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No, it is caused by the presidential system. A parliamentary system even with first past the post would give you more than two parties.

cycomanic 4y ago
I'm not sure I agree. The UK doesn't have a presidential system, but have first past the post and essentially have a 2 party system, with a small sprinkle of a third party.
- bethling 4y ago
  And France, which is a presidential system, is not a two party system, with a large number of parties represented in their legislature. They have a different election system than the US.
- notahacker 4y ago
  Arguably the UK is a good example of how FPTP can result in even worse dynamics than two broadly competitive parties as in the US (though I agree that it's FPTP doing the work; many fully functioning multiparty democracies have elected presidents). England has a de facto 2.5 party system, where the third party picks up a large fraction of votes but only a handful of seats and the governing party is rarely backed by much more than a third of the vote but usually picks up most of the seats. Worse still, the relative policy overlap of the two centre-left parties has meant the centre-right party usually wins elections even though generally a majority of the public votes for parties promising centre-left politics (yes there's obviously a lot more nuance and exceptions to that than can be fitted into a single sentence). Scotland has more recently shown shows that a single main representative of a losing minority in an independence referendum can win nearly everything against the multiple major parties on the other side. (Wales shows if your nationalist support is more lukewarm and unevenly distributed you get more unpredictable multiparty politics) Northern Ireland is contested only by local parties with a longstanding religious/national identity division leading to two major parties for each side plus, and ultra tactical voting based on trying to figure out which of your factions' parties to unite behind this time to avoid the embarrassment of the local minority faction getting their candidate elected (and the non-sectarian fifth party being squeezed out). None of the areas are particularly delighted with the results they are getting.

cycomanic 4y ago

I'm not sure I agree. The UK doesn't have a presidential system, but have first past the post and essentially have a 2 party system, with a small sprinkle of a third party.

bethling 4y ago
And France, which is a presidential system, is not a two party system, with a large number of parties represented in their legislature. They have a different election system than the US.
notahacker 4y ago
Arguably the UK is a good example of how FPTP can result in even worse dynamics than two broadly competitive parties as in the US (though I agree that it's FPTP doing the work; many fully functioning multiparty democracies have elected presidents). England has a de facto 2.5 party system, where the third party picks up a large fraction of votes but only a handful of seats and the governing party is rarely backed by much more than a third of the vote but usually picks up most of the seats. Worse still, the relative policy overlap of the two centre-left parties has meant the centre-right party usually wins elections even though generally a majority of the public votes for parties promising centre-left politics (yes there's obviously a lot more nuance and exceptions to that than can be fitted into a single sentence). Scotland has more recently shown shows that a single main representative of a losing minority in an independence referendum can win nearly everything against the multiple major parties on the other side. (Wales shows if your nationalist support is more lukewarm and unevenly distributed you get more unpredictable multiparty politics) Northern Ireland is contested only by local parties with a longstanding religious/national identity division leading to two major parties for each side plus, and ultra tactical voting based on trying to figure out which of your factions' parties to unite behind this time to avoid the embarrassment of the local minority faction getting their candidate elected (and the non-sectarian fifth party being squeezed out). None of the areas are particularly delighted with the results they are getting.