You’ll notice that religious conservatives have vastly more influence in Israel than they do in America despite the fact that religious conservatives make up a vastly larger percentage of the population.
That’s what happens in a country which declares any political party that can get 2% of the vote automatically gets roughly 2% of seats in the Parliament(Knesset).
That’s why Israel is largely governed by ineffective coalition governments.
A problem which arises only if you combine PR with a parliamentary system. In a presidential or separation-of-powers system, the executive is elected separately and the legislature has no need to “form a government.”
This is false.
Fallacy.
Not every proportional electoral system empowers the radicals, only a badly designed (like the one in Israel)
What do you think a “separation-of-powers” system means?!
Wait, why is that, in ideologically-neutral civic terms, a bad idea?! Any group of radicals that gets enough votes to meet a threshhold clearly represents a significant number of citizens who feel strongly about whatever this form of radicalism means and demands; right or wrong, they deserve to have their POV heard in the public sphere just like other citizens. And sometimes radicals have good ideas nobody else would have thought of. And radicals right and left will more or less balance each other out. I don’t mind if a White Nationalist party forms and gets David Duke (or somebody like him) into Congress – Louis Farrakhan (oslh) will be there too, both of them inside the tent pissing out, and intermittently on each other. It certainly would make C-Span more entertaining. And, it’s a safety valve. Maybe if Timothy McVeigh had been able to look to Congress and see David Duke (WN) sitting there preaching the hate-word on the taxpayers’ dime, he would not have felt so frustrated he had to express his political views through mass murder. Maybe.