“Policy lurch” is an effect of FPTP. Just a small change in voting behaviour - a party getting just a few more votes in the right place - can tip the scale and cause massive increase in the number of seats the party gets in the chamber of power.
(But FPTP does not always respond so directly and democratically - A small change in voting behaviour can instead cause no change in the composition of the chamber. Or a party may take more votes and get fewer seats. Or as we see in Labour's "landslide" victory of 2024 in the United Kingdom, under FPTP a party may take fewer votes and get massively more seats.)
The U.K. experienced policy lurches in the series of elections from 1945:
Nationalize; denationalize; renationalize; denationalize again; renationalize.
There were similar policy lurches in many other aspects of social policy.
Some commentators suggest the political instability in the UK during that period held back economic development and social development compared with European countries that had PR voting systems. They had more gentle changes of government and hence more gentle changes of policy.
(though comparisons are difficult during that turbulent post-WWII time).
The same is seen in recent Alberta history.
Rachel Notley's NDP government began construction of a large government-owned medical lab along QEII Highway south of Edmonton.
When the UCP came in, with 54 percent of the vote, the construction was stopped, and the work that had been done was bulldozed! (That is what I have heard anyway.)
The UCP privatized medical labs then had real problems when the labs were found to be doing a poor job.
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