Elections in various countries

[MacAnDàil]

So what's the point? Is it one of those just constructing for the sake of constructing projects?

[Moose-tache]

So what's the point? Is it one of those just constructing for the sake of constructing projects?

I guess it's in case some audacious fool wants to travel between Hamburg and Copenhagen?

In other election news, the Republic of Palau had their presidential election on November 3, between the president's current vice president, and his American brother-in-law. They live streamed themselves counting the votes. Palau is mostly known these days for being one of only 10 countries to never have a Covid-19 case.

[Raphael]

I guess it's in case some audacious fool wants to travel between Hamburg and Copenhagen?

More specifically, it's meant to shorten the travel time between these cities, and more generally, between Germany and Scandinavia, and even more generally, between Scandinavia and Western Europe.

[MacAnDàil]

And it would shorten the time by how much? For which cost?

[Raphael]

Want to take some time out from the election drama in the US? How about reading a brief historical primer on German religious conservatism?

OK, I hope that I'm not violating any written or unwritten rules by posting this. It is not about any particular election - it's more a kind of historical background primer to provide context for some aspects of German politics. It's basically an addendum to the introduction to German politics that I posted on the old board about three years ago and that you can see, in a slightly updated version, here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dat ... sp=sharing

So here it goes...

CATHOLICS, PROTESTANTS, AND GERMAN CONSERVATISM

If I write a text like this, I should probably start by describing the limits of my own perspective, and perhaps my own biases, too. So, I've spent pretty much my entire life so far in parts of Germany that were historically mostly protestant and are now mostly secularized. I can describe how things look like in places like that from my own experience. But I've only been in historically Catholic parts of the country for fairly short visits so far, so when it comes to things like how much influence the Catholic Church still has in which places, I have to go by media reports, stuff I can see on the internet, and guesswork. I was raised with a religious outlook somewhere between Protestantism and secularism, and when I was growing up, for a while I thought of Catholics as some kind of "strange people in different parts of the country who have weird restrictions when it comes to sex", that is, more or less the way culturally liberal people from the more culturally liberal parts of the USA might see Christian fundamentalists. Later, of course, I learned that fundamentalist protestants routinely make the Vatican look like a bastion of cultural moderation, but some small parts of my brain might still have my original outlook.

That said, let's go back to the beginnings.

Germany was, of course, one of the countries (though not the only one) where the Reformation started. This happened in the 16th century, a few centuries before the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire. In the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, that Empire effectively consisted of a lot of small-to-medium-sized states ruled by nobles of various ranks, including some ruled by Catholic bishops, as well a number of Imperial Free Cities and some other political entities. Once the Reformation had started, in some places, the local rulers became protestants, and in others, they didn't. After some attempts by the Catholic Emperor and his allies to either destroy or persuade the "heretics" had failed, political leaders eventually agreed on a compromise that was later summed up as

"Cuius regio, eius religio",

a Latin phrase that means something like "Whoever has the region shall have the religion". In other worlds, local rulers were authorized to decide which Christian denomination the Christians among their subjects were supposed to follow.

To give you some idea of what this meant in practice, here, courtesy of Wikipedia, is a map of the Holy Roman Empire in 1789, immediately before the start of the French Revolution:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HRR_1789.png

Here's the same map partially translated into English:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_ ... 789_en.png

In each of the small patches of color, the local authorities might have had a different choice of Christian denomination than in the next small patch of color. And the Christians among their subjects usually obeyed them; if someone felt really strongly about wanting to follow a particular denomination, often, the nearest place that followed that denomination wasn't that far away. People who preferred smaller protestant denominations that didn't have any rulers among their followers sometimes went to Pennsylvania. Generally speaking, you were more likely to be in a protestant patch of color in the more northern parts of the country, and more likely to be in a Catholic patch of color in the more southern parts of the country, but that's just a general tendency that didn't necessarily apply everywhere all the time.

The Thirty Years War of 1618-1648 is usually described as a war between Catholics and protestants, and to some extent, it was - but only to some extent. It started out that way, but as a result of various complicated political intrigues, all kinds of political and military leaders changed sides in the war without changing their religion, so it eventually ended up as a war with both Catholics and protestants on both sides. And it shouldn't be forgotten that France intervened in the war on what was theoretically the protestant side at a time when the French government was effectively led by Cardinal Richelieu. The best way to describe the two sides in the Thirty Years War is probably "The Holy Roman Emperor and whoever was, at each moment, allied with the Holy Roman Emperor vs. whoever was, at each moment, at war with the Holy Roman Emperor".

The Holy Roman Empire was finally dismantled in the Napoleonic Wars. After the end of those wars, in 1815, the surviving German states founded the German Confederation, whose constitution, among other things, guaranteed equal rights for Christians of different denominations. Another result of the Napoleonic Wars was that the protestant Kingdom of Prussia got a number of new, often historically Catholic territories along the Rhine.

In terms of religion, much of the 19th century in Germany was taken up by conflicts between the authorities of the Kingdom of Prussia and the Catholic hierarchy, as well as many of the observant Catholic laypeople, within Prussia. There had already been various struggles along those lines earlier in the century, but things really got to a boil after the founding of the German Empire in 1871. New Chancellor Otto von Bismarck waged the "Kulturkampf", or "culture struggle", against the Catholic Church over issues like civil marriage, state subsidies of Catholic institutions, and religious instruction in schools. After a while, things started to calm down. Note that this was a conflict between two groups of staunch cultural conservatives: Prussian monarchists and Catholic clericalists. The latter group had founded the Zentrum, or Center Party, which, over the course of the late 19th and early 20th century, gradually grew into one of the largest parties in Germany. Since that time, civil marriage has been the only legally valid marriage in Germany. You can, of course, have whatever religious ceremonies you want to sanctify your marriage, but only the civil ceremony matters from a legal perspective.

In 1918, World War 1 ended, and Germany became a republic. The new Weimar Constitution officially disestablished all churches that had previously been established churches in any parts of the country, but it also allowed all kinds of cooperation between the governing authorities and major churches that liberals from the USA would see as blatant violations of the separation of church and state. The Center Party was now one of the most powerful parties; it was usually part of the governing coalition, and supplied a number of chancellors. This being the 1920s, social mores became less conservative. In some major cities in the traditionally protestant parts of the country, most people were at most nominally protestant by now.

Then, in 1933, the Nazis took over. The relationship between the Nazis and the major German churches during the years of Nazi rule has been the subject of an enormous number of books, documentaries, exhibits, monographs, papers, dissertations, essays, articles, and stage plays. As a general rule, you probably shouldn't believe anything you read or hear on that matter without getting yourself a second opinion, because people who bother to write or talk a lot about it usually have an axe to grind. At first, many religious conservatives welcomed the Nazis, and the Center Party, like other conservative parties, notoriously voted for Hitler's Enabling Act. Nevertheless, the long-term plan of the Nazis was to destroy Christianity as a factor in German society and culture. But since, at the time, almost everyone in Germany who wasn't Jewish was at least theoretically Christian, they couldn't simply round up all the Christians and murder them. Instead, they started campaigns of anti-Christian propaganda, harassed, persecuted, and murdered many individual clerics, and promoted various non-Christian world-views. If they had won World War 2, those campaigns would, to no doubt, have been intensified, but, well, they lost.

After the war, from 1945 onwards, what was left of Germany was divided into East and West, each side, at first, controlled by the respective occupying power. One of the many effects of this was that the new West Germany consisted mostly of places that had historically been. and mostly still were, Catholic. West German conservatives now decided that it would be smarter not to restore the multitude of conservative parties that had existed before 1933, but to mostly limit themselves to two main parties: the Christian Social Union, or CSU, in Bavaria, and the Christian Democratic Union, or CDU, everywhere else. Ok, some people tried to revive the old pre-1933 conservative parties, but those attempts generally went nowhere.

The new CDU, unlike the old Center Party, was officially non-denominational; it was mostly dominated by Catholics, but protestants had a kind of "protected minority" status. After a long time in which they had often been at odds with the state, Catholic conservatives now controlled the state, at least in the West, at least at the federal level. The 1950s were generally seen as a very culturally conservative time. From the 1960s onwards, social and cultural developments had the effect that gradually - very, very gradually - the country became culturally less conservative, at least in matters involving sex among straight people. The increasing secularization of major cities in what had, historically, been the protestant parts of the country, combined with a kind of mellowing of the main organized protestant church, the EKD, had the effect that the Catholic Church came to be seen more and more as the main stronghold of cultural conservatism in the country, while Protestantism came to be perceived as at least relatively less conservative. (For the record, while there are, these days, some US-style evangelicals in Germany, there aren't many of them, and they usually don't get noticed much.)

Over in the East, the churches had all kinds of ways of handling their situation under a political system that opposed religion in general but was usually cautious about handling it. There was accommodation, there was active opposition, and there was everything in between. The ruling powers liked the appearance of having several parties, and therefore allowed so-called "block parties" to exist, whose officeholders basically always voted the same way as the ruling party. The largest of these block parties was the Eastern CDU. However, the East generally became more and more secular during the years of partition.

When Germany was reunited, it was a largely secular country in the cities - less so in the countryside - in which cultural conservatives were mostly centered on the Catholic Church, but in which political conservatives kept winning elections for a while. Then, in 1998, Helmut Kohl, who had been Chancellor of West Germany since 1982 and of the reunited Germany since 1990, lost his bid for re-election, and the CDU went into opposition. Wolfgang Schäuble, who had been Kohl's heir apparent for a while, became party leader. Former cabinet member Angela Merkel, who, as a relatively young (at the time and by the standards of politics) woman from the East benefited from three different quotas, became secretary-general of the party, which means that she was in charge of internal party administrative affairs of which the old men leading the party probably thought that they could be safely left to her.

Then, the great CDU party donations scandal of the late 1990s hit. A system of illegal donations to the party and slush funds was uncovered, which dated back decades. Almost everyone of any importance in the CDU leadership turned out to be involved, and a lot of careers were ended or at least temporarily suspended. Schäuble ended up in the wilderness for a while. Of the people with main positions in the party leadership, the only who survived relatively unharmed was Merkel, probably because she hadn't been seen as important enough to be told about what was going on. So she became party leader by default.

That didn't mean that the party she led now really liked, respected, or accepted her. She was from the East; she was a protestant pastor's daughter who, herself, didn't appear to be particularly religious; she was fairly bland as a person; and she was a woman. None of those things were what national-level CDU leaders had traditionally been expected to be. So while she was party chairperson, the party was not quite ready to nominate her for Chancellor yet. Instead, for the 2002 election, they turned to the leader of the CSU, Bavarian Premier Edmund Stoiber. He almost won. Almost. His loss meant that the CDU had run out of potential Chancellors other than Merkel, so they finally nominated her for the 2005 election, and she won that one.

Since then, the CDU had to put up with her. She's not as culturally liberal as some might think - when Germany legalized same-sex marriage in 2017, she voted against the bill - but the more culturally conservative parts of her party were probably never that happy with her. When the hard-right AfD rose to prominence in the 2010s, it attracted some fervent religious conservatives. Merkel announced that she plans to retire after the 2021 election, and the struggle to succeed her is still going on. It's not at all clear how much of a religious conservative the next CDU leader, or the next Chancellor, will be.

[Ares Land]

Oh, thanks! I wasn't really aware of how much religion could be a factor in German politics.

I had assumed the reason the CSU isn't part of the CDU was because of religious differences... So that's not really the case?

Merkel was cast as some kind of Thatcher-lite in French media back in 2005, as I recall, and she's still not viewed very positively (the French left can be unpleasantly xenophobic at times. For instance, the Germans are often portrayed as penny-scrounging, arrogant Prussians.)
But honestly, even though I'm not a conservative myself, I always found her to be an extremely competent ruler.

[Raphael]

Oh, thanks! I wasn't really aware of how much religion could be a factor in German politics.

Oh, not really that much at the national level anymore these days; note that my post is mostly a historical overview. But it probably still plays a substantial role in many rural areas.

I had assumed the reason the CSU isn't part of the CDU was because of religious differences... So that's not really the case?

No, not really. Both parties have traditionally been mostly Catholic, though the CSU more so than the CDU.

Merkel was cast as some kind of Thatcher-lite in French media back in 2005, as I recall, and she's still not viewed very positively

Oh, from a Southern European perspective, she's certainly been very Thatcher-ish. But she's usually only decisive if she's got the impression that a solid majority of the German of the German establishment agrees with her - otherwise, she usually tries to split the difference somehow. Besides, Thatcher seems to have had a kind of grim - ok, charisma is the wrong word, but a certain, well, ability to impress with determination. Merkel, less so. Thatcher's speeches could apparently make people burn with rage if they disagreed with her and inspire them if they agreed with her; Merkel's speeches mostly put people to sleep.

(the French left can be unpleasantly xenophobic at times. For instance, the Germans are often portrayed as penny-scrounging, arrogant Prussians.)

I'll grant that there's some truth to the penny-scrounging thing, but being called arrogant by people from La Grande Nation is a bit rich! That said, it is annoying how many Germans, both inside and outside the political establishment, speak of "Europe" when they mean "Germany + France". Then again, that's at least two countries, unlike the French habit of saying "Europe" and meaning "France".

But honestly, even though I'm not a conservative myself, I always found her to be an extremely competent ruler.

Oh, she's certainly knowledgeable - she was, after all, a research scientist in her pre-politics life.

[bradrn]

Want to take some time out from the election drama in the US?

Yes, I do as well! And as it happens, I’ve actually been thinking along similar lines to you — the recent gruelling election has gotten me thinking about the political system in my own country of Australia. So I’d quite like to use this as an excuse to explain it to y’all, to show you what a really insane system of government looks like.

Firstly, let me explain the party system, this being where the fun starts. I’d say that Australia is best described as having a ‘two-party system with three parties’ (however little sense that may make). The aforementioned parties being: the Liberals, who used to represent the middle class, and now represent the rich; the Nationals, who used to represent the farmers, and now represent the ultra-conservatives; and Labor, who used to represent the workers, and now represent god-knows-who (though the workers are still in there somewhere, as are the leftists). The ‘two-party’ bit comes from the fact that the Liberals and Nationals invariably govern as a coalition (referred to, naturally enough, as the ‘Coalition’), as a result of which the Liberals have been slowly dragged rightwards over the years.

(I should take this moment to clarify one potentially confusing point. The Liberal party isn’t actually liberal — at the moment, it’s conservative. If you want to refer to liberalism in Australia, you have to call it ‘small-l liberalism’, as opposed to the ‘big-L Liberals’, a.k.a. conservatives. Note however that Australian politics is shifted somewhat leftwards as compared to, say, American politics, so what is conservative in Australia is somewhat liberal in the US, which of course means that the Liberal party — the conservative party in Australian politics — would still be considered fairly liberal in the US.)

(No, I don’t have any idea whatsoever why outsiders might find our politics confusing. Why do you ask?)

Aside from those big three parties, we also have the usual assortment of smaller parties, tiny parties, independents and sundry hangers-on. The most important of these is the Greens, a party devoted to typical leftist policies such as environmentalism, renewables, free university, reducing corruption, social justice etc. (They also seem to support that other cause so beloved of the left, namely the destruction of Israel, thus doing a fantastic job of ensuring that I and many other Jews will never, ever vote for them, no matter how much we otherwise want to.) On the other side of the ideological spectrum is One Nation, devoted to typical rightist policies such as nationalism, immigration restriction, and how much we should all loathe the evil minority of the day (Asians when the party was founded, Muslims today). Its current leader in my own state of New South Wales is Mark Latham; for a sample of his views, see this amusing judgment against him. The independents are few, including such notables as Fraser Anning, expelled from One Nation the day he was sworn in, this being the same day he advocated a ‘final solution to the immigration problem’. And I would of course be remiss in not mentioning Clive Palmer, our very own mini-Trump (slogan: ‘Make Australia Great Again’; also known for his many sort-of-failed businesses and litigation).

Of course, politicians are useless without somewhere to put them (mind you, they seem pretty useless anyway). Australia has two such places: the House of Representatives (the lower house) and the Senate (the upper house). The House of Representative consists of ~150 Members of Parliament (at the moment), each representing a certain region and elected by that region. (Well, technically those regions should be called ‘divisions’, or ‘electorates’ at the state level, except for when they’re ‘seats’…) These are regularly redrawn to ensure that each one has around about the same number of people in it; coupled with Australia’s somewhat skewed population distribution, this has ensured that the largest division (geographically) is ~50,000× larger than the smallest one. The Senate has a different composition, containing an equal number of Senators from each state. (That’s each state, not each territory; the Northern Territory is our third-largest subdivision, yet it only gets two senators since it’s a territory rather than a state. No, don’t ask me why — though its exceedingly low population may have something to do with it.) Voting for the Senate is done by voting for the party you want to represent your state (except for when you don’t do that and vote directly for individual politicians instead); the votes are then tallied, and each party gets a proportion of their states’ seats. My understanding of what the Houses actually do is fairly shaky, but my understanding is that bills get bounced between the House of Representatives and the Senate, accumulating amendments (and arguments) as it goes, until everyone involved eventually just gives up and passes the bill.

…nope, actually, consulting Wikipedia, that is not what happens! Apparently the bill just goes once from the House of Representatives to the Senate and then back again; if they still disagree, the Governor-General may start the whole thing from scratch again by dissolving both Houses and calling a full election (a ‘double dissolution’). Sounds about right for Australia.

Then you have the executive branch, made up the Prime Minister (PM) and his Cabinet. The election of the PM (mostly equivalent in position to the President of the US) is one of the biggest differences between Australian and American politics, so I should go into some detail on this point. Unlike in the US, the PM of Australia is quite simply the leader of the party or coalition which has a majority in the House of Representatives. This system ensures, at least in theory, that the PM is somewhat sane and reflective of their party’s values. It also allows for quite a lot of flexibility, since the party can quite easily get rid of their leader and vote for a new one — this being a key reason why we have gone through 5 PMs in 10 years. Parties might get rid of their PMs for a variety of reasons. For instance, if memory serves correctly, Tony Abbott was removed for being too anti-renewables; he was replaced by Malcolm Turnbull, who was subsequently removed for being too pro-renewables. He was succeeded by our current PM, Scott Morrison, who has avoided this sad fate by studiously remaining completely neutral on any policy of importance during his re-election campaign. (Let’s ignore that one time when he brandished a lump of coal in Parliament, screaming ‘This is coal! Don’t be afraid! It won’t hurt you!’)

Of course, the PM isn’t the leader of Australia; that role falls to Her Majesty Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the Seas Queen, Defender of the Faith (no matter how wrong republicans may think this is), assisted in this role by the Governor-General of Australia. The Governor-General has quite a lot of power — for instance, he can fire the PM. This has been done exactly once in Australian history, with the dismissal of Gough Whitlam in 1975; said republicans have tended to take this as a sure example of the Queen meddling in Australian politics. (There was quite the controversy about this event a couple of months back, when some correspondence between the Queen and the Governor-General at the time was finally unsealed; republicans seized on the one or two sentences which seemed like a sure-fire sign of Queenly meddling, whereas monarchists have tended to carefully ignore those sentences and point out that everything else in the correspondence is perfectly innocent.)

Finally, let’s see an example of how this system works in practise. Let’s say you’ve got some crisis — say, record-breaking bushfires are rapidly burning everything in their path down the whole east coast. The federal government immediately springs into action, doing what they do best: flailing about ineffectually and getting absolutely nowhere in the process. (Notably, our PM took himself on a Christmas holiday to Hawaiʻi, presumably thinking that his presence was unneeded.) Eventually, the various states involved start to realise that no federal help is coming, and start to act themselves: deploying firefighters, evacuating residents etc. The people of Australia similarly start to help out and donate to charity — which promptly gets tangled up in the thickets of Australian bureaucracy, ensuring that the money will go to exactly the people who don’t need it. Similarly, the firefighters do an excellent job at containing the fires, even while realising that they have nearly have enough of the equipment that they need, said required equipment having also been tangled up in our bureaucracy. By this point, the federal government has realised they aren’t doing enough, and finally starts to do some productive work, viz., figuring out which party should get the blame. (Not them, of course! Everyone needs to know it’s the other party’s fault!) Eventually, the fires get put out by the rain, which by this point has become more than heavy enough to cause floods in exactly the same places which just got burnt to the ground. You gotta love this country.


Now some readers might get the impression that I’ve been somewhat negative about my country’s political system. So let me explain the one thing which counterbalances all those problems: we have compulsory voting! Let me explain how this helps. In the US, campaigning seems to revolve around getting the base excited enough for them to bother going out and voting. As the US has recently discovered, an excellent way to do this is through radicalism, a sure-fire way to get people motivated enough to wait through 8-hour queues to vote (so I hear). It also allows for exciting tactics such as voter suppression: there’s all sorts of interesting ways to convince people not to vote when that’s available as an option. By contrast, neither strategy works in Australia: radicalism may help you in the one or two seats where the people like that sort of thing, but it will mostly disgust the average voter — they have to vote for someone, and it sure ain’t gonna be that strange radical! Voter suppression doesn’t work either, in a country where it’s common knowledge that they fine you if you don’t vote. Instead, all the effort goes towards making voting as quick and easy as possible. (For instance, a well-known Australian tradition is the so-called ‘democracy sausage’: a sausage sizzle held by the local school as you wait to vote.) I can only assume that this is the sole reason why our politics hasn’t gone completely insane like all the other countries… yet.

[Raphael]

Want to take some time out from the election drama in the US?

Yes, I do as well! And as it happens, I’ve actually been thinking along similar lines to you — the recent gruelling election has gotten me thinking about the political system in my own country of Australia.

Oh, you're Australian? *slaps forehead* That explains everything! For some reason, based on your name and your apparent time zone, I had somehow assumed that you were an American living in East Asia.

So I’d quite like to use this as an excuse to explain it to y’all, to show you what a really insane system of government looks like.

Not sure about that - apart from the "three parties in a two-party system"-thing, and the compulsory voting thing, it sounds like a pretty standard combination of federalism with a parliamentary system to me.

(I should take this moment to clarify one potentially confusing point. The Liberal party isn’t actually liberal — at the moment, it’s conservative. If you want to refer to liberalism in Australia, you have to call it ‘small-l liberalism’, as opposed to the ‘big-L Liberals’, a.k.a. conservatives. Note however that Australian politics is shifted somewhat leftwards as compared to, say, American politics, so what is conservative in Australia is somewhat liberal in the US, which of course means that the Liberal party — the conservative party in Australian politics — would still be considered fairly liberal in the US.)

(No, I don’t have any idea whatsoever why outsiders might find our politics confusing. Why do you ask?)

Oh, in Germany, like much of continental Europe, the word "liberal" is still mostly associated with supporting free-market policies, so it's somewhat common to describe people, groups, or organizations as "liberal-conservative", a term that probably makes about as much sense as calling someone a "right-wing leftist" to a person from, say, the USA. I once saw a right-wing German blogger describe George W. Bush as "a liberal-conservative president", which that blogger meant as praise; I guess Bush himself would be highly offended if he would hear of someone calling him any kind of "liberal".

The Governor-General has quite a lot of power — for instance, he can fire the PM. This has been done exactly once in Australian history, with the dismissal of Gough Whitlam in 1975; said republicans have tended to take this as a sure example of the Queen meddling in Australian politics. (There was quite the controversy about this event a couple of months back, when some correspondence between the Queen and the Governor-General at the time was finally unsealed; republicans seized on the one or two sentences which seemed like a sure-fire sign of Queenly meddling, whereas monarchists have tended to carefully ignore those sentences and point out that everything else in the correspondence is perfectly innocent.)

Aren't there some rumors of CIA involvement, too?

Finally, let’s see an example of how this system works in practise. Let’s say you’ve got some crisis — say, record-breaking bushfires are rapidly burning everything in their path down the whole east coast. The federal government immediately springs into action, doing what they do best: flailing about ineffectually and getting absolutely nowhere in the process. (Notably, our PM took himself on a Christmas holiday to Hawaiʻi, presumably thinking that his presence was unneeded.) Eventually, the various states involved start to realise that no federal help is coming, and start to act themselves: deploying firefighters, evacuating residents etc. The people of Australia similarly start to help out and donate to charity — which promptly gets tangled up in the thickets of Australian bureaucracy, ensuring that the money will go to exactly the people who don’t need it. Similarly, the firefighters do an excellent job at containing the fires, even while realising that they have nearly have enough of the equipment that they need, said required equipment having also been tangled up in our bureaucracy. By this point, the federal government has realised they aren’t doing enough, and finally starts to do some productive work, viz., figuring out which party should get the blame. (Not them, of course! Everyone needs to know it’s the other party’s fault!) Eventually, the fires get put out by the rain, which by this point has become more than heavy enough to cause floods in exactly the same places which just got burnt to the ground. You gotta love this country.

Interesting - in Germany, natural disasters (usually floods and the occasional severe storm) are generally seen as opportunities for politicians to show off their leadership skills. For instance, it is generally believed that Gerhard Schröder won the 2002 election, which everyone had predicted he would lose, because the 2002 Central European river floods gave him the opportunity to appear decisive. A while before that, at a time when future West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt was a local politician few people had heard of, his career got a major boost when he was one of the people in charge of handling the 1962 North Sea Flood.

Now some readers might get the impression that I’ve been somewhat negative about my country’s political system. So let me explain the one thing which counterbalances all those problems: we have compulsory voting! Let me explain how this helps. In the US, campaigning seems to revolve around getting the base excited enough for them to bother going out and voting. As the US has recently discovered, an excellent way to do this is through radicalism, a sure-fire way to get people motivated enough to wait through 8-hour queues to vote (so I hear). It also allows for exciting tactics such as voter suppression: there’s all sorts of interesting ways to convince people not to vote when that’s available as an option. By contrast, neither strategy works in Australia: radicalism may help you in the one or two seats where the people like that sort of thing, but it will mostly disgust the average voter — they have to vote for someone, and it sure ain’t gonna be that strange radical! Voter suppression doesn’t work either, in a country where it’s common knowledge that they fine you if you don’t vote. Instead, all the effort goes towards making voting as quick and easy as possible. (For instance, a well-known Australian tradition is the so-called ‘democracy sausage’: a sausage sizzle held by the local school as you wait to vote.) I can only assume that this is the sole reason why our politics hasn’t gone completely insane like all the other countries… yet.

Again interesting. I had always assumed that compulsory voting would strengthen radicals, with people who don't really want to vote because they hate the mainstream politicians voting for them. Good to know that your experience is different.

[bradrn]

Want to take some time out from the election drama in the US?

Yes, I do as well! And as it happens, I’ve actually been thinking along similar lines to you — the recent gruelling election has gotten me thinking about the political system in my own country of Australia.

Oh, you're Australian? *slaps forehead* That explains everything! For some reason, based on your name and your apparent time zone, I had somehow assumed that you were an American living in East Asia.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned this quite a few times? (Though the ‘American’ bit isn’t entirely inaccurate — I was born in Canada, though I’ve lived nearly my entire life here.)

So I’d quite like to use this as an excuse to explain it to y’all, to show you what a really insane system of government looks like.

Not sure about that - apart from the "three parties in a two-party system"-thing, and the compulsory voting thing, it sounds like a pretty standard combination of federalism with a parliamentary system to me.

Hmm, possibly… I have limited knowledge of other such systems.

(I should take this moment to clarify one potentially confusing point. The Liberal party isn’t actually liberal — at the moment, it’s conservative. If you want to refer to liberalism in Australia, you have to call it ‘small-l liberalism’, as opposed to the ‘big-L Liberals’, a.k.a. conservatives. Note however that Australian politics is shifted somewhat leftwards as compared to, say, American politics, so what is conservative in Australia is somewhat liberal in the US, which of course means that the Liberal party — the conservative party in Australian politics — would still be considered fairly liberal in the US.)

(No, I don’t have any idea whatsoever why outsiders might find our politics confusing. Why do you ask?)

Oh, in Germany, like much of continental Europe, the word "liberal" is still mostly associated with supporting free-market policies, so it's somewhat common to describe people, groups, or organizations as "liberal-conservative", a term that probably makes about as much sense as calling someone a "right-wing leftist" to a person from, say, the USA. I once saw a right-wing German blogger describe George W. Bush as "a liberal-conservative president", which that blogger meant as praise; I guess Bush himself would be highly offended if he would hear of someone calling him any kind of "liberal".

That is interesting — the name definitely starts to make sense in that context. Still, in Australia, the Liberals are definitely thought of as the conservative party.

The Governor-General has quite a lot of power — for instance, he can fire the PM. This has been done exactly once in Australian history, with the dismissal of Gough Whitlam in 1975; said republicans have tended to take this as a sure example of the Queen meddling in Australian politics. (There was quite the controversy about this event a couple of months back, when some correspondence between the Queen and the Governor-General at the time was finally unsealed; republicans seized on the one or two sentences which seemed like a sure-fire sign of Queenly meddling, whereas monarchists have tended to carefully ignore those sentences and point out that everything else in the correspondence is perfectly innocent.)

Aren't there some rumors of CIA involvement, too?

Not that I’ve heard of.

Finally, let’s see an example of how this system works in practise. Let’s say you’ve got some crisis — say, record-breaking bushfires are rapidly burning everything in their path down the whole east coast. The federal government immediately springs into action, doing what they do best: flailing about ineffectually and getting absolutely nowhere in the process. (Notably, our PM took himself on a Christmas holiday to Hawaiʻi, presumably thinking that his presence was unneeded.) Eventually, the various states involved start to realise that no federal help is coming, and start to act themselves: deploying firefighters, evacuating residents etc. The people of Australia similarly start to help out and donate to charity — which promptly gets tangled up in the thickets of Australian bureaucracy, ensuring that the money will go to exactly the people who don’t need it. Similarly, the firefighters do an excellent job at containing the fires, even while realising that they have nearly have enough of the equipment that they need, said required equipment having also been tangled up in our bureaucracy. By this point, the federal government has realised they aren’t doing enough, and finally starts to do some productive work, viz., figuring out which party should get the blame. (Not them, of course! Everyone needs to know it’s the other party’s fault!) Eventually, the fires get put out by the rain, which by this point has become more than heavy enough to cause floods in exactly the same places which just got burnt to the ground. You gotta love this country.

Interesting - in Germany, natural disasters (usually floods and the occasional severe storm) are generally seen as opportunities for politicians to show off their leadership skills. For instance, it is generally believed that Gerhard Schröder won the 2002 election, which everyone had predicted he would lose, because the 2002 Central European river floods gave him the opportunity to appear decisive. A while before that, at a time when future West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt was a local politician few people had heard of, his career got a major boost when he was one of the people in charge of handling the 1962 North Sea Flood.

I wish!

(Mind you, that does apply a bit better to the state level — the Premier of my state has recently been involved in corruption allegations, but no-one has cared all that much, simply because she’s done such a good job at managing the various crises we’ve had recently.)

Now some readers might get the impression that I’ve been somewhat negative about my country’s political system. So let me explain the one thing which counterbalances all those problems: we have compulsory voting! Let me explain how this helps. In the US, campaigning seems to revolve around getting the base excited enough for them to bother going out and voting. As the US has recently discovered, an excellent way to do this is through radicalism, a sure-fire way to get people motivated enough to wait through 8-hour queues to vote (so I hear). It also allows for exciting tactics such as voter suppression: there’s all sorts of interesting ways to convince people not to vote when that’s available as an option. By contrast, neither strategy works in Australia: radicalism may help you in the one or two seats where the people like that sort of thing, but it will mostly disgust the average voter — they have to vote for someone, and it sure ain’t gonna be that strange radical! Voter suppression doesn’t work either, in a country where it’s common knowledge that they fine you if you don’t vote. Instead, all the effort goes towards making voting as quick and easy as possible. (For instance, a well-known Australian tradition is the so-called ‘democracy sausage’: a sausage sizzle held by the local school as you wait to vote.) I can only assume that this is the sole reason why our politics hasn’t gone completely insane like all the other countries… yet.

Again interesting. I had always assumed that compulsory voting would strengthen radicals, with people who don't really want to vote because they hate the mainstream politicians voting for them. Good to know that your experience is different.

Interesting observation; I do wonder why that hasn’t happened here, since it does seem like a plausible outcome.

Another factor which I forgot to mention is that we use Instant-Runoff Voting, a form of ranked voting. So you don’t just mark one party: you mark a list of them in order of preference, a form of voting which I always thought had the effect of favouring moderates. Except… now that I check, IRV is known to dramatically favour extremists. So now I’m just really confused as to why we haven’t devolved into the same polarised state as the US has.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, the situation you mention did actually happen in our election last year: people had become frustrated enough in the major parties that the minor party vote rose to over 25%. But for us, this is unusual enough that I remember people at the time using this result to predict an imminent breakup of our party system (though sadly I can’t seem to find the relevant article). And anyway, I don’t remember that result being caused by excessive polarisation; I suspect it had more to do with the whole ‘5 PMs in 10 years’ thing.

[Ares Land]

Oh, in support of the 'Greens are doing everything possible never to be elected": Yannick Jadot, the leader of the Greens in French announced that he supports mandatory vaccination against COVID-19.

Very good.

Cue the reaction of Green voters (and of course, conspiracy nuts): "That's totalitarism!!"

At times like this I really look forward to the upcoming climate apocalypse.

[Travis B.]

Oh, in support of the 'Greens are doing everything possible never to be elected": Yannick Jadot, the leader of the Greens in French announced that he supports mandatory vaccination against COVID-19.

Very good.

Cue the reaction of Green voters (and of course, conspiracy nuts): "That's totalitarism!!"

At times like this I really look forward to the upcoming climate apocalypse.

If the antivaxxers want to die from COVID, that's their right. But they have no right to kill other people with COVID.

[Raphael]

I guess Ares Land's point is that many of the French Greens' core voters are antivaxxers, and therefore, as right as that Green leader's statement might be on the merits, it might still cost them some otherwise safe votes.

[Ares Land]

Yes, my point exactly. Though Travis is of course, also right: anti-vaxxers are a nuisance.

And, judging from recent polls, we have a lot of anti-vaxxers in France. Sigh.

[Ryusenshi]

I guess vaccines are a victim of their own success. Some diseases used to be inevitable, but thanks to vaccines, they have nearly disappeared... so people forget about them, or no longer see them as a threat, and no longer see the points of vaccines. I think France was more aggressive than most countries in terms of mandatory vaccines, which may be commendable in terms of public health, but makes a fertile ground for anti-vaxxers.

It's a general problem, I guess: when your job is to prevent bad things from happening, if you do your job well, nothing happens... so people think you're not doing anything.

"It is in the nature of things that those who save the world from certain destruction often don’t get hugely rewarded because, since the certain destruction does not take place, people are uncertain how certain it may have been and are, therefore, somewhat tight when it comes to handing out anything more substantial than praise." Terry Pratchett, The Last Hero

[Ryusenshi]

Meanwhile, I've only learned that China is once again trying to sever other countries' relations with Taiwan, and planning a military takeover. Indeed, between the general COVID mess and an uneasy election in the US, now would be the perfect time.

[MacAnDàil]

Having just checked up, the main problem with Jadot's announcement is that it is rather different to what Michèle Rivasi (figure from the same party) is saying. https://actu.orange.fr/france/vaccins-q ... dHuu6.html On the other hand, it's as likely, if not more likely, to attract people supporting the use of one of the most important medical inventions in history than ward off those opposing it. So it's not just a vote-loser really as far as I can tell.

--

On bradrinn’s comment about Israel and the left:
As a left-winger myself, I certainly think that opposition to Israel is overly common and exaggerated, especially among the left-wing.

But, as far as I can tell, this opposition does not generally amount to the destruction of Israel. It’s the perception of Israel, and most particularly its foreign policy, as being oppressive towards Palestine and Palestinians. Israel has been accused of encroaching on Palestinian territory and of operating in an apartheid manner.

I get the impression that this is modelled on opposition to apartheid South Africa, which also involved boycotts, and which was entirely justified, even if the treatment of aborigines was about as bad in Australia. It would appear that, with apartheid South Africa gone, people opposed to apartheid saw this as a new battle to waged on the same subject in a different territory. Although, to confirm this hypothesis, one would need to check when this opposition to Israeli foreign policy began.

However, it is clear to me that this vision of ‘apartheid’ is exaggerated. Indeed, Israel is much more positive towards Palestine and Palestinians, and Arabs in general than other countries are to their own minorities. We can count so many examples. To name but a few: China’s attitude towards Tibet and the Uighurs (even worse now with the concentration camps)), Turkey’s towards the Kurds and Indonesia’s attitudes towards the West Papuans. Heck, in none of these territories could they even dream of having their language recognised as an official language of the host country, as Arab is by Israel.

--

On another note, I would say, while I am of course glad of the left’s recent electoral victories (in New Zealand, Bolivia and the US), that I disagree with some other ideas common among the left these days. For example, the subject of recent referenda in New Zealand and in the US was marijuana. I would prefer not to change the legal status of this, even less consider these priorities.

I certainly understand that there is an advantage in legalising cannabis if the alternative is an oppressive war on drugs resulting in millions of people incarcerated just for smoking pot. I also see it as somewhat inconsistent and hypocritical to have tobacco and alcohol legal but cannabis illegal, when cannabis is not more dangerous However, as cannabis and tobacco are usually consumed smoked, it is also air pollution (and often litter). Also, I think the appropriate move would be to discourage the use of tobacco and alcohol more, although not necessarily through an outright ban, which has proven itself ineffectual in the United States. The blame and burden should fall primarily on those mass producing, mass selling and mass advertising these products more than the consumers.

I certainly would have liked to change the status of this when I was younger. As a teenager, I have on occasion smoked cannabis that friends or acquaintances shared with me. I do not feel my life is any better for it although my life would have been even worse for being jail for these minor incidents.

This measure does appear popular however, because all these recent referenda (in the United States and in New Zealand) passed. And the fact that they were referenda is a plus as well as far as I am concerned: at least they took into account the will of the people.

[Raphael]

There's already an entire thread to discuss Israel/Palestine:

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=321

No need to have that discussion spread elsewhere, if that can be avoided.

[bradrn]

On bradrinn’s comment about Israel and the left:

Hmm… I’m used to people regularly misspelling my name, but that’s one I hadn’t seen before! (Usually it ends up as bradm.)

As a left-winger myself, I certainly think that opposition to Israel is overly common and exaggerated, especially among the left-wing.

But, as far as I can tell, this opposition does not generally amount to the destruction of Israel.

If it wasn’t obvious, my post above was greatly exaggerated for humorous effect: you are of course correct with this statement. (And I also agree with your other statements on Israel in that post.)

No need to have that discussion spread elsewhere, if that can be avoided.

And I agree with this as well. (In general, I don’t at all enjoy discussing politics online, particularly not on such a controversial topic.)

[Moose-tache]

Hmm… I’m used to people regularly misspelling my name, but that’s one I hadn’t seen before! (Usually it ends up as bradm.)

I think they're confusing you with brandrinn, a poster who disappeared around the same time you showed up.