Quote:
Originally Posted by blankall
In North America things are extremely tame compared to most other parts of the world. The average European nation will have a legislative body made up of a dozen or more parties, including all sorts of fringe and far left/right parties. All sorts of crazy deals have to happen for any one party to form a government.
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I think in North America, partly because the countries are so huge, you almost need to limit it. I can't imagine how it would work if the European style or perspective was adopted.
In Croatia for example, the only country there where I am pretty familiar with their political system, they have had people elected in parliament from 48 different parties over the past 30+ years in a country of around 4 million. In the most recent election, there are 19 parties with members sitting in parliament. And I assume they aren't even the best example.
You have you big mainstay parties, then you have your ethnic minority parties, special interest parties, regional and sub-regional parties, religious based parties, parties for diaspora citizens, and of course your wing nut parties. The special interest parties focus on single issues, like the environment, farming, families, unions, specific industries, education, and so on. For regional parties, you have parties that represent large regions and small regions right down to the country level. There are also parties that represent regional blocs, even if those regions also have their own parties. There are also seats in parliament set aside to guarantee specific minority groups are represented in parliament.
It's a little tedious sometimes, but I think there is value in having diverse representation. In a country like Canada though, we'd probably be looking at hundreds of parties to get the same level of representation just because of the number of regions here and the number of minorities.