Just a little more proportional representation and we could have perfect government

King Log does appeal:

Government formation talks in the Netherlands have become the longest on record, 226 days after the 17 March elections delivered a fractured political landscape that made parties more reluctant than ever to compromise.

Dutch government coalitions often take months to form, but this year’s post-election talks have been especially drawn out. For months, parties failed to even move beyond the question of who would be allowed at the negotiation table.

If that proportional representation system could be tweaked just a little more then the negotiations could stretch out until the time of the next election. Perfection, no government could ever actually do anything.

The problem with that being that the aim of democracy is to be able to change who is in power. Without elections changing governments we end up with that permanent state of the bureaucracy, just below the politicians, in charge of everything, forever.

This is one of those problems to which there is no solution, just a series of increasingly - or decreasingly - attractive trade offs. Yes, we grasp the arguments that more PR provides ever greater refinement, granularity, to democratic representation. We also, as here, understand that at a certain level of such PR then an actual change in governance becomes near impossible. The very point of elections being to be able to have a change in governance.

The decision is where to be on the spectrum, elections that are truly representative of all opinion and elections that actually perform a useful function.