>Not surprisingly the quasi-communists and Ayn Randians couldn't agree on anything and that attempt failed, but it goes to show how strange proportional represe

>Not surprisingly the quasi-communists and Ayn Randians couldn't agree on anything and that attempt failed, but it goes to show how strange proportional representation can get. That's a bit of a misinterpretation. One of the leading figures in the FDP party broke up the jamaica band when everyone was about to get together and form the coalition. (Naturally his party was pissed about this but because he won an election for them they just rolled over and went with that). While the german government can sort of deadlock it's not a situation like in the US where everything shuts down. The government continues to function, although with minimized power, until the new parliament is formed. They can't put out any major new laws but they're not completely dead-in-the-water. >Germany is ruled by a coalition of two parties that both lost votes in the last election, and whose leaders hate each other. It's more complicated than that. The SPD-CDU/CSU coalition (which is three party not two depending on how you look at it) is getting a reputation with the voters, under this coalition Merkel has been chancellor for a long time now. They two sides (other than CDU/SPD resenting the CSU for sitting in the backseat of federal politics and screaming incoherent right-wing garbage (I'm bavarian, I know what I'm talking about here)) don't hate eachother but to my knowledge it's a mutual understanding that they cannot continue this coalition any further. >because proportional representation results in lots of parties getting into power with none having a majority. Note that Germany has a 5% clause for this; you need 5% of the votes to get into parliament, otherwise you have no say. This is mainly a result of the previous government turning into the third reich after several parties deadlocked the parliament for real.