The three-party system in France and Australia

AND about:
‘Unless there is a big shift, it seems likely that the neoliberal duopoly will be eroded further, with Greens and progressive independents gaining ground in cities, while the far right increases its influence over the conservative parties’.

Annalena Baerbock has become ‘the most popular’ (German) so called – ‘politician’
AND her GREEN Party has surpassed (again) the so called Sozialdemokraten of the chancellor Scholz –
which actually proves every single word I have written in my last comment –
and if y’all don’t understand read MORE Kant!
(or Dante)

Capisce?

I’d speculate there’s a big difference between cultures where disagreement is expected and those where consensus is. Despite pockets of the former in the US, the latter seems dominant here. We have a politics where each ideology views itself as above dispute and focuses its energy on a predefined Other. I don’t see how a stable political system can emerge from this that has three parties of the kind the OP describes. We seem increasingly to have a far right that sees the center as “left,” a far left that sees the center as “right,” (and both are from their own perspectives possibly logically correct, if we assumed, which I would not, that both start from logically possible places), and a center that may or may not borrow the language of one or both of the extremes but either looks down on them or sees them as despicable elites, with a happy few sincerely recommending “the marketplace of ideas” to all since they feel it’s served them, personally, so well.

I don’t see how this can be stable, and no amount of trying to impose theory on the system can make it so. We don’t even have agreement on whether the culture broadly should be characterized by “consensus” or “dissensus,” or which of those should be associated with the right or the left. The winners are likely to be the word-selling class who declare their helplessness before the many rules imposed on them by the “Discourse,” and seem to think others are somehow not in any way bound by anything.

(That is a lot more cynical than the thought I started out with, but I think I’ll let this stand,)

France and Australia are surely different so it would be interesting to see the equivalent of Klein’s “polarization” book for them. I have no interest in forcing people to talk about the US, but I think the three-party idea looks unlikely here right now.

There are a few typos, I think. E.g. paragraph 4, and the 4th paragraph from the bottom, where words along the lines of “goes to labour” were omitted from the end of this sentence:

If the Greens are eliminated (as usually, but not always, happens), your vote.

I’m curious about this:

The name ‘teal’ (that is, blue-green) reflects the idea that the independents are broadly centrist or centre-right on economic issues but focus mainly on climate change and social issues such as #MeToo.

In the US context, my preference could be described as “vote for the Democrat who best advances neoliberal ideals” but if I was Australian, based on this short description, I think I’d likely be a teal voter. But since this post is all about neoliberalism losing ground, this must be wrong somehow.

My impression living in Italy, but also observing via blogs etc. politics in the USA and the UK, is that the left is stuck with the neoliberals, because it can’t go anywhere else and is not strong enough to dictate policy.
Also neoliberals will screw the left in any situation thinking that the left is aaking for BS anyway.

There are significant downsides for the left in this situation though.

The question is then where in the progressive left – neoliberal centre – reactionary right scheme that I broadly agree with do the teals fit? In its closing statement, the OP seems to classify them as “progressive independents” because they want action on climate change, but I would say that they are actually trying to nibble away at the Liberals to re-establish a new neoliberal centre. They consider the Liberals as having moved too far to the right, and as expressed in the OP, their economic position is neoliberal.

It thus seems that if the spectrum is approximately three thirds, many of the progressive third must still see their interests best served by voting Labor; and I think that makes sense, for two reasons.

First, many people do not realise how the position of the party they traditionally voted for shifts under their feet. That is partly why conservative parties like the GOP and Tories don’t collapse from 45% down to 30% when an extremist takes over: the inertia of many traditional, glued-on voters who are in denial about the radicalism of the new leader. “They wouldn’t really do that, it would be too unpopular, they are just saying that to win.” (And yes, that statement is incoherent, but you hear that a lot.)

To apply this observation to Labor, when the Australian election started, the ABC Vote Compass was rolled out once more. If anybody here is unfamiliar, it is a web tool where you can answer a series of questions, your answers are matched against party programs, and a little ordination plot shows you how close you are to Coalition, Labor, and Greens. There were one or two weeks where social media were full of outraged Labor supporters who found that their actually opinions matched closely to the Greens platform, and that Labor did not represent their views at all, but they just couldn’t believe it; surely the truth is that ABC must be biased!

Second, many Australians actually do not understand Australia’s preference voting system and worry that their vote for a minor party would be wasted. I suspect the Greens’ primary vote share would be easily over 20% if everybody understood preference voting. Same, unfortunately, for the sum of ON and UAP.

In summary, I agree that voters can probably be sorted into the three boxes progressive left, neoliberal, and reactionary, but the inertia of traditional party allegiance and idiosyncrasies of electoral systems make the translation of this realignment into vote outcomes rather complicated.

Okay –
as the only Country on this Planet –
(perhaps besides Switzerland) where ‘politics’
STILL! –
‘orderly categorised’
(kind of of) –
Germany -(and thusly also the very, very democratic EU Parliament) has the traditional six (or more) Party System –
From Left to Right:

The Socialdemocrats
The ‘Hard’ Left (in order to use a Q)
The Greens
The Liberals
The (Christian) Conservatives
The hard Right (in oder to use a Q)

AND the point that some Anglo-Countries –
STILL
try to squeeze such very orderly Order into three or even more – chaotically – into just TWO
parties NEVER WORKED –
Right?

And it NEVER will work –

RIGHT?
– which on the other hand can be considered more and more irrelevant – as the Voters anyhow much rather vote for somebody they are FANS von – than some ‘political’ parties.

AND
(from Wiki)

France has a multi-party political system: one in which the number of competing political parties is sufficiently large as to make it almost inevitable that in order to participate in the exercise of power any single party must be prepared to negotiate with one or more others with a view to forming electoral alliances and/or coalition agreements.

The dominant French political parties are also characterised by a noticeable degree of intra-party factionalism, making each of them effectively a coalition in itself.

Up until recently, the government of France had alternated between two rather stable coalitions:

on the centre-left, one led by the Socialist Party and with minor partners such as The Greens and the Radical Party of the Left.
on the centre-right, one led by The Republicans (and previously its predecessors, the Union for a Popular Movement, Rally for the Republic) and the Union of Democrats and Independents’.

AND how is/was it possible to compare something like… that?

to ‘Australia’?

I still don’t understand why we’re calling it “Trumpism.” The man barely has an ideology. He’s just copying from other people’s playbooks. He repeats whatever slogans will draw a cheer from “the base,” but he didn’t invent any of it. Credit Le Penn, or Farage, or Wilders, or Orban. Look at the runaway success of Modhi’s Hindu chauvinism, Erdogan’s paranoid anti-secularism, or Putin’s twenty-year-long Patriotic War reenactment, or Chairman Xi’s long march backward. Trumpism was always just a symptom, and a late one at that. We need to name the disease.

Although this is a nice post about Australia, it gives such a cursory glance at French politics that I dont know why you include France at all, John. Trumpism could be better named LePenism, since it was Le Pen in 2002 who showed the far right was coming back by knocking out the socialist Jospin. Since that time, the Socialist party won the presidency once – but it was worse than a lost, as Francois Hollande hollowed out the party to such an extent that he refused to run for re-election – perhaps fearing the humiliation of getting less than tenth of the vote – and on the national level the party died, with the PS getting a recordsetting 2 percent in this election. The old Gaullist right, which, after Chirac, went to Sarkozy, has also collapsed. Sarkozy’s old party made less than 5 percent, which meant that its standardbearer, Valerie Pecresse, failed to get enough to get election funds from the state. Thus, what happened was pretty different from a straight old collapse of a two party model, which has, besides, not fit the French model of party coalitions. There is, instead, something that looks like a party under Macron but does not have the culture of a party – unlike De Gaulle, Macron has no deep roots in French politics and he is not very interested in party-making. Melenchon – who I voted for in the elections – has cast himself in the Mitterand role of leading a united left, in the vacuum opened up by the PS. Interestingly, as some pollsters have pointed out, the Melenchon vote was far outside of the polls leading up to the election – by as much as five percent more – which parallels Le Pen’s rise in the late 90s. Since French law forbids polling by race or ethnicity, we don’t have a handle on who the Maghrebian immigrants are voting for, but it is a good bet it is Melenchon. In as much as the neoliberal era was also one of immigration flows, this is significant. Melenchon was like Macron – neglectful of party – but in the past year he seems to have turned around on this issue.

As I see it, the social democratic parties are all having a crisis of identity because of class changes. There used to be clearly the idea that the social democratic parties represented the working class and grew from the union movement. But this class no longer exists in the same sense. The working class used to include the lower middle class and many left intellectuals. But social sorting, particularly associated with education has created a new political class more interested in environmental issues and social change – the natural clients for the green party, and the working class itself has split between small businesses (tradesmen and transporters) and the precariat of casual labourers. The effect of this can be seen in countries with proportional representation. But there is also another phenomenon – the growth of troll parties – mostly clearly the AFD in Germany which have no real identity except “not the others” – nihilists. In some countries (especially Anglo-Saxon countries with Murdoch media) the trolls have attached to the conservative parties.

The social democrats need to give up their union identity I think and become proper egalitarian parties. Without a UBI I can’t see this happening. Not everyone can rely on earned income to survive all the time.

and about – @22 ‘the growth of troll parties’ – (or ‘Clown-Politicians like ‘Trump’) – that unites ALL of the a-political jokers who just want to –
BURN DOWN THE HOUSE.
(and who could deny that the major purpose of Trolls like Donald Greenwald is/was to get rid of ALL Parties)

And so it is –
at this 8th of June –
that in my homeland the US –
(but NEVER in France or the EU)
the ONE PARTY RULE –
of a ‘party’ who isn’t ‘a party’ at all –
BUT just a FAKE and very lose and crazy conglomerate of individual clowns –
who have @22 ‘no real identity except “not the others” –
nihilists.
or/and as Fake Dave wrote –
only ‘Trumpists understand why anybody would call it ‘Trumpism’
as these men –
‘barely have an ideology’.
They are just copying from other people’s playbooks.
They repeat whatever slogans will draw a cheer from “there Belgium is a beautiful city base” but they didn’t and don’t invent any of it.
Credit ‘Real Fascists’.
Look at the runaway success of GREED and chauvinism,
AND Nationalism –
and paranoid anti-secularism, or Putin’s twenty-year-long Nationalistic Patriotic Empire War and –
CRY!
(or just make fun of it like the REAL Party of US Comedians)

BUT –
on the other hand –
the current preference of ‘the people’ for a-political comedians brought US
the man in the Ukraine –

and isn’t that dead serious?

and about ‘that the archetypal working class Labor/Green voter in Australia today is a female junior nurse in her 20s and where would she fit into in any categorization?

She would fit into the categorization that the archetypal working class Labor/Green voter in Germany is Annalena Baerbock
(‘Baerbock studierte von 2000 bis 2004 im Diplomstudiengang Politikwissenschaft an der Universität Hamburg und legte dort das Vordiplom ab.[20][21][22] Im Nebenfach belegte sie Öffentliches Recht/Europarecht.[20][21] Anschließend wechselte sie an die London School of Economics and Political Science und schloss dort 2005 einen einjährigen Postgraduierten-Studiengang mit einem Master in „Public International Law“ (LLM) mit Distinction ab.[20][21][22])
AND
Robert Habeck –
(Im Jahre 1996 erhielt Robert Habeck einen Magisterabschluss an der Universität Hamburg mit einer Abhandlung zu den Gedichten von Casimir Ulrich Boehlendorff (1775–1825),[9] über die er ein Jahr später auch ein Buch veröffentlichte.[10] Von 1996 bis 1998 absolvierte er ein Promotionsstudium der Universität Hamburg und wurde 2000 mit einer literaturwissenschaftlichen Arbeit über literarische Ästhetizität zum Dr. phil. promoviert.[11])

This is an excellent analysis, but bloody hell, it deserves a 600-point headline announcing the end of the human race.

J-D What I meant to say in that the working class included the lower middle class was that there is a broad class of people who saw themselves as employees in a class struggle with employers and this class identity included people who were not the traditional working class – i.e. not manual workers.

Working class means a rural white business owner with fifty employees who is a personal friend of the senator, because he hasn’t got a university degree and likes barbecues, whereas elite means a metropolitan teacher on a temp contract with immigrant background, because she has a university degree and likes chai latte. Can’t argue with it, that’s just what those words were always meant to stand for!

(Sarcasm, obviously.)

and why about this…? this very ‘oldfashioned’? discussion about the voting preferences of something called ‘the working class’ – if so many of the real US ‘working class’ likes to votes for Non-Working Class Right-Wing Science Denying Idiots – because these Right-Wing Idiots are sharing a lot of the same ‘cultural’ -(and not ‘political’) preferences of the so called ‘working class’ –
or as my Harley mechanic once told me:
‘Trump is one of US’ –

And if a true ‘US working class mechanic’ believes – that a (supposedly) ‘Very Rich Stereotypical US Rapture Capitalist is a member of the US working class – shouldn’t we finally talk about ‘culture’ – instead of ‘politics’ -(nobody likes)

nastywoman,

It seems to me that Germany does have a two party system. There are the SDP, the Greens, and the FDP, in coalition on the one side, everyone else on the other. Everything besides that is just window dressing. You still need a majority to govern.

The difference in Anglo countries is that coalition-building is done before the election, not after. It seems to me that is more honest towards the electorate.

but about:
‘The difference in Anglo countries is that coalition-building is done before the election, not after. It seems to me that is more honest towards the electorate’

could you please explain to all of US – how and where this ‘coalition building’ is done before any election in Anglo countries – and in what Anglo Countries – and what ‘coalitions’
between what ‘parties’ – and please no return with:
‘Well sometimes Democrats vote together with Republicans’
as these aren’t ‘Coalitions’ -(if you understand what the word means)

Scott P. – sorry but that is nonsense. You vote for a party not for a coalition. The party represents your views. You cannot know the relative strength of different views before the election, and that relative strength makes a different. And building the coalition before the election means that the relative strengths of the various factions in the coalition are invisible to the electorate. What you say only makes sense if you care only about who governs and not what their policies are. This cannot be the right way for democracy to work.

… My point was more that the old path united workers in class struggle represented first by unions then by a labour (social democratic) party no longer works. …

The meaning of this is unclear in the absence of any explanation of how it once worked.

Reason @37 said: “nowhere as far as I know did I suggest the traditional working class was all male. Plenty of cleaners, nurses aids (as they used to be called), shop assistants, hairdressers etc would belong to that category.”

That got me thinking about the difference between blue collar “manual labor” and pink collar “domestic work.” Putting aside several generations of bullied wives pulling unpaid third shift because their “provider” husbands had better things to do, there’s the still-urgent question of whether workers in traditionally female professions enjoy the same rights and and privileges as blue collar men. Generally, when people could be bothered to investigate, the results were distressing.

To this day, labor leaders have a reputation for being patronizing and dismissive of women workers and the industries they dominate. The assumption that hairdressers, caregivers, maids, etc. were meaningfully represented within the “traditional working class” is naive. By and large, those sectors didn’t fair any better during the heyday of the industrial labor movement than under neocomplaints.

In fact, nurses, teachers, public employees, and caregivers have become some of the most vital currents in the modern labor movement in part because they provide a female (and queer) – friendly alternative to a sinking ship of bitter macho blowhards. It’s long overdue, if you ask me. Of course, my perspective might have been colored by the time I spent working for a labor council where the the entire senior staff was eventually purged over harassment and hostile work environment conplaints, so ymmv.

@reason, 42
The possibility of a more left-wing coalition that would include Die Linke was a significant issue in the 2021 German elections. Die Linke lost and no such coalition was built, but this was decided by the voters, not by party elites.
The idea that there should be only two alternatives and all must line up behind one of them is strangely attractive to some people. In the UK there is a persistent fantasy of a Progressive Alliance that would unite all the non-Tory parties in an electoral pact. It would make perfect sense if there were no real differences between the parties involved and all that mattered was getting the Tories out.

and @
‘The idea that there should be only two alternatives and all must line up behind one of them is strangely attractive to some people’.
– and even more – the idea that there should be only ONE – and all must line up behind this or that only ONE… thingy-
AND the funniest thing – that so many in the English Speaking World believe that there is STILL some ‘political system’ – and that ‘some people’ –
(TEH ELITES- THE ELITES) –
are STILL in control of it while in reality NONE of them can even built a Schweizer Uhrwerk – and as we all know –
that –
if ‘they’ (WHOEVER) would be
STILL in control of it – these ‘politics’ would work like a Schweizer Uhrwek
and not completely randomly like the effort of a group of Right-Wing Idiots trying to overthrow the government of a Right-Wing Racists Science Denying Idiot –
know
as
‘FF von Clownstick’!

rg 20: “since it was Le Pen in 2002 who showed the far right was coming back by knocking out the socialist Jospin”

Respectfully, Jospin wasn’t defeated by the fascists, he was defeated by leftists and their nihilist failure to back a common progressive candidate and instead engage in useless third-, fourth and fifth-partyism. While soft neoliberal is a broadly accurate description of Jospin’s policies, he was a decent progressive who among others tried to establish the 35 hour week. Leftists took for granted that he would make it to the runoff and thought they could engage in some symbolic posturing by supporting fringe candidates in the first round. This is what defeated Jospin. In other words it was the same leftist stupidity that gave Bush in 2000 and Trump in 2016 the electoral college and again in 2017 and 2022 cleared the way to the French runoff for Le Pen (daughter). While this behavior isn’t as dangerous in the French electoral system as it is in the US, it’s reckless and stupid and the people engaging in it should have known.

Scott P: “It seems to me that Germany does have a two party system”
Really it doesn’t and never, ever had – there was a one party system for a certain historical period but outside that it was always multi party. Governing coalitions change from election to election.

SusanC: “Agreed, we now seem to have, in many countries, three parties or factions squeezed into an electoral system designed for two,”
Some countries, perhaps, but many more countries never designed their electoral systems this way.

It’s frustrating how anglocentric this blog still remains. No, the British two party system is not the model which the rest of the world emulated. It really doesn’t hurt to look a bit beyond your own nose folks.

Forgot to mention the record low election turnout of 47%. This despite the fact that the contrast between the parties and platforms couldn’t have been greater. It’s beyond me why so many people have stopped caring.