I don't know how good the open list system is working in Denmark. In Italy a experiment showed that only 3% of the electors use their right to change the candidates, making it useless.
A majority system where you can choose directly your MP would be way better to achieve representation. Why voting a list? Why not elect one representative for an area of about 100k citizen?
That way you do know who is your representative, in the list system (even in the open list) who is your representative? All of them?
> Then I'm not sure what you mean. That you don't like standard representational democracy, whereby voters grant power to politicians for a limited timeframe but cannot control directly what they do during this time?
I'm going to focus on this one. Most european so-called democracies lack representation of the elector, and we can thank the proportional list system for this.
This lack of representation, in combination with the imperative mandate to the party instead of to the electors in Spain causes that we have, lets say, 150 legislators from party X, 75 from party Y, and 30 from party Z. The leader of the X party is going to be PM, which means it's going to execute the law. Law that he is going to decide(his legislators that he did put on the list).
In the spanish system we can get rid of the
Parliament and the system wouldn't be affected, I'll prove it to you.
When the leader of party X votes Yes to one proposal, all of the X representatives vote always in the same direction. The same happens with the opposition. What this means is that we can get rid of all the legislators apart from the leader of X, Y and Z. The vote of X leader would value 150, vote of leader Y 75 and so on, and both us and the system wouldn't notice.
We don't need almost 500 representatives of their respectives leaders because their leaders are already present. There is no need to represent someone who is present, right?
France doesn't have a full separation of powers since the president's executive needs the OK from the legislative power.
The Montesquieu proposal is the best mechanism that we have to avoid institutional corruption. If the power is held only by one group (legislators) corruption is inevitable.
If you only care about the output then Plato was right and the best system would be an aristocracy that cares and chooses the best for the country.
Honestly, I don't care how you feel. The Constitutional Court of Bonn (Germany) states that there is no representation in proportional list system. (I'll look for the quote).
> What's not democratic is first-past-the-post systems, where if in my city 30% of the people vote for candidate A, 25% for B, 25% for C and 20% for D, only 30% of the people get a representative and the rest of the votes go directly to the trash bin.
This doesn't happen in a two-round majority system.
> Representativeness: not possible in Spain, Italy, Germany, Greece, Portugal among others, since they use the proportional list system.
> I'm not quite sure what you mean here. Are you talking about undue importance given to small parties in such systems?
No. The proportional list system prevents representativeness. The people whose name is on the list represent the one that put them on it. They do not represent the electors.
> Separation of powers: not happening in Spain. The most voted political party in the legislative elections forms government.
> That's not how separation of power works...
Exactly. I was explaining what happens in Spain.
> Imperative mandate: Sieyes abolished it during the French Revolution and it still to be restored in all Europe. The elected candidates in the legislative elections should remain loyal to their promises.
> I'm also not sure what you mean by "imperative mandate". As for promises... well, there are promises and there is political expediency.
The electors should have a contract with their representative and if they are not loyal to that contract they can be ceased.
> Different elections: for executive and legislative (like in France)
> I'm stopping you right here. It makes very little difference in practice, since the elections for the lower chamber happen right after the presidential elections. I also don't see how it's a benefit in general. It suffers from the idiotic, anti-democratic first-past-the-post system. I'd rather have a token President and a PM coming from a coalition instead.
It makes sense if you think about the different characteristics that you look for in a legislator in contrast to the values required to be a president. A legislator should be loyal to their representatives (a part) whereas what you are looking in a governor is intelligence to guide the Nation (all). It is nonsense to think that a good legislator could be a good PM (UK). Loyalty vs intelligence, that's why it should be different elections.
There is no political Left in Europe. Podemos is not a leftist party, since no leftist party or democratic conservative party would ever get paid by the State and be part of it (like the Nazi party). It's a contradiction in terms and something that simply cannot be.
Most of the people don't know the distinction between formal democracy and real(social) democracy and this causes great confusion.
Formal democracy is not about the content of laws (eg: laws to protect Human Rights), but about the rules that define the democratic game, rules that ensure that the People is in charge at all times (constitutional liberty). Real democracy is about the content and this explains why it is prone to have an ideological battle.
The most important requirements are:
1.- Representativeness: not possible in Spain, Italy, Germany, Greece, Portugal among others, since they use the proportional list system.
2.- Separation of powers: not happening in Spain. The most voted political party in the legislative elections forms government.
3.- Imperative mandate: Sieyes abolished it during the French Revolution and it still to be restored in all Europe.
The elected candidates in the legislative elections should remain loyal to their promises.
4.- Different elections: for executive and legislative (like in France)
Podemos doesn't care about any of these things as far as I concern.
In my modest view there is no possible reform, the problem is not the people in charge (Podemos guys seem honest), but the actual political system that doesn't fulfill any of the requirements. We haven't conquered our Liberty yet.