It looks like the confusion surrounding proportional representation is going to be with us right up until Thursday's referendum and beyond, with Frank Furedi now echoing the argument previously used by spiked editor Brendan O’Neill that “In principle, the most democratic form of voting is some variant of proportional representation” (see The democratic case against alternative voting, spiked, 3 May 2011).
It is confusing because, if PR is a principle that Furedi adheres to, he says very little to flesh it out as a concrete alternative to the Alternative Vote (AV), which might have enabled his readers to see exactly how the current voting system could be improved. Instead, after announcing his support for the principle of PR, he goes on to highlight a number of practical weaknesses associated with it, such as its tendency to produce hung-Parliaments, or for political representatives under PR-regimes to be selected rather than elected. So where does Furedi's argument leave us? Well, if not wholly confused we are left suspecting that PR is one of those ideas which is great in theory but fails in practice – an entirely unsophisticated view that has been applied to everything from Robert Owen’s nineteenth century socialist factories to current plans for mining Helium-3 on the Moon.
It was Immanuel Kant who first confronted this view head-on in his 1793 essay “On the Common Saying: This May Be True in Theory but it does not Apply in Practice”, wherein he argued that, far from being a sophisticated understanding of a situation, the great-in-theory maxim represented nothing more than a failure of theory. "This maxim", he wrote, "so very common in our sententious, inactive times, does very great harm if applied to matters of morality". Such matters, he argued, demand more theory and better theory, not its abandonment. I do not doubt that Furedi is well aware of this, which makes it all the more frustrating that his article leaves us hanging between the apparently admirable principle of PR and its unfortunately impractical applications. Wouldn’t it have been so much better had he elaborated his principled view of PR and worked out a practical application of it that might work, thereby giving his readers something to go on, instead of all but asking us at the end of his article to vote for “the second-best system” (namely, FPTP) in the referendum?
Of course, Furedi (and O'Neill before him) did no such thing because such a thing is not possible. Proportional Representation is not great in theory because EVEN IN THEORY it requires lists of candidates from which election 'winners' can be selected, leading necessarily to backroom bargaining over the selection process. This makes PR inherently anti-democratic, and in practice much less democratic than FPTP.
It might sound strange but even the idea of proportionality has anti-democratic tendencies. Okay, one-man-one-vote is both democratic and proportional but beyond this principle the two elements part company and go their separate ways. This is because the drive for proportionality leads to an inadequate understanding of the one-man who has the one-vote. He might be black or white, young or old, rich or poor, gay or straight. He might belong to any number of categories that he himself thinks insignificant but which some statistician or sociologist considers significant. Even his preferred political party might be held against him as the decisive factor that characterises him. But it is just this sort of analysis that takes the initiative from the voter and hands it to the professionals and civil servants who frame the rules of proportionality in Parliament. In fact, under PR one could look at a general election not as a popular exercise in government of, by and for the people, but as something more like the decennial census which creates a valuable dataset around which future policies can be framed.
The only way to avoid people being side-lined and pigeon-holed like this is to allow them to vote - as they do now - for individuals under FPTP. I have said this before but I think it's worth repeating: a person can be represented politically only by another person. To preserve my autonomy in the political sphere I cannot allow myself to be represented by a set of socio-economic or demographic characteristics; I cannot even allow myself to be represented by a political party, no matter how much I may support that party. Only the process of placing trust in another gives your individuality the free-rein it needs in a democracy and provides a basis for collectivity. This relationship between a voter and his representative is the vibrating atom of political life, and it forms the basis for the chain molecules connecting the individual with the party and - ultimately - the government.
So, to anyone reading this blog prior to Thursday's referendum, go and vote NO to AV for all the reasons Furedi suggests, but knowing that FPTP is not some 'dirty little compromise' or 'the second-best system' that will have to do until public engagement picks up. Vote NO because FPTP is the only system that will allow the public to re-engage itself in politics.
It is confusing because, if PR is a principle that Furedi adheres to, he says very little to flesh it out as a concrete alternative to the Alternative Vote (AV), which might have enabled his readers to see exactly how the current voting system could be improved. Instead, after announcing his support for the principle of PR, he goes on to highlight a number of practical weaknesses associated with it, such as its tendency to produce hung-Parliaments, or for political representatives under PR-regimes to be selected rather than elected. So where does Furedi's argument leave us? Well, if not wholly confused we are left suspecting that PR is one of those ideas which is great in theory but fails in practice – an entirely unsophisticated view that has been applied to everything from Robert Owen’s nineteenth century socialist factories to current plans for mining Helium-3 on the Moon.
It was Immanuel Kant who first confronted this view head-on in his 1793 essay “On the Common Saying: This May Be True in Theory but it does not Apply in Practice”, wherein he argued that, far from being a sophisticated understanding of a situation, the great-in-theory maxim represented nothing more than a failure of theory. "This maxim", he wrote, "so very common in our sententious, inactive times, does very great harm if applied to matters of morality". Such matters, he argued, demand more theory and better theory, not its abandonment. I do not doubt that Furedi is well aware of this, which makes it all the more frustrating that his article leaves us hanging between the apparently admirable principle of PR and its unfortunately impractical applications. Wouldn’t it have been so much better had he elaborated his principled view of PR and worked out a practical application of it that might work, thereby giving his readers something to go on, instead of all but asking us at the end of his article to vote for “the second-best system” (namely, FPTP) in the referendum?
Of course, Furedi (and O'Neill before him) did no such thing because such a thing is not possible. Proportional Representation is not great in theory because EVEN IN THEORY it requires lists of candidates from which election 'winners' can be selected, leading necessarily to backroom bargaining over the selection process. This makes PR inherently anti-democratic, and in practice much less democratic than FPTP.
It might sound strange but even the idea of proportionality has anti-democratic tendencies. Okay, one-man-one-vote is both democratic and proportional but beyond this principle the two elements part company and go their separate ways. This is because the drive for proportionality leads to an inadequate understanding of the one-man who has the one-vote. He might be black or white, young or old, rich or poor, gay or straight. He might belong to any number of categories that he himself thinks insignificant but which some statistician or sociologist considers significant. Even his preferred political party might be held against him as the decisive factor that characterises him. But it is just this sort of analysis that takes the initiative from the voter and hands it to the professionals and civil servants who frame the rules of proportionality in Parliament. In fact, under PR one could look at a general election not as a popular exercise in government of, by and for the people, but as something more like the decennial census which creates a valuable dataset around which future policies can be framed.
The only way to avoid people being side-lined and pigeon-holed like this is to allow them to vote - as they do now - for individuals under FPTP. I have said this before but I think it's worth repeating: a person can be represented politically only by another person. To preserve my autonomy in the political sphere I cannot allow myself to be represented by a set of socio-economic or demographic characteristics; I cannot even allow myself to be represented by a political party, no matter how much I may support that party. Only the process of placing trust in another gives your individuality the free-rein it needs in a democracy and provides a basis for collectivity. This relationship between a voter and his representative is the vibrating atom of political life, and it forms the basis for the chain molecules connecting the individual with the party and - ultimately - the government.
So, to anyone reading this blog prior to Thursday's referendum, go and vote NO to AV for all the reasons Furedi suggests, but knowing that FPTP is not some 'dirty little compromise' or 'the second-best system' that will have to do until public engagement picks up. Vote NO because FPTP is the only system that will allow the public to re-engage itself in politics.
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