They actually contribute more to the debate than just demanding an answer from the Ministry of Defence — not War, nor Peace — when news leaked that the Pentagon is working on manipulating beetles, which really happened. When parliament tried to discover how the whole Iraq-war-support-issue was born they were one of the parties asking actual useful questions to the minsters.

However, this does depend on the issue the one-issue party is focused on. The Party for the Animals was founded by and attracts a specific kind of people that has always been interested in politics and knows how it works and who now found a reason to try to be elected. However, the other one-issue party, that of Geert Wilders, whose main issue is Islam, does not contribute much useful to the debate.

In a multi-party systems like Sweden (and the Netherlands) a one-issue party can be valuable. However, if you have constituencies like Britain and the USA it will more often turn out to be unsuccessful because: A. People are more likely to vote on someone who has a reasonable chance to win and with whom they agree enough. This is bad news for smaller parties, because their electorate is more spread. B. Governments in political systems based on the idea of proportional representation often consist of multiple parties. This is an opportunity for one-issue parties to occupy a department that’s related to their issue without having to other things.

Get it on!

Lobby groups are fine for limited-scale efforts, but in the long run they tend to lose, because they can only react to agendas set from the mainstream (i.e. big companies). See the effort on software patents: yes, it was defeated, but the industry tabled the idea and they will table it over and over again as long as they “own” politicians through donations. The only way to balance that is to have your own politicians who can table their own agenda and be proactive, reframing debate in parliaments and in the media. And you need a political party for that, someone who can say “electoral results demonstrate that I directly represent X millions of people”.

Looking at the historical perspective, btw, the opportunity is even more appealing. Post-1989, the political debate in Europe was thrown into chaos by the end of long-standing “socialism vs capitalism” fights, on which most European political systems were built after WW2. 20 years later, all main parties are still desperately trying to reinvent themselves, which is why they adopted the green movement so wholeheartedly. As green issues are solved (or discredited), they will scramble again for something new, and that new might as well be “digital rights” if someone can prove that it’s a vote-winner.

I’m sceptical about the political process in general (slowly edging towards the anarchic). I don’t think small or one-theme parties have much chance in politics. But I also think way too much is decided by politicians and their armies of bureaucrats to begin with. I’d like to see a day where I do more voting with my wallet or my feet than by crossing of a piece of paper and hoping for the best.

For a start, if there are large multi-seat electorates then it is often a lot easier for minor parties to get a seat. The required percentage of votes to get elected is a lot lower, and those voters don’t need to be concentrated in as small an area. In Australia, the senate at the Federal level works this way, as do the upper houses in many state parliaments.

Now if no party has a majority in the senate, then it will be necessary for a major party to gain support of one or more of the minor parties in order to pass legislation (assuming it isn’t already supported by the other major parties). A single issue party is a good candidate for these kind of deals, trading support for that single issue for whatever other issue is being voted on.

For the single issue party, this is obviously a good deal since they get more support for their issue. For the major party, they can get their legislation through.

And Jono, if you believe your current government will make sure your kids will get a good education or that terrorism is prevented then you need to open your eyes.

Another thing ist that you don’t have to be the gouvernment to influence the law. If the gouvernment sees a lot of people caring about some specific topics, they are likely to care about them as well. A lot of mainstream parties have now understood that the Digital Rights Movement is something you can’t just ignore. Recently, Sweden has decided not to implement EU law retention into swedish law. They might be afraid of the Pirate Party who won two seats in the european parliamant some weeks after they had passed a law that constrained digital freedom.

Lobbyism has been tried for so many years. I don’t say it’s bad but why not try forming parties (and continuing the lobbyism)?

I know this from people my age who don’t bother – its not because there is nothing to motivate them its just because they could not be arsed.

Now becuase of unforeseen events, ww1 for one example, they didnt get home rule and radicals stepped in and they lost out and Ireland gained independence otherwise.

Not a wholly apt comparision I know I know – but it is the only example of a single lobby political party I know (minus maybe sinn féin).

The pirate party has no say in the EP – bigger political parties have no real say even when they lobby into a larger political grouping. So how would the party even register any effect in the parliament yes they get time to speak etc etc etc but they will not get any tangiable results.

The pirate party has three issues: * Shared culture * Free information * Privacy

In the same way as the social democratic party is able to use their view of the world on closely related issues (and some not so closely related issues), the pirate party is able to derive (and abuse) their baseview on other topics. From school politics to climate issues (something one of the pirate EU-MPs(?) seems to be fond of).

And the second thing I’d like to say is you guys have been looking at this from the perspective of your government and political system. May I draw your attention to the Netherlands, for example, which have a very diverse and interesting political scene. I mean they have the “Party for Animals” in parliament!!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_parties_of_the_Netherlands

Have you ever considered that this might be the future in a world where people gather more and more around the issues they think are important and care less about everything else ?

The public perception of these issues is not yet mainstream, but think back 10 years when the green party started. Now green issues are mainstream. I think it will take a lot less than 10 years for digital rights to become a key mainstream issue.

Listen to the Interview with Andrew Robinson, the point he makes is that when you have some real people voting for you then the media starts to pay attention, and with media attention comes the members, money, and influence.

http://piratepodcast.org/2010/01/andrew-robinson-ppuk-leader/

As for mainstream political parties talking about it, here’s an opposition MP who is the official spokesman for his party (NDP) on these issues:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFjOS1aHnBQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Epv4u10Bp-I

That guy by the way, was a professional musician before he went into politics, so he knows the musician’s side of the story. He spent 14 years on a single issue (fighting a garbage dump) and succeeded. That is the sort of determination that is needed. The following is one of the protest songs from that effort.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVjy8VKRsNo

I wouldn’t normally vote for his party, but I would just for this issue alone.

If you live in a country with proportional representation, you can get an MP elected with as little as 5% of the vote. MPs have a lot of advantages such as free postage to send out letters to their constituents. Even if you don’t win, if you get enough votes then you can get election funding which puts you on the same footing as the larger parties. If you do get elected, then if the government is a minority (in many countries this is the rule, rather than the exception), you can make your single issue the requirement for your support in parliament.

In the end, a single issue party doesn’t have to even get elected to influence the government. They just have to attract enough attention that the other parties will want to steal (pirate?) their policies to try to attract those voters. The difference between being the government and being the opposition is often just a few percent of the vote. That matters a lot more to a politician than whatever a lobbyist might whinge about.

I’ve no interest in voting for either of the two main UK parties, I dislike both and neither have the public’s interests at heart.

It would be nice to have a government that behaved as if it mattered what its people thought, rather than doing whatever it feels like, at the beck and call of corporations and multinationals.

The way digital copyright issues are handled is indicative of the disgusting political attitudes that dominate the major parties.

I have the impression that many of the FOSS contributors in Sweden are members or at least have leaning towards this party’s ideals. The move to Openness would be the deal sealer for many.

This has historically been used to great success in local government issues. An issue of concern to a local community

I don’t know whether there are any examples of this technique being used to successfully influence national (or even inter-national) issues

Where lobbying groups raise the awareness of the public on an issue, a single issue party raises awareness of the issue with the other parties.

The idea of such political parties is to never actually get into power, rather to skim votes off of the “real” parties.

Skim enough votes, and the race between the other parties becomes very close. Close to the point where if one party announces it’ll mirror the policy of the minority party, all the voters will flood back to the “real” party and secure it’s (re-)election

Lobby groups and minority parties play the two pincers that act to corner the major parties into addressing issues of concern to the voting public