It was Winston Churchill who said "democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time". Never has this seemed as true as it does in Ireland today, where so ingrained are our problems that it seems only a six-month bout of benevolent dictatorship could help sort out the mess.

It goes without saying of course that democratic ideals are sacrosanct – the alternative, as Churchill implied, leads only to the kind of madness witnessed across much of Europe 70 years ago (as opposed to the vastly more humdrum economic recession and depression we currently have to endure).

But it is long past the time when we need to examine whether or not our democracy could work better. And first on the list for scrutiny is our PR single transferrable vote (PR-STV) electoral system, which lies at the root of much of the crisis we find ourselves in.

PR-STV's biggest perceived asset is that it delivers proportionality (compared, for example, to the British system where a party can win a comfortable Commons majority with 35% of the vote). But while it is more proportional in theory, in reality it also gives enormous power to small, well-organised groups of voters, very often at the direct expense of the common good.

In every election, some seats, which often have the potential to dictate the make-up of the ensuing government, are decided by a handful of votes. This happened in 1992 when Eric Byrne's defeat by just five votes to Ben Briscoe was a key factor in ensuring a Fianna Fáil-Labour, rather than a Fine Gael-Labour-Democratic Left, coalition.

The tightness of virtually every election means political parties can ill afford to alienate even tiny numbers of voters. As a result, vested interests have been largely able to dictate their own terms to successive governments. This was particularly the case during the boom. Every problem was bought off. The public-sector unions got the benchmarking. The western seaboard got the western rail corridor. Local hospitals were allowed retain key services (against all the best medical advice). GPs were allowed dictate outrageous terms for the over-70s medical cards. The farmers got the hugely costly farm waste-management scheme. Every small town got decentralised public-sector jobs. The list goes on and on.

This is a country where until a few years ago everybody flying to and from the US was forced to land at Shannon Airport, just because successive governments were afraid of losing votes and seats in the mid-west. Where is the common good there?

The direct result of this refusal to put the national interest before various minority interests is the €20bn hole in the public finances. And now that the government is moving to close the gate after the vested interests have bolted, all hell is breaking loose.

We've had two government TDs resigning the whip over their local hospital and in the wings are many more muttering dark warnings about their vote if there are changes to their local hospital/transport services/garda stations, etc.

We have taken Tip O'Neill's line about all politics being local to ludicrous proportions. Imagine Gordon Brown or Angela Merkel or Barack Obama having to worry about how a regional hospital or bus route would impact on their ability to stay in office. It's no way to run a country.

The government has been so obsessed, particularly in the past decade, with making sure every lobby group is happy that the bigger, national picture has been ignored, with disastrous consequences.

There are precious few TDs in the Dáil for whom the national, as opposed to the local, interest is paramount. And who can blame them? The system we have doesn't reward principled legislators or parliamentarians. It rewards slog and graft at the parish pump and towing the local line, whatever its merits.

If we are serious about a new beginning for this country, that must change. And the upcoming renegotiation of the programme for government is the perfect time to address this issue, with the Greens keen, a change to our electoral system should be high up the agenda for talks.

After two previous failed Fianna Fáil-inspired referenda to change from PR-STV to first past the post, it is highly improbable that voters would agree to adopting this system even if it was desirable to do so. But the list system, used in Germany and elsewhere – where half the parliament is elected in single-seat constituencies and half chosen from a party list – could be sold on the basis that it dilutes the dead hand of clientelism but still offers proportionality.

No one system is perfect and nor would a change be a panacea for all our problems. But ask yourself this: how far are we from that great statesman and political theorist Edmund Burke's description of a parliament as "a deliberative assembly of one nation with one interest, that of the whole, where, not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good, result­ing from the general reason of the whole"?

Quite a distance. And it will stay that way until we change an electoral system that puts county before country, that fosters localism and intra-party rivalries across every constituency, and that emphasises candidates and constituency workload, not political parties and policies.

scoleman@tribune.ie