Matthew Lynch

In simple voting models, parties and voters act according to a single dimension (conservative or liberal, left or right, etc.). However, in reality, there can be sometimes two or more dimensions. Hence, while voters may vote primarily along conservative or liberal dimensions, they may also vote based on ethnic, religious, economic and social values. This would make it impossible if not very difficult for a particular party or candidate to accurately represent all the interests of voters at any given point in time. This dilemma is further aggravated by forces such as globalization, which continue to add to the variety of political dimensions that could influence a voter.

In this case, it will be difficult for political parties to converge on the median voter position (assuming that there are voters in-between these dimensions), which in turn makes competition between the parties more difficult to predict. Supporters of the current system argue that relatively predictable voting patterns will eventually emerge in the long-run and help parties to once again converge on the median position. However, the fact remains that it is becoming increasingly difficult for representatives to represent a majority of the values or principles individual voters have, which arguably does significant damage to the concept of representative democracy but is essentially unavoidable.

For example, assume a voter is socially liberal (pro-abortion, pro-gun laws, pro gay-marriage, etc.) and economically conservative (against large-scale government spending, privatization, minimum state influence, etc.). Furthermore, the only parties the voter can choose to vote for are either socially and economically liberal or socially and economically conservative. In this case, during each election cycle, a voter will have to decide which of these values mean more to him/her at that given point of time and vote accordingly, thereby foregoing other interests. Not only does this mean that voters will not be represented properly but they would also be forced to vote against some of their own interests.

Thus, during the election cycle, if a voter were to vote for the conservative party based on economic factors, he/she will also be voting against their social interests (assuming that the conservative party will put forward a conservative social agenda). Moreover, globalization is ushering in new dimensions such as global warming, nuclear proliferation, arms control, etc., that will continue to add political dimensions and thereby add to the complication.

In the case of countries that feature more than two political parties (a feature that is common except in the US), each individual party will be less inclined to attract median voters. On the contrary, they could remain effective by focusing on a particular dimension. Thus, many liberal democracies are experiencing the influx of smaller parties dedicated to a specific cause such as global warming or extreme nationalism.

The aforementioned problems with the election process in a representative democracy are not new but they have become more visible in recent history. While it may be easy to fix some of the institutional or practical problems regarding the voting system, it would be a lot harder to fix problems associated with the growing amount of political dimensions.