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Barry w

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Should countries abolish the two party political system ?

The reasoning for my argument is that with a two party system political system, is that politics has become a battle for power or to maintain that power, rather than its initial purpose which is to represent the people, act as a voice for the people and do what is best for the people
I get the fact that people have different ideology but in all honesty all ideas basically result in that group of people having maximum gain, minimum loss.
in the end i just think that government should stop focusing on the balance for power but rather focus on what is best for the people.

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Topics: american politics politics
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    Fran Ontanaya 100+

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    TED TranslatorLanguage Coordinator
    Oct 5 2012: A compromise deal would be to let citizens to override their representation vote in the elections when they want to exercise a direct vote for a policy. Both technology and politic science should be mature enough by now to accomodate people willing to take active part in politics, without going through the corporative, corruptible ladder of a political party.

    We still base the need for a non direct democracy in the idea that the population will often make wrong decisions for particular issues... and this notion comes from an era in which the main source of information was the occasional newspaper. The current world is so different that that notion should be under review.

    • John Smith 30+

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      Oct 5 2012: Representative democracy is not obsolete, if only because most citizens don't have time to study issues in full detail and because compromises have to be made.
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        Fran Ontanaya 100+

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        TED TranslatorLanguage Coordinator
        Oct 5 2012: Of course, but my claim that it isn't sufficient anymore if we want to keep making progress as a civilization. Planes haven't made cars obsolete because there's plenty of places that are too local or too specific and you have to drive to them on your own. It's logical to delegate on representatives most of the time, what isn't logical is that citizens can't quite override their representatives once chosen. Their sovereignity is for all practical means suspended after the election. A system in which national democracy is exercised once every 1460 days is democratic only 0.07% of the time...
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          Rick Ryan 10+

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          Oct 6 2012: Your assumption depends on your interpretation of what "Representation" means.

          In the U.S., a voter doesn't grant their vote so the representative (politician) can only make the decisions the voter WANTS them to make. The representative is granted the right after being elected to make decisions FOR the voter...decisions needed to keep the country safe from foreign destruction, economically functional and basically solvant, and "running" on a day-to-day basis.

          Polling the entire population to vote every time a decision needed to be made would not be efficient, nor even possible in many cases. The time factor alone required for some decision making (for instance...a "crisis" decision needing a relatively immediate response) would prevent it from working.

          And in any case, politicians tell the people what the people want to hear during a campaign. They will promise to "do this" or "do that" if elected, knowing full well they won't be able to do it. But if that's the only way they can get the vote, that's what they have to tell the people. The LAST thing any educated politician would want, for the safety and security of the country, would be letting the citizens who voted for them make the decisions.

        • John Smith 30+

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          Oct 6 2012: I agree with Rick Ryan, but I want to add that most politicians are not that highly educated (a law or politics degree won't help you when you have to decide on funding for NASA or the Navy or on economic policy) or very knowledgeable, but most citizens aren't either, so that's still not argument for direct democracy.

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