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How the (Mythical) Left-Right Political Spectrum Harms America (Book Review)

3 points by mpweiher 3y ago

jruohonen 3y ago
Can someone explain to me why America never gained a multi-party system like most Western countries? If the point of the author is true, which I have no reason to doubt, it seems that such a system would solve a lot of the problems.
- ZeroGravitas 3y ago
  It's an emergent property of the voting system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law
- jfengel 3y ago
  Most Western countries are like the US, dominated by two political parties. A small handful of others exist, most of them in a permanent alliance with one of the others. In Canada it's Liberals and Conservatives. In Germany it's the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats. In the UK it's the Tories and Labour. The other parties are always forced to make long-term alliances if they want any say. The UK Scottish National Party really wants to opt out entirely and become a separate country, but they're always closer to Labour than the Tories. If there is a hung parliament next time around, the likely Labour majority will make a coalition government with the SNP. They can call it a "multi party system", but those coalitions really just reduce it to two effective sides. It's just the way electoral math works out. There is one winner and everybody else is a loser. The only way to win is to make allies who put their collective victory over some of their priorities. You can call those allies a "party" or not, but in the end the losers had better set about joining together or they'll keep losing. The two parties are often called "left" and "right", but the names don't mean anything because the coalitions differ from country to country. The coalitions can be close to arbitrary, and they sometimes switch en masse (such as the realignment of US Southern Democrats to the Republican Party over civil rights issues). But the realignments always eventually come back to one winner and one loser, and the loser starts making long-term promises so that they don't stay the loser.

3 points by mpweiher 3y ago

Can someone explain to me why America never gained a multi-party system like most Western countries? If the point of the author is true, which I have no reason to doubt, it seems that such a system would solve a lot of the problems.

ZeroGravitas 3y ago
It's an emergent property of the voting system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law
jfengel 3y ago
Most Western countries are like the US, dominated by two political parties. A small handful of others exist, most of them in a permanent alliance with one of the others. In Canada it's Liberals and Conservatives. In Germany it's the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats. In the UK it's the Tories and Labour. The other parties are always forced to make long-term alliances if they want any say. The UK Scottish National Party really wants to opt out entirely and become a separate country, but they're always closer to Labour than the Tories. If there is a hung parliament next time around, the likely Labour majority will make a coalition government with the SNP. They can call it a "multi party system", but those coalitions really just reduce it to two effective sides. It's just the way electoral math works out. There is one winner and everybody else is a loser. The only way to win is to make allies who put their collective victory over some of their priorities. You can call those allies a "party" or not, but in the end the losers had better set about joining together or they'll keep losing. The two parties are often called "left" and "right", but the names don't mean anything because the coalitions differ from country to country. The coalitions can be close to arbitrary, and they sometimes switch en masse (such as the realignment of US Southern Democrats to the Republican Party over civil rights issues). But the realignments always eventually come back to one winner and one loser, and the loser starts making long-term promises so that they don't stay the loser.