Talk:Parliamentary government formation

RobLa (talk) added topic headlines at 20:48, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

European government formation
User:Dr. Edmonds, this is a specifically British/European concept? Can you clarify that in the intro? Should it really be linked from the Main Page? — Psephomancy (talk) 16:27, 28 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Psephomancy No, all systems result in a government/executive branch in the end. Germany, the US and all the countries using the westminster system all do this in different ways. The topic of reform for this sort of thing is also quite important but does not get much attention from the election science community. I am more well informed on parliamentary systems and have put down what I can for them on this page. Somebody should add some more content for presidential systems. I think the major reform efforts there are with open primaries and electoral college. In both these systems the actual formation process tends to be "find the head of state and let them appoint the rest of the government (cabinet/staff/ect). There was a good discussion of all this here --Dr. Edmonds (talk) 16:54, 28 March 2020 (UTC)


 * I don't believe there's any such concept in the US. "The government" is just "the set of all elected representatives".  There is no "formation of government" or "opposition party", etc.  Maybe you mean that the same thing happens, but under different names? — Psephomancy (talk) 16:59, 28 March 2020 (UTC)


 * This is covered in the post I linked. The government is that which is formed by the president its called the executive branch in most systems. This is distinct from "The House" which is the legislative branch. The house is the same as the as the Parliament. In a parliamentary systems the executive branch (government) is a subset of the legislative branch (House). In the US they are distinct. In the US there is a two party systems so the party not in power is the opposition. It is not really that different. What this article is about is the step to get the set of executive from the elected officials. In the US the president is elected and then appoints them all. Most are not elected. In a parliamentary system the leader of the biggest party in parliament is made the Prime Minister and they select the cabinet form the rest of the parliament. --Dr. Edmonds (talk) 18:09, 28 March 2020 (UTC)


 * Would Matrix vote be an example? — Psephomancy (talk) 18:22, 28 March 2020 (UTC)


 * Yes. Electing the whole of the executive branch from the parliament is an option and this is one way to do it. Clearly this is not possible in a presidential system --Dr. Edmonds (talk) 19:20, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Homepage portals
I agree with Dr. Edmonds that "government formation" is a worthy link from the home page. However, I don't agree that this page is ready for it. It is a long, uncited essay written exclusively by a single author, with links to other articles buried in prose. Links from the front page should have more structured introductions, similar to the portals (Portal:Arts, Portal:Biography, Portal:Geography, Portal:History, Portal:Mathematics, Portal:Science, Portal:Society, Portal:Technology) found linked to from the top of the English Wikipedia main page. We don't have to make anything as fancy as Wikipedia's portal system, but when covering a big-picture topic like government formation. This doesn't just apply to government formation; let's make sure all of the big-picture topics linked to from the homepage focus on structure rather than prose-based persuasion. As of this writing, we promise that Electowiki "gives you a guide to what these things are". Let's try to make the guide more like a roadmap and less like a lecture. I'd like to encourage experts like Dr. Edmonds to opine on electoral reform subjects on Electowiki, and we can even figure out how to prominently link to essays by subject-matter experts like Dr. Edmonds, but I would prefer this essay in its current form reside at User:Dr. Edmonds/Government formation rather than at Government formation, since in its current form, its in DEPOV (Dr. Edmonds' point of view) rather than EPOV (Electowiki point-of-view). My instinct would be to move this page over to Dr. Edmonds' user area, and then create a new, much simpler portal-lite which links to Dr Edmonds' essay in the intro of the new Government formation portal. -- RobLa (talk) 20:48, 29 March 2020 (UTC)


 * RobLa My main point for adding this to the main page was to get awareness in the hopes that other would add to the page. After all this is the purpose of a wiki page. A lot of the reform community spends time on these topics and to have a list of topics for reform without listing this is an oversight. Given that I wrote the current content I wanted a pass from others. Also, my expertise is the Westminster system I was hoping that somebody with expertise in different presidential and parliamentary systems could expand. The other pages I put it beside are proportional representation, Approval voting, Score voting, instant-runoff voting, and Condorcet methods.  None of these are at the high standard you claim is required but are arguably better than the Government formation page. I'll do a pass to make sure that there is nothing which is outside of standard discussions on this topic. To be clear there is nothing that is opinion and to call it an essay is a little weird. There are two subsections about the common reform efforts. I only favour one of them. --Dr. Edmonds (talk) 21:36, 29 March 2020 (UTC)


 * I think there is some controversy to what you wrote. Some examples that I'd like to run through before any edits are made: "The most polarizing systems are Single Plurality Voting and Rank Voting so one might think that these would produce a good Prime Minister and opposition leader. " I think a lot of Condorcet advocates would pretty strongly disagree that "rank voting" is polarizing. "It is typically suggested that a form of Score Voting would be optimal since it has been established as the best system for single winner elections." I think it's easy to see the bias on this one; many people prefer FPTP or IRV. "In summary, the most common suggested replacement method of government formation is to have an Approval Vote for the Prime Minister." I'd simply want a source on this one. BetterVotingAdvocacy (talk) 22:19, 29 March 2020 (UTC)
 * BetterVotingAdvocacy OK that was an oversight on my part. You are right, I forgot about you Condorcet people. I tried to lay out the debate as I have seen I go down many times. Condorset has never come up. When I wrote "Rank voting" I meant IRV. I'll write to some people and get them to add their various advocacy groups and chime in. I might have a bit of a Canadian bias. Please update as you see fit. This is how wiki pages should work. --Dr. Edmonds (talk) 03:15, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Rename to "Government"
It seems odd that we have a "Government formation" article here, but not a "Government" article. I would like to change that by doing the following:


 * 1) Rename "Government formation" to "Government"
 * 2) Move the English Wikipedia text that I copied to Government formation to the article lede
 * 3) Move the current lede down into a new "Government#Formation" section

Thoughts? -- RobLa (talk) 05:48, 13 January 2022 (UTC)


 * I have a strong preference against this change. As the creator and dominant author I hope that my preference has some weight. The intention of the page is to discuss the formation of governments and how that process can be reformed. This site is largely about electoral reform and alternative systems. Government formation is a topic for reform that is somewhat underserved. I use this page to refer people to quite often and do not want to lose that ability. The larger topic of governments in general is important and should maybe be another page. The English Wikipedia page for "government" covers something quite different to the process for forming a government after an election. The English Wikipedia "Government formation" page is quite lacking but is distinct from the generic government page. Admittedly this page only covers the Westminster system and should be expanded if there are people with the knowledge to do so. To help round out this page, it would be worth while to take some of the existing information from the English Wikipedia "Government formation" page which is not here. --Dr. Edmonds (talk) 23:56, 13 January 2022 (UTC)


 * I forgot about being referred to as "you Condorcet people" and then almost immediately misspelled "Condorcet" as "Condorset" just to emphasize the point that you truly don't think that Condorcet methods (or the Condorcet criterion) are important. My comments from 2020 still stand; this is not a good article as written.  Either we move this page to Government or we move it to User:Dr. Edmonds/Government formation, unless someone weighs in with a compelling counterargument (preferrably someone other than User:Dr. Edmonds, since a different electowikian oould break the stalemate, and User:Dr. Edmonds has made their position clear).   I still maintain that this wiki needs a "Government" article more than it needs a "Government formation" article. -- RobLa (talk) 09:46, 19 January 2022 (UTC)


 * Psephomancy, Kristomun, or Marylander‎‎, do any of you have opinions on if the processes and electoral methods for forming a government after the general election deserves a page? I really only know about the one system currently there so it would be great if this page could be expanded. --Dr. Edmonds (talk) 20:11, 19 January 2022 (UTC)


 * As I understand it, this page is meant to describe the possible application of election methods, in this case for forming a government. I kind of see both your points. On the one hand, the article is about how voting methods could be used in government formation, not about government as an institution. On the other, it's a bit tangential to election methods themselves, and it would seem strange to discuss how to change something (in this case government) without at mentioning what that something is. So I would say it comes up to what style electowiki is going for.


 * If a page on X can be relatively light on X itself and then have a long section about something that has to do with both X and voting methods, then the relabel to Government seems reasonable. But if it's more like Wikipedia (where you'd have an article on a country, and then "Politics of Country" as a separate page), then electoral reform in the service of changing government procedure could use a page of its own. In any case, it could use a rewrite/edit as RobLa pointed out.


 * A third option would be to move the relevant information to the pages on the various voting methods, so that if FPTP is used for government formation, this gets referred to there. This is in effect what pages on specialized methods like delegable proxy already do, but the information would become more fragmented by doing so. Kristomun (talk) 22:19, 19 January 2022 (UTC)


 * A page on the process of forming a government in a Parliamentary system could be useful. An article on Government might be more useful but I'm not sure why an article on government formation would make an appropriate substitute. Marylander (talk) 07:42, 22 January 2022 (UTC)


 * I ended up moving this page from "Government formation" to "Parliamentary government formation". I also put a comment on the English Wikipedia counterpart to this page (w:Talk:Government formation) suggesting that those of us in that community rename Government formation to Parliamentary government formation.  We'll see where that lands.  -- RobLa (talk) 08:14, 22 January 2022 (UTC)