How have other democratic countries escaped two-party politics?

Factual Questions
41

Depends on how you look at it, really; I for one am uncomfortable with coalition government, as it gives undue influence to smaller parties; the Lib Dems may have 8.7% of the seats, but they have 50% of the government power. I consider that to be more undemocratic.

I’d much rather a party which has a plurality of the vote and a majority of the seats govern alone, as a less undemocratic outcome. My main concern about FPTP is its tendency to give whopping majorities to that single party, rather than the single party itself.

That said, from what I read Alternative Vote tends towards even bigger majorities, so maybe we have the least worst of the two.

And I used to be a card-carrying Lib Dem! :smiley:

42

I don’t know the first things about LibDems or how coalition governments work in the UK, but what makes you say that they hold 50% of government power? That is certainly not how things work in Germany with (usually) one major and one minor partner in the coalition.

43

Would be interested to learn how it works in Germany, but here the two parties in government have essentially divided up policy fields between them - so the Tories have happily chundered off and focussed on economy and welfare, while the Lib Dems obsessed themselves with constitutional reform.

It has also been increasingly the case that, for example, the Tories will announce their support for A, and the Lib Dems will declare they won’t let it pass. They will use their numbers, which provide the government majority, to block the policies of the far larger party.

A major fallacy of coalition politics is assuming the 35% of votes commanded by party A combined with the 25 % of votes commanded by party B means that their resulting government will produce a policy platform supported by 60% of the country. On the contrary, the platform tends to be one of 0% mandate.

The last few years have poisoned my formerly agnostic view of coalitions and I don’t think they’re well-suited to our constitution and culture. Mark Oaten, a former senior Lib Dem, also came out sour against them a few years ago in his book Coalition.

44

The antithesis to this would be the liberal FDP (Free Democratic Party) in Germany. This is a party which usually struggles to make it past the 5 % threshold, yet they are the eternal king makers of German politics. Although the party is, for all practical purposes, a splinter group, they have managed to secure key cabinet posts as well as twice the office of Federal President.

45

In some states, like mine (WA), not only does one not register as a member of a party, there is no partisan primary at all. All the declared candidates are listed on the same ballot, and the top-two vote-earners proceed to the general election. This can (in theory) result in a general election where both candidates are of the same party, though I haven’t seen that happen.

46

The Tories had that as an option.

The problem was that it is piss easy to get a vote of no confidence in the government going.

Strange though that for a party that apparently has so much power, the Lib Dems have done bugger all with it, instead just bending over to their Tory masters.

47

In Germany, coalition governments tend to reflect the vote ratio between the parties a little better. In a coalition with one party at, say, 40% and the other at 10%, you would usually divide the secretaries accordingly - the smaller party will usually get something prestigious, like Secretary of State, but definitely not half. They will agree to support their government in exchange for a certain number of concessions to their platform. This is discussed before the government is formed. Usually parties will even announce their preferred coalition ahead of time, so your comment about 0% support doesn’t really apply, since everybody knows what they’re voting for. If you value environmental issues, a vote for the Green party will be almost like a vote for the SPD, but it might strengthen the Green’s bargaining position and result in more “Green” policies.

48

I think they’ve done an awful lot with it, just not in the fields that the electorate expected them to focus on. They’ve expended their energy on a raft of highly ambitious and radical constitutional reforms which failed because of their arrogant assumption that anyone who disagrees with them is an antidemocratic dolt.

Meanwhile, they left the arena free for the Tories to run rampant on those areas which people didn’t want them anywhere near - tuition fees, healthcare, welfare, taxes; this coalition government is not representative of the country at all.

Of course, the alternative would have been what I foresee of the next two and a half years - both parties are going to argue for a long time over what to do, getting nothing done, the coalition will disband in 2015, and both sides will claim they would have done so much better on their own.

49

Fair enough, but I’m not talking about the division of ministerial jobs - I’m talking about power. Parties coalesce in order to secure enough votes in Parliament to have a built-in majority. If a party of 10% is needed to make that majority, then that party’s assent to all government legislation is essential - meaning it gets 50% of the power.

You don’t even need that party to have any ministerial jobs for this to be true - if they just insist they approve all government initiatives, they might as well be the party in power.

I accept that if the coalition is formed before the election, then people know what they are getting into - I would consider that to be a pretty democratic outcome. But that’s not the norm in the UK. It seems, then, that Germany actually has a two-party system itself: SDP and Greens on one side, FDP/CDU/CSU on the other.

50

A step in the right direction yes, but it’s not the answer of itself.

Australia uses preference voting (also known as STV or instant run-off) in the (lower) House of Representatives. The odd strong independents can win a seat, at present we have more than usual but no third party has ever become a force since WWI (for practical purposes, lets regard the Libs and Nats as a single political party as they rarely compete in three cornered contests … and whenever they do the Libs win). Best example of this was the 1998 election in Blair. Pauline Hanson won 36% of the primary vote and nearest rival had barely 25%, yet she didn’t win the division because both LIB and LAB preferenced against her. Might not have been democracy in it’s true sense, but I’d consider it was one of Australia’s finest political moments.

It’s multi-member proportional voting systems that can allow, indeed can sometimes force the emergence of third mainstream or single issue parties.

The Australian Federal Senate uses proportional representation and initially had 10 senators per state, with half up for election each term. With these numbers a minor party needed to accumulate about 20% of the vote to win a seat, which was a rarity. Usually senate elections went 3-2 to the two majors.

Then in a move to increase their numbers in parliament the LIBs & LABS decided to increase the Senate representation to 12 per state. It was a spectacular own goal. To win a majority in any half senate election one of the majors needs 66% to get the fourth spot. This is requires a landslide win so usually it’s split 3-2 and a third party winning say 5-8% of the vote and having a sound preferencing deal is virtually guaranteed to win the last spot. Over a couple of election cycles this can build to minor parties holding 18% of the Senate from a basis of less than 10% the primary vote.

Assuming the two major parties hold similar sized voting blocs, then 6 member electorates maximise the electoral power of third parties. The flip side being a full senate election usually wipes them out as the lower quotas allow the majors all the seats.

Five or less members per electorates usually favours the two major parties.

If you have a 20 member electorate then a party winning 5% will consistently hold 5% of the parliament. Much harder to lose their spot but equally they less commonly hold the balance of power.

51

Yes, there are pro’s and con’s for various systems.

The practically free-reign USA system with a 2-year window can lead to a lot more need to actually tailor policies to what the people want, rather than imposed form above. In its best, it produces compromise; at worst, as we have seen, grandstanding and gridlock.

The whipped system (Canada, Britain) with FPTP produces majorities and occasional minorities. The only limit on a majority government’s power is backbench revolt (think Margaret Thatcher) when the policies might take the party so far out of public approval that the MPs all fear for their jobs next election.

In this, I strongly approve of the British system. When you add up all the cabinet ministers, secretaries, and committee heads, that’s about 100 members. add in about 20 to 40 still trying to get noticed and promoted. A majority in Canada is 155 seats, that leaves about 20 or 30 who know they haven’t a hope in hell of getting promoted and so are willing to buck the party leader. (However, these are usually not the best and brightest). Pierre Trudeau famously said “backbenchers are nobodies 100 yards from Parliament Hill.” DO the same math in the 600-seat British system and a majority has 150 to 300 MPs who have to be pleased by the Prime Minister. If the majority is close or a lot of these are upset, they can usually force change. In Canada, this is very rare.

A coalition like the US congress, can be either an opportunity for compromise or a chance for gridlock. Nobody wants a repeat election in less than a year, so “who caused it” is the number one question if the parties can’t compromise. Generally, the third party has to hold their nose and support the government unless they want an election, in which case the government has to decide if they want to play chicken or give it. Ah, politics.

A run-off (France) or Australian system simply gives voters a way to express a preference, or send a message. If there are 2 parties of the left or right, it is possible that likeminded voters can send the message to an errant party, while still choosing them if the other party does not do well. Canada does not have this system, and in 3-way races you often hear “A vote for the NDP is a vote for the Conservatives, because it is one less for the Liberal”.

Proportional representation is the worst of all worlds. It encourages small single-focus parties; it encourages them not to compromise since their single point of view is all that their voters choose them for. The members of parliament are chosen from a list, and the issue is not to appease voters, but to wheedle the party bosses to be as high up that list as possible. You get the gridlock and the main parties “buy” the support of enough small parties to keep in power. Nothing of substance can be done if one of the tiny parties in the coalition rejects it. The ultimate example is Israel, where they are building a Jewsih homeland - yet the supposedly devout but large number of Haredim are allowed to live on welfare doing nothing but studying their religion, and exempt from military service(!) thanks to the demands of fundamentalist religious parties.

52

California just moved to the same system, and there are now quite a few general election contests in which both candidates are in the same party. Both candidates for my congressional district seat are Democrats, for example.

53

They are better educated than Americans…Two parties is a result of powerful money given to the winners…it is a corrupt situation

54

I grew up and lived for 31 years in the US and have now lived for 44 in Canada. I am a dual citizen and have voted in both countries. In fact, in early Sept, I voted in the Quebec election and a few weeks later I cast an absentee ballot in Illinois. I cannot explain why a third party can flourish in Canada and is even currently the official opposition, while no third party, not even the Dixiecrats, can make a viable third party in the US. In my years in Canada, I have seen a major party deteriorate from a strong majority to just 2 seats, the remnants absorbed into a new ultraconservative party (I guess one could argue that this has effectively happened in the US, but there was no actual third party). Since both country elect by plurality (I have never understood where the illogical FPTP comes from) that cannot explain the difference. Yes, there is (or used to be) much less party discipline in the US than Canada, but it is hard to see how that prevents the formation of a third party. There have been rumors that Roosevelt and Wilkie, the loser of the 1944 election, were talking about forming a new Progressive Party, to appeal mainly to the northern liberals and leave out the southern Democrats, but Roosevelt died before such plans, if any, went anywhere.

I don’t think party registration, for states that still have it, makes the slightest difference in how people actually vote. NY actually has a Liberal and a Conservative candidate. But the Liberal party often colists the Dem and the Conservative often colists the Rep candidate and that is really the only way they survive. In general people prefer to vote for candidates that actually have a chance to win, but that doesn’t explain why an NDP candidate in Canada actually has a chance to win, while a Socialist candidate in the US doesn’t. There may be some subtle reasons caused by the parliamentary system, but none of the WAGS above gives a convincing explanation.

I’d be interested in hearing from other dual nationals. And this thread really belongs in IMHO.

55

Just because you don’t understand the mechanisms at work here does not mean they should be in IMHO. This is firmly in the realm of GQ, as it is a question that has a factual answer that can be given on the basis of decades and decades of research in political science and related disciplines.

56

About half a million Canadians, at most, belong to one of the three major federal parties.

You may be mistaking the concept of registering with a party in the USA with being a member of a party. Registering as a Republican or Democrat, which is a voluntary process (and in some states isn’t done at all) is largely done to allow a voter to vote in primaries. It does not make you a member of the party. You have to actually go to the trouble of joining and paying dues.

57

Just to add to Hari’s comments, here’s the Gov’t/Official Opposition line-ups after the Canadian federal elections from 1988 onwards:

1988: Gov’t: Progressive Conservative Party; Official Opposition: Liberal Party.

1993: Gov’t: Liberal Party; Official Opposition: Bloq Québécois (yes, a separatist party was the Official Opposition)

1997: Gov’t: Liberals; Official Opposition: Reform Party

2000: Gov’t: Liberal Party; Official Opposition: Canadian Alliance

2004: Gov’t: Liberal Party; Official Opposition: Conservative Party

2006: Gov’t: Conservative Party; Official Opposition: Liberal Party

2008: Gov’t: Conservative Party; Official Opposition: Liberal Party

2011: Gov’t: Conservative Party; Official Opposition: New Democratic Party

Now, there was continuity in some of the those changes; Reform broke away from the Progressive Conservatives, who started a long downward trend; Canadian Alliance was an attempt to put Reform and Progressive Conservatives back together; and the Conservative Party was the outcome of that effort.

Nonetheless, this outline shows that in Canada, with a FPTP system, there can be considerable electoral fluidity in the party structure. It’s simply not correct that FPTP means a two - party system with no changes in the major parties for over a century, which is the pattern in the United States.

I would also suggest that the 1993 outcome points to an answer to Hari’s question: Canada has much stronger regional identities than does the United States, particularly with respect to Quebec, and that is a factor that historically has tended to support strong regional parties; the party structure reflects the regional issues. Perhaps in a more homogenized country, with a greater consensus on national issues (and even national identity), FPTP may lead to a more rigid two-party system. But it is not correct, in my opinion, to point to the outcome in the US and say that it can be entirely explained by FPTP; there are other factors in play, as the comparison to other FPTP countries demonstrates.

58

To show I remember something from PolSci 101 (taken 15 years ago)- FPTP creating two parties and proportional representation creating multi-party government is called Duverge’s Law.

59

I suspect the main reason is because the US presidential system means that the top job can only be occupied by one person: presidential power cannot be shared. Therefore, for any party to achieve that power they need to attain at least 50% of the vote (possibly more given the College). So for many people, a third party is a waste, as it threatens that the party they dislike the most might benefit from their not voting for them.

In parliamentary systems on the other hand, power is divisible through the Cabinet, therefore the third party only needs to get enough votes to make a majority for the other parties. Third parties are therefore slightly more viable.

60

Doesn’t that still mean that 32.5 million Canadians do not belong to one of the three major political parties, and are therefore, non-partisan? Given that the current population of Canada is about 33 or 34 million (give or take), I am unsure why you are taking issue with my assertion that most Canadians do not belong to a political party. Based on the figures provided by you and I, it would seem that most Canadians do not belong to a political party.

I am familiar with my own country’s political system, and method of elections, but I will admit that any misunderstandings may be a result of the American system, and the news we in Canada get of that. Registering to vote (as opposed to simply checking a box on one’s tax return, as we do here); doing so as a supporter (not necessarily as a party member) of a party in order to vote in a primary (what the hell is that?), and so on. Compared to what we know here in Canada (in a general election, a citizen has the right to vote for whomever he or she chooses, regardless of one’s own party affiliation, membership, registration, etc.), it is confusing. I have no doubt that, once in the privacy of the voting booth, an American can vote for whoever he or she chooses. But we never hear that.