Two party systems unavoidable?

[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?

[POed_Ex_Repub]

1. No.. it's not inevitable

India comes to mind. The big complaint I hear from there is that there are too many political parties.

[liberalpragmatist]

9. actually, his point remains valid with India

I'm Indian-American and I follow Indian affairs with some regularity and am familiar with the history.

Basically, though it was multiparty, it was completely dominated by the Congress Party formerly the Indian National Congress up until 1979 (could be off by a year in the date) when a backlash against Indira Gandhi's attempt to make herself dictator swept a hodgepodge anti-Congress coalition into power. It collapsed 3 years later.

So the Congress basically ruled mostly unchallenged from 1947 through 1985. Then it became Congress vs. a coalition of anti-Congress parties, and in the late '90s, the Conservative, Hindu Nationalist BJP came to power.

What's happened in the last election cycle, with Congress won in an upset is that what's emerging is a more typical two-block system between Congress and its allies of other regional and minor parties (the United Progressive Alliance) and the BJP and its allies (the National Democratic Alliance). Then there is a group of left-wing Communist and Socialist parties, the Left Front and a few other minor parties and block that are outside the two large blocs.

[NMDemDist2]

2. what about France? don't they have lots of parties

and have to build coalitions to rule?

I'm not sure but I have that impression...

[NWHarkness]

3. American parties are not like European parties

In European countries it is not uncommon for governments to be formed by coalitions of several parties that agree on enough basic issues to work together, but each maintain a distinct separate identity.

The American parties already contain such coalitions, but without the distinct identities.

The democratic party is not one thing, it doesn't have one establishment or hierarchy. It is composed of constituencies that, in another system, would most likely constitute their own organizations . Likewise, with the GOP, although they face the problem of some factions becoming so dominant that they are able to run roughshod over tyhe others..

I don't see any realistic possibility that this system is going to change anytime soon. That is why I find third party efforts futile. Change in American politics takes place within the party structures first.

[unblock]

4. just saying that there are 2 parties masks the complexities

it's not like that 2 parties are each filled with 100% like-minded people in complete agreement at all times. there are always shifting voting blocs and interests underlying the whole thing. a voting bloc within a party can threaten to leave or withhold support in order to exercise its power. sometimes a bloc might even switch to the other party.

in other words, it's not necessarily all that different from a multi-party system where that smaller voting bloc would have its own party name. instead they're just a group within the major party, but often the effect is the same.

[Minstrel Boy]

5. "In Britain, the Labour Party is virtually unchallenged"

You think so? Have you paid attention to recent local elections? It appears to be well challenged. Most significantly, the chief beneficiary of dissatisfaction with Labour is not the Conservatives.

[George_Bonanza]

7. No, I have not paid attention

I just read it in a newspaper. So who's the beneficiary party? The Liberal Nationals? I think that's the other big party.

[GreenPartyVoter]

6. I'd love to see the U.S. head toward a more european-style

gov't, or take what's best from our system and best from theirs.

But mostly I can tell you that I just don't like the system we have now. I can't help but wonder how Dennis might have fared if there had been Instant Runoff voting used in the primaries.

-------------------------------------------------------
An open letter to John Kerry, John Edwards, and the DNC:
http://www.geocities.com/greenpartyvoter/OpenLetter.htm

[George_Bonanza]

8. Dennis Kucinich is a great congressman

But never in a billion years would he have won the Democratic nomination in 2004. He's simply not hawkish enough, which will probably cause you dismay. But putting a vegan dove against Cowboy Bush would not have been the politically wise thing to do.

[GreenPartyVoter]

12. Maybe he wouldn't have won, but he sure as heck would have

gotten more votes under IRV.

[liberalpragmatist]

10. Sort of - it's more of a two-bloc system

You're right that in most countries, even if they have a multiparty system, they tend to stabilize with their being two leading parties (the major parties) and some minor parties. Usually, most of the minor parties are allied with one of the major parties in a semipermanent coalition and there's sometimes one or two parties in the center that swing one way or the other.

So you're right that in many countries there are two dominant parties. That's the trend. A more apt description would be a Two-Bloc System. In Germany, for instance there are two major parties, the Christian Democrats (right) and the Social Democrats (left), plus the Grees who ally with the Social Dems and the Free Democrats who have in the past volleyed back and forth but in recent elections allied with the Christian Dems.

The difference is that there is perhaps a more accurate representation of views within the "left," "right," and "center" in a multiparty system. For instance, if the public mood is more strongly left-wing and a leftist ally gets a higher share of the vote, their power in the coalition is increased. In the US system, everything is subverted to the leadership of the single party.

[kclown]

11. C. Northcote Parkinson wrote on this subject

in "Parkinson's Law", ca. 1956.  

I hesitate to summarize a genius, but his thesis is basically
that the shape of the debating room decides the fate of the
nation.  If it is semi-circular, like a theater, then the
conciliatory members will sit in the middle, and literally
endless negotiations will ensue.  If it is rectangular, with
no middle area, there will be no conciliatory members, and the
representatives will know that there is no point in listening
to arguments from the opposite side because they are assholes.
 So they will only listen to the arguments from their own
side, because these are the statesmen, and to listen to the
other side is a waste of time.  

It has always been fashionable to believe that the Founding
Fathers established a "perfect union", rather than
the "more perfect union" they claimed.  In fact, the
FF's naively disregarded the potential for political parties,
which are nowhere mentioned in the Constitution, and chose to
rely on personal integrity of the interested individuals,
which did not outlive them.  The origin of the Electoral
College is the best example; this was to be a congress of
elected individuals from each state which would deliberate
over the selection of the executives.  The electors were to be
chosen by their wisdom; their choice of candidate was not
expected to be known.

Extreme partisanship such as what we have seen in the last 15
years is not part of the founders' vision, and not well
handled by their historic structure.  The state-by-state vote
count is the largest contributor to this imbalance.  * doesn't
have to campaign in Texas (I hope he loses), and Kerry doesn't
have to campaign in New England, 
because both need Ohio, Missouri, and Florida.  Alabama voters
will not see either candidate; neither will Illinois voters.  

This is how Al Gore lost in 2000.  I ask my 18-yo and 16-yo
sons, as if they and not I were responsible for this, how they
would explain this to an aquaintance in India or China.  

If we manage to defeat * this fall, we should immediately
proceed to the basic reform of majority vote, and lose the
Electoral College.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

13. The US system requires compromise before the election

The Democrat and Republican Parties both have coalitions including those from the center to the extreme edge. Candidates in the primaries usually try to market themselves closer to the left or right edge and then come back to the center for the general election, hoping with the latter pursuit to capture votes from non-party members. Hopefully, this selects a candidate who appeals to the greatest common denominator in the party. It is a winner-take-all system both as to the primaries within the parties and the general election.

In European parliamentary systems, representatives are elected in proportion to the votes their parties receive on a national scale. Thus, the US Congress might contain one or two Libertarians, a few Greens, a few ultra-right American Independent Representatives, a Reform Party member, in addition to Democrats and Republicans. The advantage of the European system is that compromise occurs as issues arise, unlike the American system where representatives embody a pre-existing compromise. The spectrum of political views is much more extreme and diverse in European parliamentary systems. Debate is heated. The Prime Minster is also required to face debate and respond to the questions brought forth by members of opposing parties. The US system, with greater homogeneity in its representatives is more in lock-step with party leadership. I would have liked to have seen the vote on the Iraq war debated in Congress under a US parliamentary system, especially if Greens, Communists, Socialists, and Libertarians, although in small numbers, had had the opportunity to debate before the American public.

[TrogL]

14. Canada currently has a minority government

Those "little parties" are now in the driver's seat, particularly the NDP and the lone independent.

[Bucky]

15. Defending the system: majority vs proportional representation

I prefer the US system to the alternative "proportional representation" system. Our system produces representatives in Congress who have been elected by a majority of their constituents. Countries that have the PR system tend to have more problems than we do. The worst example is Israel's. The Knesset has 150 seats and all 150 Knesset members are elected at-large (or nationwide) by strict proportional representation (PR).

Thus if a splinter party gets 4% of the vote, they automatically get 6 seats in the Knesset. The leading parties usually get about 30-40% of the vote, equalling 45-60 seats and meaning that to form a government they have to form coalitions with the little splinter parties.

There's a couple of problems with this system. One is that it encourages demogogues. Any old crank with a good speech and a commanding personality can up and form his own political party and this system rewards that sort of behavior. Then, when it comes time to form a government to actually run the country, the single-issue extremists can exact concessions from the would-be ruling party in order to hand over their support. Once in the fragile coalition, they can continue to threaten to withdraw from the coalition and collapse the government and cause new elections if their pet issues aren't handled their way.

The extreme conservative religious parties in Israel use this system to oppress the Arab minority and the Palestinian refugees. The conflict in Israel and the Palestinian territories is very much a product of this PR system.

PR encourages political parties to favor their partisan interests over the national interest, and it holds the ruling party hostage to the prejudices of a few demogogues.

Italy also has PR, and thus for the last 60 years they've rarely had a government coalition that didn't fall apart within two or three years. Some governments last only a few months. The system in Italy has survived because bureaucrats have stepped into the power vacuum by ineffective politicians. The down side to the Italian system is unstable government, runaway deficit spending, and a lack of longterm policy planning that has left them econmically behind the curve compared to the rest of Europe. The up side to the Italian system is that they occasionally elect porn stars to parliament.