By Lydia Miljan
and Taylor Jackson
The Fraser Institute
The alliance between Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver and John Horgan, premier-designate and NDP leader, will be central to the new government in British Columbia.
Political alliances, however, are not formed on good graces. Weaver has some well-publicized demands, which reportedly include official party status for the Greens (they hold three seats and B.C. law requires four seats for official status) and a change to a proportional representation (PR) electoral system.
Unsurprisingly, these demands would help the Green Party.
A PR electoral system elects members based on the proportion of votes each party receives. PR countries are often governed by coalitions because it’s nearly impossible under this system for one party to garner a majority of the votes. One recent analysis found that between 2000 and 2015, more than 80 per cent of elections in advanced democracies with PR electoral rules resulted in coalition governments.
Lydia Miljan
Some see this as a benefit because it allows for a greater diversity of views to be represented in government. But while even minority governments elected under our first-past-the-post system often don’t form formal coalitions, the idea that we’re not regularly governed by coalitions is false. Big-tent parties such as the Liberals, Conservatives and even the NDP are comprised of internal coalitions. While Christy Clark’s B.C. party is called Liberal, it’s actually a coalition of Liberals, federal Conservatives and Social Credit supporters.
Voters in B.C. know this and for the past 16 years consented to this internal coalition in each election.
PR systems, on the other hand, don’t require this kind of compromise because the way the votes are counted rewards small, even fringe parties, often touting single issues, at the expense of the big-tent parties.
To govern, the large parties must gain the support of smaller parties by giving into some of the preferred policies of those smaller parties.
Taylor Jackson
Consequently, voters of smaller parties are empowered disproportionately at the expense of the majority of voters, who tend to vote for one of a few main parties.
In B.C., more than 80 per cent of voters did not vote for the Green Party and yet the Green Party may dictate changes to a system as fundamental as the way British Columbians elect their political representatives.
Only time will tell what effect an NDP/Green pact will have on policy in B.C. But if the Green’s strong stance on the environment, for example, finds its way into the policies of the NDP government, propped up by the Greens, many British Columbians may not get what they voted for.
Lydia Miljan is a professor of political science at the University of Windsor and a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute. Taylor Jackson is a senior policy analyst at the Fraser Institute.
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