> OK, but that's how representative democracy works isn't it.
No, representative democracy is largely issue-based and less personality-based in many regimes, particularly parliamentary systems with electoral systems which produce roughly proportional results while supporting multiple ( significantly more than 2) viable parties.
The US combination of a presidential (or, for states, gubernatorial, which amounts to the same thing) rather than parliamentary system and an electoral system which has poor proportionality and strongly favors duopoly (the latter more significantly than the former, though both are factors) creates a weak party system with weak issue focus on elections based on personalities and identity politics more than issues at both state and federal levels.
Because of the federal nature of the US system and the distribution of much power over even federal elections to the individual states, and the fact that many states feature citizen initiative processes, this could be radically changed for state government in many states without direct support from existing elected politicians, and could also be changed to a limited extent for federal elections without elected politician involvement.
>representative democracy is largely issue-based and less personality-based in many regimes //
Could you give examples please?
>many states feature citizen initiative processes //
I'm not from the USA, what do you mean by this? There is some system to get laws passed or governmental processes altered that bypasses representatives? If that's the case then doesn't it prove my point, that the part of the system that's a representative democracy doesn't allow the populous to address issues atomically.
For me in the UK I've a choice of maybe 8 parties. But ultimately it comes down to one or two issues - do you cut the NHS [health], do you keep Trident nuclear missiles, do you address income gaps in favour of the poor, ... suppose you say yes/yes/no and only the We-Are-Evil party is doing that then if they get in to power you're largely stuck with their predetermined answers for all other issues until the next general election (5 years). Indeed local elections become proxies in some cases for addressing issues, but the party whose candidate is elected need not vote with that candidate, nor uphold a "promise" they give prior to that election.
As I see it the electorate is left to sit on their hands most of the time. Then at election times we get the hard sell with psychological manipulation, character assassination, personality cult, anything to avoid presenting genuine working solutions to issues the electorate wants to address.
No, representative democracy is largely issue-based and less personality-based in many regimes, particularly parliamentary systems with electoral systems which produce roughly proportional results while supporting multiple ( significantly more than 2) viable parties.
The US combination of a presidential (or, for states, gubernatorial, which amounts to the same thing) rather than parliamentary system and an electoral system which has poor proportionality and strongly favors duopoly (the latter more significantly than the former, though both are factors) creates a weak party system with weak issue focus on elections based on personalities and identity politics more than issues at both state and federal levels.
Because of the federal nature of the US system and the distribution of much power over even federal elections to the individual states, and the fact that many states feature citizen initiative processes, this could be radically changed for state government in many states without direct support from existing elected politicians, and could also be changed to a limited extent for federal elections without elected politician involvement.