Two vs Multi Party Politics
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Canada has 5 parties that regularly win seats. While the American electoral college is grossly undemocratic (for presidential elections) the Canadian and British system (Westminter) is the most unfair system in the free world. The Green Party with between 5-10% of the national vote wins 1 out of 338 seats (0.25%). Meanwhile one of the major parties wins an abolute majority (meaning they can do virtually whatever they want) with around 40% of the vote. It is pretty grotesque that while 60% didn’t want that party in, they have virtual free reign for 4 years with almost nothing to stop them as the senate is generally powerless and the Queen’s representative never interferes with politics. Trudeau won a large majority with 40% of the vote. That’s insanely unrepresentative. The advantage of more parties only becomes apparant when there are minority governments occasionally in Canada. Almost invariably one party props up another party meaning they have to compromise and work together, all things which helped create Canadas best features such as healthcare and social services and civil protections. In Canada’s case, this plurality is good…some of the time.
However it works so much better in most of Europe. Belgium for example has 8-12 parties who take seats. Divided by language and ideology, the king only permits a coalition government that has at least 1 party from both language areas. Unfortunately it can take a very long time to negotiate a coalition (they often contain 4 or 5 parties) and negotiations can take over 1 year while an effective care-taker government is in charge. But the advantage is their entire agenda is pretty much already planned out and most laws are tentatively drafted. Smooth sailing for the next several years. The amount of compromise involved is incredible and for the most part policies and laws end up being somewhat moderate, middle-ground while still including advantages for the various special interests. Most European countries work at a smaller scale but still have to form coalitions and work together. It is ideal. However, a couple countries have a pretty hard time getting together and forming coalitions. Spain and Italy are the more famous examples. Spain had to call a new election after a year of negotiating cause no one could compromise. The results of the new election were virtually the same. Finally there was a tentative compromise which didn’t last for long and parties tried to go on their own with a lot of failures. Italy is usually more disastrous with frequent elections to beat the deadlock where compromising seems almost impossible and parties are very hostile to one another even when they are in a coalition. While right now they are relatively stable (though aggressively criticize one another) there can be decades before any government fills up a full term. So while multiple party systems are often fantastic (Belgium, Germany, Denmark) or good (Ireland, Czech Rep, Japan) it is a bad system for a few countries. You need to have a proportional representative system to regularly have large coalitions and the UK, Canada and the US don’t have one and are systems highly resistant to reform or proportionality.
The craziest of all however is the EU. I am always in awe of how it manages to function. There are between 6-7 blocks of parties in the parliament and each one is formed by dozens of parties from around Europe (sometimes even 2 parties from the same country). That means that not only do 3 or more blocks have to come together and negotiate a basic outline of the agenda, but each block also has to come together and negotiate their position with many very different parties involved. A functioning EU parliament working group can basically consist of 40 or more national parties all working together. It doesn’t quite work like a coalition but more a general understanding of policy direction. It is still amazing, incredible and fantastic than anything actually gets done. Add on top of that the EU commission (the leader of all 27 countries) who must make new laws by absolute unanimity and it just makes the functioning EU all the more outrageously unique and astonishing. And incredibly democratic and pluralistic and representative of various views.
You can be sure that if the USA switched to a proportional representation system in the house of representatives, that multiple parties would pop up and many would win seats and no party would ever have a majority. Regional interests, specific agenda parties and even far-left/far-right factions would require multiple parties to form coalitions. US politics would become instantly more moderate, less extreme (or insane) and the rhetoric would soften, parties would trash each other less and a large variety of interests would be considered for all laws and policies. It really is what the US desperately needs. Considering how cumbersome it is to change the constitution and how protective people are of that document, I just cannot see that happening in the next 50 years.
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This reply was modified 5 years, 4 months ago by
Davis.
Thank you for that awesome summary. I aced poly sci, but it was very America-centric, as are most Americans, blissfully ignorant and non-caring of what works well in the rest of the world.
You aced poly sci and so you are qualified to speak for all of us blissfully ignorant Americans on Memorial Day are you? Thanks so much! I am somehow reminded of the Japanese fleet commanders who assumed Americans were morally weak and had no spine for war. Holy shit….they were wrong as they watched wave after wave of almost suicidal US pilots attack their fleet in the Battle Off Samar. That battle is quite a study.
You may want to take a minute today and think about all the billions of dollars and all the thousands of ignorant Americans sons who laid down their lives so that our incredibly enlightened Western European friends can freely voice their incredibly intelligent opinions about the shortcomings of the United States.
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This reply was modified 5 years, 4 months ago by
_Robert_.
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This reply was modified 5 years, 4 months ago by
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