Do political parties exist in the world of STAR TREK?

[Jayson1]

No parties. That's because people trust even the person who wins they didn't vote for will still do a somewhat good and responsible job. The people trust the system because they trust their fellow citizens.

 

[Lord Garth]

Is the Romulan Free State an adversary? Obviously the Tal Shiar are still a threat, but I think there's good reason to view the RFS as much less belligerent than the RSE. They've allowed for the abolition of the Neutral Zone; they invited Federation scientists to participate in administering the Borg Reclamation Project aboard the Artifact, and even allowed Hugh, a Federation citizen, to serve as its Executive Director. We know from "Broken Pieces" that the Tal Shiar did not have legal carte blanche to seize control of RFS facilities the way it had enjoyed carte blanche to seize control of Romulan ships under the Star Empire.

Obviously the RFS may not be an ally, but that's not the same as it being an adversary.

Possibly. I don't think Picard gives us enough information either way, so that was pure speculation on my part.

 

[Sci]

Part Two:

I'm trying to solve the issue of collusion, tribalization, and unfair competition.

This is understandable, but outlawing political parties cannot and will not accomplish this goal. The best-case scenario is that factions will still form, but instead of those factions being open and understood by the public and therefore accountable to the public via competitive elections, the factions become obscured and characterized by a combination of opaque backroom dealing and the formation of loose coalitions of other interest groups based around individual candidate elections or individual contentious issues.

I live in Montgomery County, Maryland, and it is an example of the best-case scenario. With a population of 1.1 million, Montgomery County is larger than some countries. A strong and enduring majority of its population supports the Democratic Party; it is virtually impossible for anyone to be elected to the 9-person County Council or to be elected as County Executive -- or to be elected mayor or city councillor in the incorporated municipal governments -- without running as a Democrat. But that doesn't mean that factions don't exist or that there's broad consensus on how to run the County. Instead, what happens is that factions form around candidates and issues. For instance, in 2018, multiple people ran for County Executive and coalitions of factions formed to support each candidate without those coalitions being united under a formal name that voters could easily identify. (The winner, then-County Councillor Marc Elrich, developed a very weird coalition of factions including county employee unions, social-democratic organizations like Progressive Maryland and Our Revolution, the local Democratic Socialists of America chapter... and police and fire fighter unions and NIMBY organizations. [Full disclosure: I am treasurer of a state-registered PAC that ran an independent expenditure campaign in support of Elrich and personally knocked on over 2,000 doors for him.])

In essence, what happens is that the Democratic Party primary becomes the real election. If you win the primary, you're guaranteed to win the general. But. Voter turnout in the primary is much, much lower than voter turnout in the general. In essence, a very small percentage of the population ends up comprising the real electorate -- and that real electorate itself cannot easily identify the coalitions and factions supporting candidates.

So you end up with a major lowercase-d democratic deficit. And that's the best-case scenario. It's just as likely that if something like this happens on a national scale, the lack of organized political parties just allows a ruling faction to emerge and use the power of the state to suppress dissent.

I for one really wish that the competing factions within the Montgomery County Democratic Party could just become their own separate parties, and that Montgomery County voters would then have a greater level of transparency about how different candidates' positions align or do not align and about how different candidates would take the County in different directions.

If every single person had to compete as a individual and not a branded organization, you'd have a more fair & representative democracy. You'd force everybody to think, to really delve into each individual that they vote for.

That is absolutely not what happens in real life. In real life, voter participation just decreases. John Oliver's segment on judicial elections is a good examination about how a lack of partisan identification just obscures voters' ability to make decisions about who they would most likely agree with and therefore prompts them not to vote.

And that's not even a matter of voters not "thinking" or doing their research. When it comes to extremely complex matters such as judgeships, it's extremely difficult to find information about candidates' records upon which you can make predictions of their probable future performances. Oftentimes, the information only exists on pieces of paper sitting in courthouses -- there aren't local news organizations doing the work of aggregating that information in media that the public can access, or at least not in sufficiently large numbers. (That's just one consequence of the fall of local newspapers.) And that applies to things like municipal or county elections too, not just judicial.

Chicago, New York, and most major US cities have nonpartisan elections. Nebraska has a nonpartisan state legislature.

And in those elections (thank God), the political parties make it clear which candidates they support even if the actual ballot line doesn't list the candidates' parties. But that still means voters are forced to rely upon forums like social media, party flyers, etc, to know which candidate is associated with or endorsed by which party. I promise you, that decreases turnout; more people would vote in those elections if there were more effective mechanisms for communicating party affiliation, up to and including listing party on the ballot line.

Speaking as an (admittedly nonpracticing) political scientist, outlawing political parties would only achieve one thing: it would remove yet another slice of political decision-making from the public sphere right back into the smoke-filled back rooms. It is the very nature of politics that people will seek to associate with others for political leverage, for the simple reason that you have a better chance having your way if you have allies. And people will naturally seek allies with whom their interests align on a consistent basis. If political association was banned, that would only make this coalition-building informal. You'd still have groups that would vote together but you would no longer be privy to why they're doing that.

Also, people won't actually start reading political programmes just because there isn't a party written next to the candidate's name. The majority of people simply don't care that much about politics. Their choice would still be based on the few memorable soundbites floated in the media during the campaign. Removing political parties altogether would just turn elections into even more of a beauty contest based on personal charisma and little more. And we're lucky that the Federation doesn't seem to have a monetary economy because without parties it's practically guaranteed only the wealthiest people could afford to stand for an election and run a campaign - or more likely, field a candidate of their own who would then act as their mouthpiece. Political lobby would stop being a dysfunction and would become an overt requirement for electability.

Y e p.

Mandatory voting, legal duty to keep yourself educated enough to make informed political decisions, and a blanket ban on political association enforced by a literal Thought Police... Pardon me, but I find all this just a little bit too Orwellian for my tastes.

Mandatory voting is not authoritarian. Plenty of healthy democracies have it, and it ensures higher voter turnout, which in turn means the resulting governments are more accountable to the people instead of being accountable to small minority. As long as "None of the Above" is always an option, as long as it's a secret ballot, and and as long as enforcement primarily relies on enabling voting over punishing nonvoting, then there's nothing wrong with it.

The moment you have to force people to do something, even if to exercise their own rights, it ceases being democratic.

By that logic, no country that requires people to do jury duty or pay their taxes is democratic. Democracy comes with both rights and responsibilities.

If you want to eliminate the supposed evils of political association and voter manipulation, or basically human emotionality altogether, it would be technically easier to just ban elections altogether and replace it with a census where you query the political viewpoints of the entire population and then have a computer appoint a legislature replicating the exact political composition of that population.

There is a school of thought that says that a legislature comprised of people randomly selected to be representative of the entire population via lottery would actually be more democratic and representative than elected legislatures. Kim Stanley Robinson has the Martian Duma comprised of people chosen by lottery in his Mars trilogy. (IIRC, there's an elected Senate that has more power -- the Duma is there to counter-balance the Senate.)

In fact, having a 'President of the Federation' while having a Federation Council at the same time is also pointless.

You think having an executive branch and a legislative branch is pointless?

A council is likely to be less biased as its comprised of all member species representatives... so I didn't like the fact the UFP had a President... it seems... irrelevant.

Tell me, have you ever tried to get a large group of people to make decisions quickly?

But given that we've seen one (actually two if you count the movies), a president could be 'elected' by rotating through every species member planet (similar to how Starfleet rotates through member species and places them on the USS Tikhov to take care of the seeds).

If you do that, then the head of government at any given moment is someone who does not have a democratic mandate.

Here's one compromise system you might like though: In the Swiss Confederation, the Federal Assembly (parliament) elects some of its members to serve on the Federal Council (the cabinet). The Federal Councillors' parties are proportional to their membership in the Assembly, and every party is represented. (So if the Dog Party makes up 60% of seats in the Assembly, the Cat Party makes up 30% of seats, and the Parrot Party makes up 10%, then roughly 60% of Councillors are Dog Party members, 30% are Cat Party members, and 10% are Parrot Party members.) Each member of the Federal Council heads a different executive department -- again, akin to a minister holding a portfolio in a Cabinet. But, the key difference is that no one Federal Councillor is in charge, like with a Prime Minister. Instead, the Federal Council is, collectively, the head of state and head of government. Policies are made collectively and carried out in each executive department by the appropriate Councillor according to their collective decision. Federal Councillors take turns serving one-year terms as President of the Swiss Confederation, but the President is merely the presiding officer of the Council -- he or she does not make policy by him- or herself.

The big advantage here is that no one party can ever truly hold power by itself; all policies must be some sort of consensus, even if some parties are more influential in that consensus than others.

Robinson has the independent Mars use the Swiss model for its executive branch in the Mars trilogy.

Mandatory voting isn't going to work the way you think it will. Back people into a corner and tell people who don't give a shit about politics they have to vote Or Else just means they're more likely to throw away their vote on either the incumbent, whoever appears to be in the lead, or base the vote on something completely arbitrary like whoever is the best looking candidate or whatever.

That's not what has happened in countries like Australia or Belgium.

True freedom means giving people the right to throw away their rights.

That just opens the door to an authoritarian or oligarchical system evolving to subvert the democratic process.

And here's a fun fact, a majority of the people who took part in the January 6 riot on Capitol Hill, did not vote themselves. So if there had been mandatory voting in the US last year, you could have ended up with a second term of Trump. Food for thought.

Highly improbable; Donald Trump never once had the support of a majority of people, nor even the support of a majority of voters, in the United States.

At this time, only 684 terrorists have been charged in the attack. It's difficult to estimate the overall crowd size, but an estimate of up to 10,000 might be plausible. That's only about about 0.003034901% of the U.S. population (329.5 million) and only about 0.006313792% of the number of people who actually voted in 2020 (158,383,403).

There were no states where Biden's margin of victory was less than 10,000 votes.

As for voting. 1 represenative per planet, no matter the population. So the poor, small planets have an equal say .. Same with big planets.
It's like now, big cites have most of the population, but the rural areas need to be equally represented.
As

The problem with that is that you end up with areas with extremely small populations vetoing policies favored by a large majority of the people. It violates the principle of equal representation for all individuals.

I would argue in favor of a system akin to the German system. Their Bundestag has most of the legislative power and is based on population, but their Bundesrat is based on (IIRC) equal representation of the länder (states) and has powers over issues of states power vs. federal power and over the constitution itself. So smaller states do get more influence, but not to the point of subverting the principle that everyone's vote is equally valuable.

Like it's more a true representative democracy, policy implementation and resourcing decisions are made by politically neutral subject matter experts appointed by some kind of voting consensus.... That way you avoid problems of decisions being made by political cronies

I agree with you about much of what you wrote, but I promise you, the "politically neutral subject-matter experts appointed by some kind of voting consensus" would themselves become political cronies. Especially in areas where there is no such thing as politically neutral expertise (like economics).

 

[Sci]

For a real-world analysis of why a lack of political parties prevents a democracy from functioning well, see Matt Yglesias's 2016 analysis from Vox of why the European Union needs a more overtly partisan structure.

Key quote:

Way back in 2004, the European People’s Party — the main center-right party operating in the European Parliament — won the largest number of seats. Roughly concurrently, José Manuel Barroso was inaugurated for the first of what would prove to be two terms as the president of the European Commission, the head of the European Union’s executive branch. Both of Barroso’s commissions were mostly composed of politicians from center-right parties, and so is the current commission, headed by Jean-Claude Juncker, another EPP leader. And all this time throughout two more European Parliament elections, the EPP has remained the single biggest group.​

What makes this situation strange is that the continually governing party hasn’t been particularly successful. The EU slipped into the same severe economic crisis as the United States back in 2008 but has had a much weaker recovery. Nor is the EPP particularly popular.​

But while economic failure and unpopularity would lead to electoral defeat and a new regime in Europe in the context of conventional national politics, the impact of the EPP’s mismanagement has been to discredit the entire institutional scheme. The United Kingdom voted to leave the EU on Thursday, and polls show voters in a number of other countries agree.​

To save itself, the European Union is going to need a real opposition political party: one that can formulate a coherent alternate policy agenda and give dissatisfied voters the opportunity to “throw the bums out” without tearing down the entire institutional edifice they inhabit.​

So far, Europe’s main center-left party has been too intellectually timid, too hungry for patronage, and too subordinate to local agendas to play that role. But to save the European project, someone needs to speak strongly against the people currently managing it. Excessive partisan polarization has its flaws, but Europe is currently being brought to its knees by an absence of partisanship.

The genius of a loyal opposition

The notion of a “loyal opposition” is in many ways the key innovation in the institutionalization of democracy. The idea is that an organized political movement may object stridently to the agenda of the current governing regime without being seen as disloyal to the state or the nation. This means that incumbent rulers face meaningful electoral accountability. If voters are displeased with their performance, a rival team waits in the wings ready and eager to take over.​

Traditionally we think of a loyal opposition as being absent because of repression by the rulers. But the European Union suffers essentially from the opposite problem — too much consensus.​

Rather than being a choice between competing teams, each successive European Commission has reflected an effort to achieve balance — doling out seats to the center-right EPP, the center-left PES, and the centrist Liberals roughly according to their weight in Parliament.​

This leaves voters displeased with the status quo only the option of voting for one of a variety of fringe parties who don’t credibly propose to govern. Or, more to the point, it leaves them with the option of becoming sullen and deciding not that the specific current crop of EU policymakers are bad but that the EU itself is bad.​

In practice, in other words, consensus politics is counterproductively acting to undermine consensus over the very existence of the union itself — a disaster far worse than a few rounds of contentious politics.
​

To bring things back to Star Trek -- I strongly believe that a United Federation of Planets lacking in political parties would suffer the same problem that Yglesias is describing here.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

That is absolutely not what happens in real life. In real life, voter participation just decreases. John Oliver's segment on judicial elections is a good examination about how a lack of partisan identification just obscures voters' ability to make decisions about who they would most likely agree with and therefore prompts them not to vote.

And that's not even a matter of voters not "thinking" or doing their research. When it comes to extremely complex matters such as judgeships, it's extremely difficult to find information about candidates' records upon which you can make predictions of their probable future performances. Oftentimes, the information only exists on pieces of paper sitting in courthouses -- there aren't local news organizations doing the work of aggregating that information in media that the public can access, or at least not in sufficiently large numbers. (That's just one consequence of the fall of local newspapers.) And that applies to things like municipal or county elections too, not just judicial.

So basically, lack of access to clear cut information on their past history is the issue.

We need to make it clear on how everybody performed in the past and open up that information to the constituency.

 

[Sci]

So basically, lack of access to clear cut information on their past history is the issue.

That's a really important part of it. But another part of it is that voters don't get a sense of what the candidate's overall political (or judicial, but I repeat myself) philosophy is. That's one of the really important functions of political parties -- allowing voters to discern overall philosophy, even if a given candidate has individual positions that are outliers. (No candidate is 100% ideologically pure, after all.)

If, say, you have a candidate for a Planetary Supreme Court, it's all well and good to know that in previous judicial cases, the candidate voted this way, that way, and this way. But someone needs to aggregate the rulings to discern an overall pattern. And when they do that, they're de facto assigning them to a political party. So you might as well just have an overt party affiliation on the ballot line, since that information will reach the maximum possible number of voters and therefore assist in their decision-making process.

We need to make it clear on how everybody performed in the past and open up that information to the constituency.

On this I agree completely.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

That's a really important part of it. But another part of it is that voters don't get a sense of what the candidate's overall political (or judicial, but I repeat myself) philosophy is. That's one of the really important functions of political parties -- allowing voters to discern overall philosophy, even if a given candidate has individual positions that are outliers. (No candidate is 100% ideologically pure, after all.)

If, say, you have a candidate for a Planetary Supreme Court, it's all well and good to know that in previous judicial cases, the candidate voted this way, that way, and this way. But someone needs to aggregate the rulings to discern an overall pattern. And when they do that, they're de facto assigning them to a political party. So you might as well just have an overt party affiliation on the ballot line, since that information will reach the maximum possible number of voters and therefore assist in their decision-making process.

So we need a political philosophy / alignment test for every candidate that reveals what they think about key subject matter and to hold them accountable to what they state.

 

[1001001]

Oh, for corn’s sake…

Is it inevitable that any fictional discussion has to bring in real world politics? Didn’t we just go through this with another thread?

If you want to talk about Federation politics, knock yourselves out.

If you want to talk about real world politics, take it to Miscellaneous or TNZ.

 

[Sci]

I am at a loss as to how to discuss whether or not the UFP has political parties without bringing in real-world politics. You might as well ask people to eat cheese without consuming a dairy product.

 

[1001001]

I am at a loss as to how to discuss whether or not the UFP has political parties without bringing in real-world politics. You might as well ask people to eat cheese without consuming a dairy product.

You know better than this. If you have a problem you can use PM or reports.

Do not derail threads arguing mod actions.

It’s very easy to discuss Federation policies and politics without launching into real world diatribes. Many people in this thread have done so.

Moving on.

 

[Sci]

So we need a political philosophy / alignment test for every candidate that reveals what they think about key subject matter and to hold them accountable to what they state.

Okay, let's say that there's an official Federation Alignment Profile that every candidate for the Federation Supreme Court must fill out and it's distributed to every Federation voter.

How is that functionally different from that candidate being affiliated with a Federation political party?

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

How is that functionally different from that candidate being affiliated with a Federation political party?

Because not everybody will vote Lock-Step with a political party 99% of the time.

Most people aren't pure ___ party and just follow the party blindly, but we have that happening IRL which I won't get into since that's out of the scope of the topic.

But I have a very wide set of views that can span each side of the political spectrum and will vote differently based on individual subject matter.

Many people are that way.

But with political parties, you get forced into a group to vote a certain way to get only a small fraction of what you individually want.

With individual dynamics, you won't really know what the vote outcome will be since it's individualistic based on each representative's analysis.

There won't be political blocks trading votes or voting along faction lines.

That's a form of "Collusion" that I want to stop.

Vote on the issue, not along your Political Faction/Party/Team

Come to a consensus on the ___ issue after you have a deep debate, discussion, and analysis of the PRO(s) / CON(s) of any given topic. Then come up with a solution that is amenable to as many folks as possible.

I think more similar to the Japanese way of Consensus building.

Not to rush into things without analysis.

The Japanese call it "Nemwashi". The major difference is that we're doing it in the political office by talking, analyzing, and discussing each subject matter. It'll all be officially documented for the public to see and analyze. Then, eventually making a decision and voting on it, and then decide on what we should do.

 

[Sci]

Because not everybody will vote Lock-Step with a political party 99% of the time.

I'm not sure why you think that would happen if there were Federation political parties, so I'm still not sure what the functional difference would be between a Federation Alignment Rating and a Federation party affiliation.

Most people aren't pure ___ party and just follow the party blindly, but we have that happening IRL which I won't get into since that's out of the scope of the topic.

I will only say that when voters become more loyal to the party than to the state, there's a fundamental problem with the political culture that cannot be cured by a mere change of state operation, anymore than the heat of the tea can be changed by pouring it from one cup to another cup. And that I think the Federation's political culture would by necessity be so diverse and multicultural (what with it having so many different planets and planetary cultures) that the kind of Federation party loyalty you're fearing would be difficult to take root.

But I have a very wide set of views that can span each side of the political spectrum and will vote differently based on individual subject matter.

Many people are that way.

But with political parties, you get forced into a group to vote a certain way to get only a small fraction of what you individually want.

Well, that depends on the political culture. Historically, there have both been party structures that sorted people into tight ideological bubbles, and there have been party structures where each party had a range of ideologies (with some overlap). I say this not to discuss real-world politics per se, but because it is relevant to the question of Federation parties. I suspect that the Federation's political culture would be too diverse and diffuse to allow for the kind of rigid party loyalty you're describing.

With individual dynamics, you won't really know what the vote outcome will be since it's individualistic based on each representative's analysis.

Well, if the voters are getting multiple people's analysis of a candidate's record and those analyses contradict one-another, you're just going to go back to the problem of the Federation voter not knowing the candidate's broad philosophy and then not voting.

There won't be political blocks trading votes or voting along faction lines.

There will absolutely be political blocs trading votes or voting along faction lines. This is an inevitable, unavoidable feature of every single political system that has ever existed, from absolute monarchies to New England town-hall democracies, because no person rules alone and every political leader must find a way to make accepting their position as leader useful to the political leaders below them just in order to stay in office.

If you think about it, this is even part of how families function in day-to-day life -- mom and dad taking turns making dinner, kids having to do chores in exchange for an allowance, moms and daughters (one voting bloc!) getting upset that dads and sons (the other voting bloc!) won't put the toilet set down.

The only way to avoid the having political blocs acting along factional lines is for every single sentient entity to live alone with no interaction with another sentient entity.

Vote on the issue, not along your Political Faction/Party/Team

But what if your Federation political faction/party/team has developed precisely in response to an issue or common set of issues?

Come to a consensus on the ___ issue after you have a deep debate, discussion, and analysis of the PRO(s) / CON(s) of any given topic. Then come up with a solution that is amenable to as many folks as possible.

I think more similar to the Japanese way of Consensus building.

Not to rush into things without analysis.

The Japanese call it "Nemwashi". The major difference is that we're doing it in the political office by talking, analyzing, and discussing each subject matter. It'll all be officially documented for the public to see and analyze. Then, eventually making a decision and voting on it, and then decide on what we should do.

I think that's a stronger argument for a consensus-based political culture than it is for an abolition of political parties.

 

[publiusr]

Jungle primaries seem to open things up. If there are only two parties of one side or the other they vie for that side, but each planet or state has one of each. You keep everything 50/50 where they have to work with each other. Assigned seats.

Thoughts?

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Jungle primaries seem to open things up. If there are only two parties of one side or the other they vie for that side, but each planet or state has one of each. You keep everything 50/50 where they have to work with each other. Assigned seats.

Thoughts?

I implemented "Unlimited Candidates running with Proportional Representation per Seat" (At every Elected Office Government Level) + "Outlawing Political Parties" along with stringent controls to enforce any form of back deal collusion by heavily monitoring elected government officials (NOT Citizenry) to ensure fair, equitable, unbiased representation for a reason.

The concept of "Jungle Primaries" is largely archaic and pointless in my universe.

No need for "Assigned Seats".

Every Candidate that runs, goes into office with the voting power that they receive from their constituency.

Every citizen can split their 100 integer voting power amongst any and all candidates in any proportion that they want.

No more having to choose the Least Worst Candidate.

As long as the voting power they split up is in integer whole #'s and totals ≤ 100 points, they can assign any number of points they feel like to any number of candidates.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I really don't see how that could be. The Federation is clearly a sovereign state.

With it's own political agenda. Ditto for the Klingons, the Romulans, etc., if the known Galaxy is the arena here.

 

[SJGardner]

With it's own political agenda. Ditto for the Klingons, the Romulans, etc., if the known Galaxy is the arena here.

Are sovereign states not allowed to have political agendas?

Political parties generally don't own sovereign territory or have the legal, diplomatic and military means to exert exclusive control over that territory, including a legal monopoly on the use of physical force. Imagine if the police weren't able to enter a political party's headquarters for a criminal investigation because the party was a sovereign entity and an armed force entering their property would be considered an act of war.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Are sovereign states not allowed to have political agendas?

That's exactly my point. Within the local galactic community, you got the Federation, the Klingons, the Romulans, etc., all doing their own thing and doing whatever they can to further their agendas. I'm talking about the bigger picture, not the smaller one.

 

[SJGardner]

That's exactly my point. Within the local galactic community, you got the Federation, the Klingons, the Romulans, etc., all doing their own thing and doing whatever they can to further their agendas. I'm talking about the bigger picture, not the smaller one.

But why would that make them political parties? Wouldn't this mean that the United States of America, the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China are political parties furthering their agendas within the global community?

 

[C.E. Evans]

But why would that make them political parties?

Why wouldn't they be in the grand scheme of things? A political goal is a political goal.