Quote:
Originally Posted by peter12
That really doesn't have any basis in theory or reality, does it? One of the oldest parliamentary systems EVER was conceived around the idea of two large brokerage parties.
Fact is, partisanship is important. Compromise and all that can still occur within parties.
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I kind of agree with this, and I kind of disagree. If you had proportional representation, either the winning party if there were only two or any logical coalition would have to include the median voter on the left-right spectrum (obviously a simplification, but let's go with it for the sake of argument), so in a sense it's true that it doesn't really matter how many parties you have. The problem is that the system that encourages voters to restrict themselves to two parties also skews the results from what they would be under proportional representation to the point that the median vote is often excluded from the government. That usually means that the government hasn't been elected by the majority of voters, and that's undemocratic.