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In Belgium there are enough parties that not a single one can grasp 51% of the votes. Moreover since the country consists of two linguistic communities with the

In Belgium there are enough parties that not a single one can grasp 51% of the votes. Moreover since the country consists of two linguistic communities with their own set of different parties (there isn't any national, translinguistic parties anymore) there is always the need for build a « coalition » or a « majority » between parties that then form a government. edit: in Belgium we don't have a presidential body. We vote for the federal parliament, parties gather together to see who's going to ally with who to reach a majority and then those parties build a government by picking up ministers from their rank. If during the legislature a party should break away from that majority in the parliament then the government would fall and there would need to either form a new majority or call for anticipated elections. (that's a gross approximation of the legislative process) The situation is more contrasted and antagonistic in France where the left (PS: Socialist Party) and the right (LR: The republicans) are so huge they don't share the power (at least in the government). In Belgium we can have left and right ministers at the same time depending on which party entered the coalition. In France the government is basically either from the right or the left. The parliament is more nuanced. Both countries have a senate with elected members (who make up groups as well). I don't know if it answers your question though.

gozur88 11y ago
I see I wasn't clear. When I said third parties, I didn't mean political parties, I meant it in the more literal sense. That is, groups that aren't technically affiliated with a political party. In the US you can't always tell what the group is by the name, e.g. "People for a Better Tomorrow" or "Alliance for Children" or "People Who Care More Than You". Well, okay, I made the last one up, but only just. Anyway, when you limit money going to politicians it goes to these sorts of groups instead. Then they turn around and buy air time supporting whoever funded them. If you limit money to those groups (which isn't constitutional anyway), you get money supporting dubious university research and "think tanks". And so on. If all those are limited, people start buying media organizations. The point being it doesn't seem like there's any way to remove or even curtail the influence of money in politics. All they can seem to do is move it around. That's why I'm curious what sort of legal environment Belgium has in place to prevent that.

gozur88 11y ago

I see I wasn't clear. When I said third parties, I didn't mean political parties, I meant it in the more literal sense. That is, groups that aren't technically affiliated with a political party. In the US you can't always tell what the group is by the name, e.g. "People for a Better Tomorrow" or "Alliance for Children" or "People Who Care More Than You". Well, okay, I made the last one up, but only just. Anyway, when you limit money going to politicians it goes to these sorts of groups instead. Then they turn around and buy air time supporting whoever funded them. If you limit money to those groups (which isn't constitutional anyway), you get money supporting dubious university research and "think tanks". And so on. If all those are limited, people start buying media organizations. The point being it doesn't seem like there's any way to remove or even curtail the influence of money in politics. All they can seem to do is move it around. That's why I'm curious what sort of legal environment Belgium has in place to prevent that.