, what happens when a small party gets many direct seats. Currently, the other parties get more seats until the balance is reestablished, but this has become increasingly problematic with people consciously splitting their vote, because we started facing a parliament with 800 delegates for 299 districts. So they changed things up for the next election to stay within the nominal 598 seats. We'll see how this goes.
Man coming back here is wild after what happened
This is by far the best explanation of the electoral college I've ever seen and ice legitimately looked hard into this every election for years. Thank you jj
I think that it is a bit weird that you did not focus more on the number and diversity of political parties in relation to these issues. I do at least think that having a system where multiple parties represent broadly similar political factions, as we have in my home country of Norway, legitimizes a more "smoke-filed room" kind of electoral prosess as people have the opportunity to change parties based on their actions without needing to vote for a completely different political platform.
Maybe he should do the top 5 countries in the World Happiness Report and how their governments function.
This video actually aged very well.
Always a good day when JJ uploads a video.
you made this video at such a perfect time. being from Israel, the political situation in this country is so messy, exactly because of what you described. all those elections caused people to just give up and burn out, and the new coalition that was formed is a far-right coalition that is starting to pass many problematic rules, and is not actually representative of the will of the people (as is demonstrated by various public surveys). personally i work with teenagers in the education system, and this video will be super helpful in my efforts of talking about democracy with them! thank you.
שיהיה לנו בהצלחה
@@NeelLLumi-AnCatDubh לפחות אנשים התחילו להתעורר, נקווה שזה יעזור
@@shaniamibar5459 the script of your language looks so cool
8:30 Not really though. While it is true for the traditional parties (Parti Socialiste and Les Républicains) and the Greens, these parties either drastically fell off in the last couple of years or were never that big in the first place. In the 2022 election for example, the four most successful candidates in the first round (Macron, Le Pen, Mélenchon and Zemmour) totalizing 80% of the vote were not designated to be their party's candidate through a primary election.
One thing I find interesting about the French party system is how it drastically changed with the 2017 presidentials, and how there now seems to be an entire different set of parties that do well in presidentials (LREM RN and LFI), as opposed to the "traditional" ones who now mostly do well at the local level (PS LR and sometimes EELV). And yeah, meanwhile you have Zemmour, who is good at shock value but just not enough to break into any kind of electoral success.
When I as younger I naïvely assumed that candidates had gone through some sort of vetting process that could ensure that they had a skill set which would make them at least likely to succeed. My expectations have been dashed by the overt and obvious way that money and celebrity now dole out candidates for us in the last 10 years. I’m also saddened by the sentiment that people don’t want to elect officials who are *gasp* smarter than they are.
Great video J.J. The first country i think of when you talk about direct democracy is Switzerland. From what i understand they get to vote on most if not all their laws and who the elected officials are doesn't matter too much. I'm from Norway so i know next to nothing about swiss politics, but that's my understanding of their system. Anyways that might be a topic to explore in a video.
It's more along the line of if enough signatures are collected in the three months after a law has passed, the people can vote on if the law should exist
@@nicholasengel9823 Okay, that is an amazing control mechanism, how many?
@@ShadowSkryba after the law is passed by congress you need to collect 50000 votes in 100 days for a referendum. So it is usually not too hard if the law is somewhat controversial
@@nicholasengel9823 now that is a viable form of direct democracy, if every citizen could/had to vote on every bill everyone would have gone insane
@@ShadowSkryba we can also propose changes to the constitution and if 100000 signatures are gathered, we vote. It's called a popular initiative.
I think people see the recent speaker voting as the government not working, when that was exactly what it was doing. The parties have just been so split down party lines recently that we don't see the internal politics of either party that should slow down the government. The US system of governance is interesting because its basically built to stop officials from doing their jobs at every turn, especially with the splitting of the Executive and Legislature branches even though they are both needed to do anything meaningful.
This thumbnail aged like fine wine
As an Australian, I do wish that we had a more direct say over who our representatives and leaders are. We changed prime ministers twice without any say from the voters.
Oh yeah. Parties here are like hive minds for the rich and powerful. Both major parties get millions every year from corporate donors *cough* the fossil fuel industry
As a Canadian, I find it interesting that the political parties basically use a ranked voting system to elect their leaders and yet they think the public too stupid to use a ranked voting system in the ridings.
Probably because the American public IS too stupid to use a ranked voting system..... lol
I don't think that's the reason. The reason is that different voting systems favor different kinds of parties. Preferential voting systems tend to favor centrist parties, which is why the Liberal party supports it but other parties don't.
@@jsnrvst They support it when they're not in power. If I remember correctly it's been about 100 years since the Liberal party first suggested a change from FPTP, but magically forget about it every whenever they win power through FPTP.
@@MrNicholasAaron I think a big reason why they don't follow through with it is because it wouldn't be able to get passed. The Conservatives, for one, always spread the lie about some people voting more than once. With the disinformation and the resistance to change, it is doubtful that it would become law. That is what I am referring to. The Conservatives, for one, use it to elect their own leader but then refuse when it comes to the public because they know a majority of the public would not vote for them. Slightly hypocritical.
@@MrNicholasAaron I'm still salty af about the libs just dropping electoral reform from their campaign promise. My riding is super liberal though so any vote (esp for NDP) just ends up being wasted and not really reflected in parliament.
Great presentation of this info JJ. Keep on educating. The world needs you.
Apart from the populism/elitism angle of indirect democracy, there's also the time/effort angle: one can argue that ordinary voters simply don't have time to learn about the deeper details of policy and statecraft since they are usually busy not being politicians.
16:45 - Although European style majority coalition building is starting to feel a bit more normalized in canada, especially recently, we’ve had two provincial Governments be formed (BC in 2017 and Yukon in 2021) by the party who finished second forming an alliance with a smaller party to form a majority, as well as the current liberal and NDP alliance federally.
I have been living in Canada for 22 years but I am originally from Switzerland and I still think the Swiss system does have some advantages. The lower house features a variety of parties of which none have a majority, the upper house is similar to the US senate with 2 politicians per Canton (1 per half canton). The government is a group of 7 ministers which are elected by a historically grow agreement that provides two seats each for the 3 largest parties and 1 seat for the 4th largest party. candidates are elected by the individual party caucus and can be politicians from amongst their own ranks or any other eligible citizen. Typically two candidates are nominated by the party coming up for filling a seat. the combined house (lower house and senate combined as a single chamber) elect the candidate for 4 years, after 4 years candidates are usually re-elected except if they choose to retire or in rarest circumstances they are not reelected. Sometimes the candidates proposed by the party are not acceptable to the house and another candidate is elected (still from that specific party) which has led to crisis as the candidate does not have the support of the party; such candidates my accept the election or they may refuse acceptance... it is all very complicated.... but fascinating (I hope I got it all right)
What would you change about it?
@@JJMcCullough about the swiss system? It’s main shortcoming is that consensus is slow and has a hard time of dealing with pressing issues in a decisive manner. On the other hand, the canadian system can act fast and decisively, and make many missteps in the process. I wish for an intermediate version that retains the consensus based legislative branch of switzerland and the efficient executive branch of canada (i don’t mean to say that the canadian public service is particularly efficient) What I mean is that the executive should be given maximum freedom to act within broadly set legislative boundaries. But then; I live in a dream world ;-)
JJ what do you think of Klaus Schwab and Agenda 21 and the New World Order and links to Trudeau.... no ok I don't want to interrupt your leading the sheeple.
This is a great video because I've thought about what an ideal democratic system might look like. Maybe something like the American system with the congress functioning more like a parliament. I like Italy's system of keeping the position of leadership open to anybody, only I think it would be better if the parliament picked the candidates, and then the people voted for who becomes Prime Minister.
Btw, ranked voting fixes most of those plurality problems.
I think that the amount of power being trusted to the public in elections heavily depends on the quality of the public's education. A democracy with a broken education system could be a broken democracy.
Hey! I’m from Italy and this is the video I was searching! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
In the State of South Australia we had a weird situation a few years ago where the government effectively lost control of the state Parliament but rather than voting no confidence, the opposition and independents pushed through a change to the state constitution so now the Speaker of the House has to legally resign any party membership and become independent upon election.
So now only really those already elected as independent want to become Speaker!
Of course this is a Parliamentary system where the Speaker just chairs the debate but I thought it was interesting.
Revisiting this video now makes the intro rather amusing.
It feels like direct democracy makes voters more responsible for their choices, because they have no one to blame for the "misrepresentation" but themselves then
They will never blame themselves. you kidding me?
Tell that the to the classical Athenians.
All they'd do is shift the blame to the people informing them on their voting options.
In a small community, yes. But imagine 300 million US citizens voting for every piece of legislative or executive action...it's a logistical nightmare.
Brexit tho
In the United States there is a general sense that politicians when behind closed doors can’t be entirely trusted, I’ve heard that in Canada that can also be the case, I think before we create the perfect political system or even try to determine it we need to do as much as possible to insure politicians have the peoples best interests in mind, that could involve restricting campaign financing laws, lobbying groups, and generally brining more transparency to the committee as well as accountability to decisions being made.
In the USA, at least if you were just paying attention to what all the party heads were saying on both standard news media and social media, the whole debacle around McCarthy was unprecedented in history. Knowing what we know about other similar government stoppages due to similar problems of negotiation, I think anyone of any political lineage can easily say that it could have been much worse.
Fairly unpredecented yeah but not "unprecedented in history", there was this trivia going around of the time before the civil war there were over 100 rounds without someone becoming speaker.
It just showed how the Squad and other progressives were wrong.
@@vibhav_m the correlation between many rounds of voting for a speaker and civil war or economic depression is both certainly not a causal link yet it is disturbing
Watched this video without knowing what was happening; 30 minutes later he's ousted. Wow.
One other problem with all these systems is that many of them are "first past the post" systems, whereas other voting systems might make the process both smoother and more representative. Something like ranked-choice voting (both at the level of the public and then again at the level of indirect democracy) could potentially get people out of gridlock while still maintaining their preferences.
JJ what do you think of Klaus Schwab and Agenda 21 and the New World Order and links to Trudeau.... no ok I don't want to interrupt your leading the sheeple.
wow, this stayed relevant for a bit longer than expected.
JJ, have you ever looked at the politics of school boards? interesting how they are elected officials and work every day jobs a lot of them or are retired. I work in a school system and it is a gateway into politics for some too. there was also that insane story about that guy in California who trolled the school board after he got elected. some places are getting rid of the school board election systems and school boards all together in the USA.
I am also curious about "school boards" in other places like canada or europe. the education systems and politics of education vary from place to place incredibly, yet are so critical to the infrastructure of a healthy public.
The UK has governors, but AFAIK all positions are appointed by existing governors.
In Lebanon, it is the same as it is in Belgium which means that it has been 2 months and a half since a president was in office.
In Brazil, candidates for executive office are chosen conventions. Important to note that parties also do that to chose to join together for a 4 for year fedaration. In Brazil, one is not allowed to run as an independent. As for the legislatures basically any party member can run for anything since it's a proportional vote, open list. Within our legislatures we use a runoff sistem for the presidency of the upper and lower houses.
Your new setup is coming along rlly nicely. I love the little donkey kong logo but every is great. It’s nice to see u setting into the new place
Thanks so much!
And then there's Switzerland, whose leaders aren't determined by a national election at all. The same four parties are basically guaranteed the same level of power, no matter the outcome of an election. Coming from a fairly competitive democracy, that seems absolutely crazy to me. I can't wrap my head around how that's supposed to be legitimate. But whenever I talk to a Swiss person about it, they seem surprisingly chill and instead proudly tell me about all their forms of direct participation. Switzerland has a very weird and unique mix between elitist executive politicians, but direct democratic law making. Very weird, very unique.
I get the impression that Swiss people are also used to being constantly praised for their unique system, and have a patriotic culture that puts the system at the center of their identity. So I feel like Swiss culture isn’t super self critical of Swiss democracy.
@@JJMcCullough True, I also get that impression.
There is no perfect system and we swiss acknowledge that... but our system has worked rather well for us so we tend to look at it fondly. As for the same parties being in power, it's something we call the magic formula to form the federal council (no PM or president). 7 seats divided between the 4 parties with the most representatives in a 2-2-2-1 distribution. That can change if other parties gain power. We might someday have 6 or 7 parties of similar strength to form the federal council.
@@Nl0R I do get that and I'm not saying it's necessarily bad. But it does seem very weird to me, that a parliamentary election in Switzerland will not change the composition of the government. For instance, the Greens now hold more seats than the Center party, right? And yet, there's no Green member of the Bundesrat council. That way, the magic formula seems very rigid and in a way... not legitimate.
In Australia it doesn't matter who you vote for because the elected people are found ineligible to sit by courts or resign only to be replaced by someone else anyway.
I feel like there's an obvious solution to the problem JJ describes at 19:55: make the politicians rank all the nominees, and then chose the winner with an instant runoff system.
The problem with instant runoff is it assumes people will be happy with like, their sixth choice getting in power.
@@JJMcCullough assuming anyone is happy the other way is a pretty big leap too tbh
@@JJMcCullough That's a reasonable concern, but like, at this point I've given up on "happy" and I'm mostly focusing on "not worth trying to start a civil war over." (Great video btw!)
so if you rank your ballot 1- Jesus 2- Hitler 3- Jeffry Daumier 4-Thanous then you are ok with your 2 or 3 choice ?
@@user-be1jx7ty7n That's a good point, but I also think instant runoff is the most democratic option. All the other options give disproportionate power to whoever's willing to dig their heals in and make the biggest fuss.
We should go back to strange women in ponds distributing swords to determine our leadership.
Already thumbs up and commercial still running. It's JJ...automatic thumbs up.
In Ireland, if we had gone by 'Plurality Rules' Fianna Fáil would've been in power for 82 of the last 102 years since the first elected Dáil, with them in power continously between 1932 and 2011, so I can't imagine if we had that system
Do you think there's any difference between FF and FG?
That’s assuming that the voters would of voted the same way if we went with Plurality Rules. Which obviously they wouldn’t, so you’re argument is flawed
@@Jenkowelten as an Irishman there's only some slight difference between them as both parties are pretty much centrists if not centre-left when it comes to governing with a healthy dose of liberal economics.
P.s. anyone telling you they are right wing are definitely extremists.
but other than 1972-74 and 1994-97 Ireland has pretty much been a one party sytem untill 2011
@@Jenkowelten Theres NONE, Ireland has no opositon,, ALL partys support LGBT,Pro Abortion, pro Green policies, Black diversity over whites, Immigrantion with no restrictions du to the EU and every woke policy u can think off, we have No TRUE Opposition in Ireland, all partys support EVERYTHING Liberal so u may as well just merge to form one giant party
last time thre was a real devide was 1996
From New Zealand here. We use the MMP system (Mixed Member Proportional). I find it hard to keep track of how these systems work, but I've heard that it seems to give the smaller parties a better chance to have a say in politics. We used to use the First Past the Post system until the 90's when they changed it over. As for what determines the new Prime Minister, it's whoever the current leader of the party who gets the majority of the vote happens to be.
Who picks the party leader?
NZ suffers from the lack of an upper house. In that respect, it's like Queensland; which means that there's no pushback and oversight.
@@andrewrollason4963the common problem of parliamentary system is the lack of powerful upper house to impose checks and balances.
@@faldovifendi6878 Germany has a upper house, it's called the Federal Council, and it is made up of members of the governments of the 16 states in Germany. But they can only really block things if it relates to state affairs or state finances.
They recently blocked a bill passed by the lower house which reformed unemployment benefits, but it is tradition that the Fed. Government and the states reach a compromise and pass something, usually a watered down version of the original law
@bananenmusli2769 As I said, it's not powerful. Unlike the US Senate which can block any bill for any reason, or without reason at all.
I tend to think the public should have as much say as possible (within reason, obviously every decision can’t be done through direct democracy) . But it is frustrating how so many people prioritize culture war, personality issues over the actual policies and platforms. Feels like the conservatives here in Canada often barely have a platform beyond vague notions of lower taxes yet they still get votes.
Exhaustive voting is used in the EU parliament and the Scottish parliament. The candidate who got least votes is dropped on every round until someone gets over 50%
That's just ranked choice with extra steps.
Here in brazil, we use run-offs a lot to solve the problems of plurality. even for the election of the "speaker" of the house.
As an Australian, I wanted to shout "use a preferential voting system" too many times while watching this vid
Hey JJ! I'm a long-time fan from Belgium🇧🇪. Great video!👍
About our 2 years long crisis (at 20:42 ), I want to add this: part of the reason why it took us from December 2018 until September 2020 to appoint a full-powered government, was also due a government crisis, prior to elections that came months later.
The the largest party in PM Charles Michel's coalition left the federal government in Dec 2018, because of disagreements about the UN Marrakech Migration Pact. It stripped them of a parliamentary majority and effectively nerfed Michel's government. However, he still tried to continue with a minority government. But that didn't work out... so Michel's govt. resigned. However, they stayed in place, as a de-powered federal government (meaning that they could only take care of "current affairs", "lopende zaken" as it's called in Dutch). The remaining parties preferred to sit the remaining 4 to 5 months out until the elections, instead of organising early ones.
After the May 2019 elections, that's when the arduous formation process started, lasting until September 2020. All while still having that de-powered minority government. But then with Sofie Wilmès as PM, because Michel got a new job as President of the European Council.
Fun fact about Wilmès: she was our first female prime minister.
What do you think of Leopold II aka the greatest king of Belgium?
@@night6724 Well that's quite off-topic, but to answer your question: the opposite of your description of him😉
@@natanphuatinzita8047 Why is Leopold the opposite of the best king? Who do you think is the best king of the belgians? Leopold II was the only one with real power. Albert I changed the constitution to give more power to the parliament.
Leopold II helped build Belgium’s legitimacy and prestige and was able to get the Congo Free State as a colony. Sounds great to me
@@night6724 Few things are purely negative or purely positive. The world is not that simple, and its history should not be treated as such. However (and I hope your not intentionally doing this), you cannot just ignore the human suffering that happened under his rule over the Congo Free State, not to mention the millions of local people that perished because of it. If you cause such tragedy, as someone who is personally in charge, I don't think you can be called the "greatest". Especially when you know that kings like Albert I or Baudoin/Boudewijn are more positively remembered in the Belgian collective memory.
And to answer you: Since our monarchs don't have real political power, it's hard to point at the best, so I'll go with the one who, in my opinion, meant the most for his people during his reign, and that is Albert I, who's also nicknamed the "king-soldier" (Koning-soldaat).
I'll leave it at that because it's nowhere near the point of my original comment or the topic of the video.
Good day to you 👋
@@natanphuatinzita8047 Leopold wasn’t responsible for the deaths in the congo. An independent commission was convened that reported that the reported atrocities were because of the force publique (who were african conscripts and volunteers) going against orders since in the congo it was common to collect hands as a trophy. There was never any order to cut off people’s limbs. The Belgian high command either wasn’t aware of it or began to permit it. Basically you’re upset that leopold II wasn’t more of a tyrant over the black africans. You also ignore Leopold built schools and hospitals for the natives and abolished the slave trade even going to war with arab slave raiders in the east to drive them out of the congo. In the congo most congolese admire Leopold II
Even by that logic Belgium still controlled the congo after Leopold sold it to Belgium parliament and there was more suffer afterwords which was directly ordered by Belgium and yet Albert and Baudoin did nothing so why are their hands clean? Belgium controlled the congo until the 1960s. Did they do anything to denounce the tyranny?
In Malaysia, our system is basically the same as Canada. Basically the PM candidate needs a majority of MPs in order to hold the office of PM. However, we also have a middle ground because political parties make it clear that if you vote for their party, this is who you'll get for PM. For example, Pakatan Harapan supporters are very clear that they will get Anwar as PM, Perikatan Nasional supporters will get Muhyiddin, and Barisan Nasional supporters will get Ismail Sabri (although everyone knows that Zahid, who is charged in court for corruption, is the actual candidate and Ismail Sabri is just being used as the "poster boy" so that voters won't perceive BN yo be corrupt).
Last time, our political parties win a clear majority, but this has changed in 2022 when no coalition has a majority of 112 seats to govern the country. Eventually, Anwar from Pakatan Harapan (which had a plurality of 82 seats) emerged as the PM and led a unity government of 148 seats, consisting of PH, BN and East Malaysian parties.
In this situation, the guy with the plurality got to be the PM, but things weren't as certain when the election results first came out, as there were concerns that Muhyiddin with 74 seats might actually be PM. I hope it will be a tradition in the future for the guy with the plurality to be PM
Politicians always should pay attention to the public opions. That's what define a democracy.
This video is relevant again!
Great analysis. Thanks for drawing all the contrasts between different countries systems of democracy.
Insightful video! I believe we tend to view the politics from a different country solely under the prism of our own system. A parliamentary approach just feels natural for me, as I live in Austria. I guess for a Canadian or for someone from the US, their system must be the „normal“ one.
People should think more critically about the logic of their system. Americans do this a lot, but I find Europeans are pretty complacent about their democracy.
@@JJMcCullough completely agree. But would you say the reason behind this attitude is the US educational system or the current turmoil of US politics? The last few years were quite instable in domestic Austrian politics and I feel since that we have discussed more about our constitution, the role of the president and our „system“ than let’s say 20-30 years ago.
Not sure if someone else has mentioned this already, but I think it's worth noting that the Electoral College remains controversial here because our presidents are still ultimately decided by how many electoral votes they earn and not the actual popular vote. Also relevant is that different states are allotted different numbers of electors in proportion (allegedly) to their population. Doing the math will reveal that even though the electors only ever vote in accordance with the popular vote results of their state, a candidate can actually lose the national popular vote but still win the presidency provided they get even the slightest majority in the right combination of states. This is not merely a hypothetical problem but has in fact happened a handful of times in US history.
Gaddafi was very clear on this issue in the green book. Idk why we are still struggling with these questions when he was very clear in his third universal theory
Clear about what
@@Jenkowelten Chapter 1 The Solution of the Problem of Democracy:
The Authority of the People “Parliament is a misrepresentation of the people, and parliamentary systems are a false solution to the problem of democracy. A parliament is originally founded to represent the people, but this in itself is undemocratic as democracy means the authority of the people and not an authority acting on their behalf. The mere existence of a parliament means the absence of the people. True democracy exists only through the direct participation of the people, and not through the activity of their representatives. Parliaments have been a legal barrier between the people and the exercise of authority, excluding the masses from meaningful politics and monopolizing sovereignty in their place. People are left with only a facade of democracy, manifested in long queues to cast their election ballots.”
@@nestormakhno9266 That may be true and all (and there are valid points), but Gaddafi was a dictator
@@nestormakhno9266 This is not a solution, only a critique.
So the question still stands, clear about what ?
I love direct political commentary like this, thanks for the video!
Hi JJ, great video! I found it super interesting that alot of the problems you discussed can boil down to if politicians should make judgments themselves or if they should follow what the population that elected them to do to a tee. I feel alot of that is downstream of if a nation has civil law or common law. I would love to hear your take on these two systems of law. Just a video idea, hint hint.
And he’s not our speaker anymore. So the position is now open again. Your free to Apply 😆👍🏽
14:52 FOR THE VIEWERS: To avoid confusion, the one showed in the photo from Bloomberg's news is Luigi Di Maio and not Giuseppe Conte.
6:37
What about the elections of 2000 and 2016 when the winner of the popular vote wasn't the winner of the Electoral College vote?
As a Swiss voter, I don‘t get to vote for any executive position. They are all elected by both legislative chambers assembled together. I do get to vote on controversial Policies and any constitutional change though. I would consider that a unique combination of direct and indirect democracy.
I’m a fan of representative democracy with those representatives being elected by as wide a swath of the population as is reasonably possible. I’ve been a fan of ranked choice for that reason lately. Do I trust the general population to make the best decision? I go back and forth on it. But the solution to that issue to me is better civics education, rather than voter restriction.
J.J.M. I really enjoy your cogent and effective summary of topics. I enjoy learning more about these things.
But, goodness, your accent just turns it into pure candy. Thank you very much. Please keep it up.
Kevin McCarthy speaker of the house vote was HILARIOUS it reminded me of the Suez Canal in terms of hilariously dumb things greatly affecting the world. on tumblr someone said “Nancy Pelosi saw her shadow which means 6 more weeks of no speaker of the house” which I found very funny.
How did it greatly effect the world
I still don’t understand how it’s also bad to make a slow informed decision on a house of speaker. Especially when it’s someone like McCarthey, who did a terrible job of funding and running the Republican Party in 2022.
@@NA.NA.. Suez Canal impacted the economy and delay in electing speaker of the house basically halted congress who votes on foreign policy and economic things
@@deafleppard1812 it’s not a slow informed decision when your basically saying “I will vote for any living breathing person over McCarthy,” someone voted trump for speaker ffs.
@@liftingskies8970 you need to demonstrate how the delay on the votes directly impacted said economic things, and especially foreign policy
Your musical selection under the Canadian section is hysterical
A two party system is a complete joke of a democracy.
And so is the 'winner takes all' on a state level.
The Netherlands has 17.5 million inhabitants. 13.6 are old enough to vote. We have 150 seats in parliament. If you have 90667 people nationwide voting for you: you get one seat. We mostly vote for parties. We had 41 parties attempting to gain a seat. 17 got in parliament. There is no majority party. For each decision, or, more likely, a large volume of decisions, parties have to form coalitions. We have 4 parties in a coalition now that have a majority (and can thus negotiate and push their agenda).
This creates a much more vibrant political landscape.
A two party system is a complete joke in our eyes. Winner gets it all is the opposite of democracy: its the disfranchisement of all minority political groups. It creates a two party system that in the end is a one party system with two branches. Like in the USA now and before Trump.
Then there is the fact that your political system is infested with lobbyists, that pay big money and is in bed with Big Tech, creating actual fascism according to Benito's definition (the merger of state and corporation), with propaganda, censorship, endless wars for profit, inflation, etc.
To call the USA a democracy is reaching.
k
good for you I guess.
Fellow Canadian here, I'll speak to the system in Canada as that's what I'm most familiar with:
I think overall it is very close to being "good". The whole idea that we technically don't have a parliament to pick a PM is not that important to me - I care less about the party leader and more about the actual policies to be enacted.
The big piece it's missing is some form of proportional rep or preferential voting. As seen here in BC twice in the last 10ish years and the lack of willingness from the Federal Libs, it's always seen as the right thing to do but difficult for anyone in power to do (who wants to stop winning?). As much as current governments in power hate it, provincial and federal, it will ultimately be the healthiest thing going forward. Canadians have rarely given a party popular majority in the modern era, last time being Mulroney's 1984 landslide where by popular vote he actually "only" got 50.03% (with about 2/3 of seats). Creating an environment where no party can receive a majority of seats easily could lead to healthier coalition governments in the future as seen in some European countries.
Lastly a slight rant on the Senate, either get rid of it completely or takeaway its ability to introduce & deny bills. You get to be a senator by being the best c*cksucker to the political party of your choosing AND get to serve until you're 75 (used to be for life). Yet, these people have the ability, albeit rarely, to change the course of certain bills in parliament, which is absolutely bonkers.
Canada needs proportional representation.
Like the US, we have a first past the post system. This breaks the politics in any country into dominant left and right parties. Those parties play regional games to build the big winning party tent.
Now that everyone can limit their news feed to hear only one side, there is no longer the slightest attempt to negotiate or recognize that the half of the population on the other side of center has even a single point that should be respected.
This is extremely dangerous for Canada in particular. We have a 1000 mile stretch of nearly unoccupied rock in the middle of the country. We have two cultures (the west and east, far more than English and French). We have two separate economies, resource extraction vs industrial, both for export and mostly not to each other. The money does not circulate between the two, not with only a single highway running east out of Manitoba. It makes more economic sense for each side to trade across the oceans or with the nearest US states than to try shipping over the Canadian Shield.
The politics in the two halves is just as divided as if between competing nations, with much explicit contempt. The potential for political crisis here is enormous.
Israel actually had direct elections for prime minister exactly 3 times from 1996 until 2001. It didn't last long as the prime ministers and their parties had supposedly very little actual power inside a parliament that didn't elect them nor did they have any kind of a deal for basic legislative agreements with other parties. Although there have been a few attempts to recreate that system in recent years as a suggestion to solve the political crisis JJ mentioned, it never progressed anywhere.
Israel has been so ineffective informing governments that they allowed Benjamin Netanyahu to come back as a leader of one of their parties and as I'm sure you're aware he nvestigated for corruption
In Germany it is the same as in Canada. The parties nominate a candidate for chancellor and the person is the center of the campaign, rather than political ideas. In the last election, the Green candidate led in the polls, but after she published a book which had a lot of plagiarized sections, her numbers fell and the Christian Democratic candidate then led the polls quite comfortably, until he laughed during an emotional speech by the President at a town which was hit by a flood where over 100 people died. His poll rates fell and the Social Democratic candidate got ahead, even though nobody thought a year before that the Social Democrats could win an election because they were at 15% at the beginning of the campaign and at the end they won because of personal mistakes by the other candidates and Olaf Scholz pretty much did nothing during the campaign and waited for the others to do something wrong, instead of offering better ideas. So people don't really care as much for politics as they do for personalities.
And also there is the point of "tactical voting" where people don't vote for the party they like the most, but for parties which would prevent the opposing party from forming a government by not wanting to go into a coalition with it.
I hope to see a video on the Swiss system.
I agree. It's very interesting and unique as a (semi) direct democracy
Good video but I think you kinda missed an oppurtunity here to talk about switzerlands democracy, it's basically a mixture of direct and indirect democracy without one but seven heads of government (think 7 prime ministers or presidents) that is unique in the world and if you look at the results in tearms of wealth, security, freedom, happiness etc. definitely a country and system worth looking into.
From now on when there are multiple votes to elect someone we should play Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies over it the way JJ did in this video and as the votes go longer and longer the song should get faster and faster like it does in a game of Tetris
8:28 in fact this had become highly controvertial inside the partys since non of all the candidate elected by a primary had reach the second turn of a presidential election, LR the most important party that practiced primaries had say that they doesnt want to do that anymore since their last deafeat. And for local elections, from almost all the partys, the smoke filled room method is still the only methode. Having a system of numerous party and two turn elections made the systeme of party primaries not as important even if personaly I think it remain a good option worth trying especially when we are not satisfied with our local politician that seems unremovable.
Remember that election reform we were promised in Canada? Coool
i think it’d be nice if during an election you were presented with the different parties/candidates you could vote for as well as list of different policy areas (economy, foreign policy, education etc) and you would then be able to say which party you agree with the most in each area and rate how important each area is to you so that it would be more clear which party really had the mandate of the people for different issues if a coalition government needs to be formed
I am eating ice cream and went on UA-cam to watch while eating. I chose this vid, a high compliment good sir.
JJ what do you think of Klaus Schwab and Agenda 21 and the New World Order and links to Trudeau.... no ok I don't want to interrupt your leading the sheeple.
The central problem to all of this is that in any of these systems, the options presented to the people, in my life time anyway, fall within a very narrow window of political possibilities. In countries like the US and Canada, policies which are broadly popular (such as healthcare, or legalizing of marijuana, etc.) can go decades without even symbolic gestures towards them. And people recognize that corporate influence plays a huge role in this problem (whether the candidates are voted directly or indirectly) and as a result there's mass alienation and only half to 3/4s of people bother to vote.