[extropy-chat] 2-party-system = 1-dimensional politics (was polls again)

[BillK]

On 11/13/06, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
> Just to clarify, while I posted under the subject of 1-D politics, my
> concern was not with the dimensionality of US politics but rather with
> the genesis of the two-party system.
>
> I wish I could read Swedish... :)
>

Swedish to English machine translation is not popular.  :)
Google and Babelfish don't offer it.

InterTran and WorldLingo are prepared to make a valiant attempt, with
WorldLingo producing overall better results, though InterTran caught
some phrases that WorldLingo missed. Use WorldLingo if you just want a
quick fix.
<http://www.worldlingo.com/wl/pages/T1/G0/UP46167/P1/l/products_services/worldlingo_translator.html>
<http://www.tranexp.com:2000/Translate/result.shtml>

The English translation was a bit weird and the software didn't know
some of Anders' Swedish political words.  But, anyway, here is their
translation of Anders' paper.
(With a little help from me who doesn't speak a word of Swedish).
If nothing else, it should give Anders a laugh.  :)

---------------------
How many dimensions does Swedish policy have?

How many additional components play a role in röstningsmönstren? Below
is shown "the strength" (how much of the variation everybody is
showing) for the main 100 components, there we have shown the first
three.

(Chart 1)

As can be seen, most are very small. This year the policy has had
approximately four - five dimensions, but the first component plays by
far the biggest role - 92%. The five largest are 92.2%, 4.3%, 1.4%,
0.4% and 0.3% daily. The parliament's röstningsmönster is entirely
dominated by the government alliance, overriding all ideology.

This can be compared with a study of the American congress, which
found two big components corresponding to 45.3 and 29.6%, with the
rest smaller than 1.6%. Swedish policy is more one dimensional even
than the American!  A similar analysis of Great Britain's policy also
shows one outstanding strong component, and the distribution of the
members is our similar result. Norway demonstrates a more
multi-dimensional policy than Sweden. Variants of the method can also
be used in order to map the structure in parliament where the members
do not have formal party alignment, as, for example, Finland.

(Chart 2)

Above we have coloured the endowed members for different components
(batch colours up left). Component 1 and 2 has earlier been treated.
The third component appears to divide between moderate and
Folkpartistisk policy: it indicates certain questions where the people
have crucial differences. Component 4 divides out Swedish Christian
Democrats while component 5 has Centre Party and green party on same
side against the other batches - maybe an environmental issue
indicator. Component 6 divides the average centre and green party but
places the centre together with Left Party. Component 7 seems only to
depend on the number of votes. Only component 8, corresponding to
0.03% of the variation in voting, describes a difference within a
batch, in this case Socialdemokraterna.

Am I seeing the political landscape similar in all questions? No,
local politics persuades to break the main pattern.

(Chart 3)

Here, the analysis has been done for voteringar from different
committees. For several committees the structure approached the
similar total policy (for example Parliamentary Committee on Justice,
The standing committee on social affair, Parliamentary Committee on
Cultural Affairs and Parliamentary Committee on Civil-Law
Legislation). In others the structure is noticeably different (for
example in Parliamentary Committee on Finance, Parliamentary Committee
on the Constitution, Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture and the
Environment, Parliamentary Committee on Industry and Trade,
Parliamentary Committee on Taxation, Parliamentary Committee on
Foreign Affairs and Parliamentary Committee on Defence). Parliamentary
Committee on the Labour Market shows how the green party has joined
with Socialdemokraterna and left Left Party in certain ballots.
The agriculture committee shows an exceptional split between
Socialdemokraterna and Parliamentary Committee on Defence and
Parliamentary Committee on Finance with exceptionally individual
röstningsmönster. Perhaps, just Parliamentary Committee on Defence and
The agriculture committee and Parliamentary Committee on Transport and
Communications are examples of how local politics pursues a path
separate from party politics. Compared with earlier year however the
foreign policy has been considerably  more party orientated.

------------------

BillK