I am starting to question: Is the current political party system, a right mechanism for legislation formation for a nation-state?
Why do I question the same? I am not seeing any major constructive work to form policies. It's just becoming an aimless exercise to oppose the other point of view and/or there seems to be a lack of effort to come to a common ground. (Examples:US Healthcare Debate, US Deficit Ceiling Limit Debate - striking the right balance between austerity, healthcare-expenditure, unemployment, growth will need a national consensus; India Anti-Corruption Debate - strictly speaking group lead by Anna Hazare is not a political party, but the topic is so important that a national consensus would be the best way to come to a final conclusion here also.)
Let's say Party A is the governing party (elected through free and fair elections) and Party B is in the opposition. Party A is trying to bring in a new landmark bill and needs support from Party B to convert this bill into legislation. What does Party B get for supporting Party A? If the bill gets converted to law, the credit will still go to Party A and Party A will advertise about the same in the next election (with all fan-fare as politics goes). Party B stands to gain some goodie points at the best. So there is a very high probability that party B will attempt to stall the policy.
So my next question would be be, why did we come up with the party system in the first place? The idea of having different parties most likely originated from the fact that individuals have different ideologies, different perspectives. These individuals get together to form parties. These groups then should take these different ideas into consideration while forming a new legislation for governing a nation-state.
Which means that the basic premise of having different parties is getting lost in practice, due to the nature of the electoral process. Ideally, if the parties understand the larger good for the nation-state, existing system will work - but it doesn't seem to be happening in recent times.
I believe in people electing their representatives in the government, but there has to be some mechanism to put a check to the above problem. Do reply to the post, if you think I am missing something or you have a different point of view.
Government for the people, of the people and by the people.
.
Why do I question the same? I am not seeing any major constructive work to form policies. It's just becoming an aimless exercise to oppose the other point of view and/or there seems to be a lack of effort to come to a common ground. (Examples:US Healthcare Debate, US Deficit Ceiling Limit Debate - striking the right balance between austerity, healthcare-expenditure, unemployment, growth will need a national consensus; India Anti-Corruption Debate - strictly speaking group lead by Anna Hazare is not a political party, but the topic is so important that a national consensus would be the best way to come to a final conclusion here also.)
Let's say Party A is the governing party (elected through free and fair elections) and Party B is in the opposition. Party A is trying to bring in a new landmark bill and needs support from Party B to convert this bill into legislation. What does Party B get for supporting Party A? If the bill gets converted to law, the credit will still go to Party A and Party A will advertise about the same in the next election (with all fan-fare as politics goes). Party B stands to gain some goodie points at the best. So there is a very high probability that party B will attempt to stall the policy.
So my next question would be be, why did we come up with the party system in the first place? The idea of having different parties most likely originated from the fact that individuals have different ideologies, different perspectives. These individuals get together to form parties. These groups then should take these different ideas into consideration while forming a new legislation for governing a nation-state.
Which means that the basic premise of having different parties is getting lost in practice, due to the nature of the electoral process. Ideally, if the parties understand the larger good for the nation-state, existing system will work - but it doesn't seem to be happening in recent times.
I believe in people electing their representatives in the government, but there has to be some mechanism to put a check to the above problem. Do reply to the post, if you think I am missing something or you have a different point of view.
Government for the people, of the people and by the people.
.
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