7 ms·

How can a country be democratic with only two parties?

• tonyedgecombe 2mo ago
  I remember reading an economics paper that showed you need at least four suppliers in any market to get real competition. I can't see why politics is any different.
• hn_submit 2mo ago
  This is a direct outcrop of the winner-takes-all electoral district system which forces parties to merge to have a chance at winning. I personally find it an undemocratic, archaic and meritless system.
  • giov4 2mo ago
    electoral district system? this seems to be very specific and a subset of the topic/problem
    • hn_submit 2mo ago
      It relates to the two-party system, not whether the U.S. is an oligarchy. The article implies that the U.S. is not a democracy, but oligarchy and democracy aren't mutually exclusive. I'd say the U.S. (and most Western countries) is both and always has been. Voters certainly have influence in the U.S. but it's limited, just like everywhere else.
  • RobotToaster 2mo ago
    It was revolutionary and progressive, in the 13th century... Now, not so much.
  • lapcat 2mo ago
    > This is a direct outcrop of the winner-takes-all electoral district system which forces parties to merge to have a chance at winning. I'm not sure this is true. When the highest vote-getter wins, despite the lack of an absolute majority, that gives a better chance to third-party candidates in a multi-candidate election. The reason third parties fare so poorly in the US is that the two major parties have a duopoly on campaign fundraising and free news coverage, which is a vicious circle. The media covers only candidates who are "electable", and they judge who's electable based on their ability to raise money, but you can't raise any money if nobody knows about you, and nobody will know about you if you don't get media coverage or don't have the money to spread your message. This is why self-funded billionaire Ross Perot was the most successful third-party Presidential candidate in recent times.
    • cybert 2mo ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger's_law It absolutely is true.
      • lapcat 2mo ago
        > In political science, Duverger's law holds that in political systems with single-member districts and the first-past-the-post voting system, as in, for example, the United States and United Kingdom, only two powerful political parties tend to control power every election cycle. Citizens do not vote for small parties because they fear splitting votes away from the major party and allowing their opponents to win an election. There are two parts here. Nobody disputes the first, empirical part, the dominance of the existing duopoly. The second part, however, is a questionable causal claim. It's astonishing to me that this entire article can fail to mention even once campaign fundraising or news media coverage. Voter awareness of third parties and third party candidates is minimal, because nearly all of the paid political advertising and free news media coverage is about the duopolist parties. This fundamental plight, not the voting system, consigns third parties to the "spoiler" role. A third party candidate is not a spoiler if they have a legitimate chance to win, which in a first-past-the-post system doesn't even require 50% of the vote. They're only a spoiler if they have no legitimate chance to win. In a 3 candidate race, 34% wins over 33% and 33%. The more the vote is split between multiple candidates, the less it takes to win. The article mentions Ross Perot, which supports my point. To me, the most interesting question is not the % of the popular vote or electoral college he received. Rather, the question is how did Perot break through and become the most successful third-party Presidential candidate in recent times? And the answer is his money, which he used to finance TV informercials and get his message out to the public. As a reward for spending money, Perot was invited to the news media debates along with the duopoly candidates. Sadly, Perot kind of self-destructed, wilted under the scrutiny. At one point in 1992, Perot was actually leading the polls over both Bush and Clinton! That's not a spoiler. But Perot dropped out of the race and only later returned, which dampened enthusiasm for him. The spoiler effect presumes that third party candidates can't win. I think it's crucial to ask why they can't win, how is the system prevents them from having a reasonable chance at winning. > (i) small parties are disincentivized to form because they have great difficulty winning seats or representation I would say that parties are disincentivized to form because they have great difficulty raising money and getting attention. This is why they're doomed to smallness and obscurity.
• DarkNova6 2mo ago
  I'd like to think that it's twice as good as a one-party system.
  • lapcat 2mo ago
    Not sure whether you're serious or joking, but in the realm of economics, I think that duopolies are actually worse than monopolies, because everyone recognizes that a monopoly needs to be strictly regulated and/or broken up, whereas when there's a duopoly, that's supposedly "competition" and thus the duopolies largely escape regulation or breakup, even if they implicitly or explicitly cooperate and coordinate to crush any other competition. In the same way, the obvious solution to a one-party system is to overthrow the government, whereas with a two-party system, you're supposed to fight within the system... and mostly accomplish nothing, because those in power have overlapping interests.
    • cucumber3732842 2mo ago
      >because everyone recognizes that a monopoly needs to be strictly regulated and/or broken up And who's gonna do that when the government has a monopoly?
      • lapcat 2mo ago
        > the government has a monopoly What do you mean exactly? This seems a little too vague.
        • cucumber3732842 2mo ago
          Breaking up a monopoly requires some external entity that has power over the monopoly. There is no such entity for government. So as bad as a two party government is one party would likely be way worse.
          • lapcat 2mo ago
            I said, comparing a political monopoly to an economic monopoly, "In the same way, the obvious solution to a one-party system is to overthrow the government" The "external entity" is the people in revolution against the government. This was how the US itself was founded, in revolution against the existing monarchy.
• arzig 2mo ago
  You should think of it this ways. In the us, political groups for coalitions before the election happens. This is in contrast to most European countries where they set up the coalitions afterwards. Groups occasionally migrate between the parties and the us is in one such realignment now.
• akimbostrawman 2mo ago
  While i agree in theory, in practice multi party systems still end up with only two sides where the biggest/most influential party on either side exerts its power over the others regardless. Going away from parties to actual individual person voting on each topic/decision would be actual democracy but not like that has no drawbacks.
• JKCalhoun 2mo ago
  Interesting take: arguing whether the U.S. democratic system is a democracy when, as the paper points out, economic elites and organized groups representing business interests are the elephant (no pun intended) in the room.
• classified 2mo ago
  Not just two parties, but winner-takes-all elections manipulated by gerrymandering on top.
• pan69 2mo ago
  It's more like two collisions rather than two parties.