[Stormbinder]

Originally posted by tinkthank:

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Originally posted by johan osterman:

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Originally posted by tinkthank:
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allowing at present only 2 nationally funded parties (a non-trivial consequence of which is the fact that should there be one less party (a total of 1 instead of 2) we would have a dictatorship).

If we had five less parties represented in the swedish parlament (a total of 1 instead of 6) Sweden would also be a dictatorship, if we accept your usage of the term.

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Yes, but you have 6, we only have 2. This is not a mere contingency and it is not a trivial difference.

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You know what is funny? I've been several times in Israel. They have 100% democracy in your definition (parlament/election-wise, let's not get into discussion about arabs, counter-terrosrist measures, etc.).

So they have dozens of political parties in Kneset (Israel's parlament), some of them are very tiny. But it is huge pain in the arse to make a working "goverment coaltion", and even parties with 1 or 2 seats can very often become king makers, meaning they wield largly disproportional ammount of infulence in goverment. And once you get a ruling coalition going (that requres 60+ seats out of 120), it's often very difficult to maintain it for even half of the term, since every coalition memeber demands constant "bribing" (out of budget money) to stay in colation. And if the coalition breaks, you have short time to form another or must hold new election. All that makes persuing a consistent and focused policy next to impossible for any ruling party.


Now do you think israelis like their "pure" democratic parlament system? They hate it! I can't tell you how many times different people complained to me about inefficency of this system, and told me they wish they would have just 2 or 3 party system, like in the USA.


The bottom line is that you have to maintain a perspective when you are comparing different election/parlament system. Each one have some advantages and disadvantags. So having 2 party system have major advantages, as well as disadvantages.

P.S. Although I also wished there would be more choices for president. I mean, c'mon - are these people - Bush, Al Gore, Kerry - the best with what huge country can come up with for 8 years?!?