> The US (and the UK for that matter) are not such resilient democracies, and this worries me, just like it would have worried Popper. I agree, but one way in

> The US (and the UK for that matter) are not such resilient democracies, and this worries me, just like it would have worried Popper. I agree, but one way in which Germany's democracy differs from America's (and Britain's) is its use of proportional representation (whereas both the US and the UK make extensive use of the decidedly non-proportional First Past the Post). I consider this among the strengths of German democracy, but Popper didn't: > proportional representation confers, even if only indirectly, a constitutional status on political parties which they would otherwise not attain. For I can no longer choose a person whom I trust to represent me: I can choose only a party. https://www.economist.com/democracy-in-america/2016/01/31/from-the-archives-the-open-society-and-its-enemies-revisited https://www.economist.com/democracy-in-america/2016/01/31/fr... However, Popper use the term "proportional representation" to apply only to closed list proportional representation. I wonder whether even Popper's assessment of that form of proportional representation is still plausible, in light of the increasingly obvious weakness of democracies that use "majoritarian" voting systems compared to democracies using proportional representation (closed list or not). I don't suppose Germany's relatively healthy democracy is solely due to its use of proportional representation, but it does share many other constitutional virtues (such as federalism, republicanism, bicameralism and a codified constitution) with the United States, so those can't account for differences between the two countries.