---------------------------------------------------

Dear Amadeo,

áááááááááááááááááááá Thanks for your letter. On the whole I agree

with the argument Popper makes which is why I would not favour

changing the electoral system for elections to Westminster. However,

I would make these points.

(a) at a local level the case for some form of PR is strong to

overwhelming - at least here in Britain. That is because the social

composition of local government areas means that most of them are de

facto one party states and there is no realistic prospect of being

able to throw out the ruling party by voting eg here in manchester

the local council is 14 Liberal Democrats to 96 Labour and it has

been sixty years since a party other than the Labour party was in

power. Similar situations until recently in many parts of the U.S. eg

in the "solid south".

(b) the points Popper makes about the effects of PR are correct. The

worst features of most actually existing forms of PR are the enormous

power they give to party apparatchiks who control the lists, and the

way (particularly in the extreme versions such as the Israeli one)

that they institutionalise the power of single issue pressure groups.

However there are some forms of PR which do not have these defects

(although they still have others). In particular I would point to the

system used in the Irish Republic of Single transferrable vote in

multi member constituencies. Here you have geographical

constituencies which elect between 3 and 6 MPs. Each voter lists his

chosen candidates in order 1 - 3 or 1 - 6 or whatever. First

preferences are counted first then the lowest candidate's second

preferences are redistributed and so on. This system greatly

strengthens the power of voters against parties because the voter can

chose between different candidates from the same party. It also leads

to a system with a small number of parties (between 3 and 5) with two

large ones and means that elections do usually have decisive results

with one side or another winning or losing. However, as I indicated

in my answer, there is the additional factor of national culture.

Some countries are always going to have a large number of parties and

some fewer because of the local political culture. However, the

voting system will tend to accentuate or retard this. It was good to

meet you, keep in touch I hope I'll see you in Aix or some other

time.

Steve Davies