Parliamentary democracy just fundamentally has a weakness when it comes to single-issue voting. After picking a party to vote on based on housing, economic policy, crime, ..., how much voting power so to say is left for.. which guy the party says they'll send to the european commission? And what that guy's stance on chat-control is? If they're even publicizing that...

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account42 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Not to mention that once voted in they are not bound by their campaign promises.

	▲	tracker1 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		It can sometimes happen... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_with_America

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ookdatnog 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think the primary positive feature of democracy is simply that we have regular peaceful transitions of power. I'm not sure that the fact that the people choose their own leaders by itself leads to higher quality leadership, or even leadership that cares more about said people. But the fact that the baton passes every couple of years is absolutely invaluable.

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Ntrails 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> how much voting power so to say is left for.. which guy the party says they'll send to the european commission?

Short of a direct (referendum based) democracy how do you resolve that?

	▲	gpm 3 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		In principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy is an interesting idea to address this sort of issue.
	▲	recursivecaveat 3 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		More expressive voting systems help. If your vote has meaning when cast for something other than 1 of 2 platforms it can encode more of your preferences. Referendums are also not the only variety of direct democracy, you can have sortition.

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tracker1 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

How many people participate in party candidate selection at all... it's a mixed bag to "primary" out an incumbent... sometimes it's easy as they don't see it coming or a threat... others the entrenchment goes deep.