Two party systems unavoidable? [View All]

[George_Bonanza]

It seems that in most countries, it all dwindles down to basically two parties: a general liberal one and a general conservative one. Then there are perennial outsiders who are too exclusionist to appeal to the broad spectrum of voters. Take Canada for example. On Jay Leno last night, Michael Moore erroneously said that Canada has five major parties. Living in Canada, I know that Canada is more like a single party state. With a small population, a good amount of it concentrated in educated and cosmopolitan cities, and no Deep South to impede our progress, Canadians are generally liberal. The 20th century has been dominated by Liberals, them having ruled for about 75% of the time. A couple of aberrations of Progressive Conservatives like John Diefenbaker and Brian Mulroney have broken the streak. Yet now, thanks mostly to the disasterous governments of Mulroney and Campbell, the PCs have died and have been forced to merge with the socially regressive Reform/Canadian Alliance party to simply put a right-wing resistance to the Liberal juggernaught. Meanwhile, the NDP are simply seen as too antagonistic, too unwieldy, and too unable to form a federal government. Fiascos on the federal level, like in BC, do not help the party standing. Even with a hot and media savvy leader like Jack Layton, the NDP only got 21 seats, nowhere near their zenith during the Broadbent years (when they reached the high forties). At best, the NDP are seen as watchdogs to the inevitable Liberal government. The Bloc Quebecois are a regional party and probably should not be allowed in federal debates if the Green Party is excluded.

What I'm trying to say is that in a lot of multi-party countries like in Canada or Western Europe, it still boils down to two parties, with a couple of peripheral parties that only serve as watchdogs. In Britain, the Labour Party is virtually unchallenged, so much so that even with Blair's unpopularity, there is no challenger. In Canada, the right-wing is too fractured between progressive conservatives and conservative conservatives to present a viable threat to Liberal rule.

While the U.S. political system is far from perfect (the EC should be scrapped forever), is it that different from others?