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When only 2 parties take turns ruling the country, the checks and balances don't really work well when stressed. Because the party that needs to be checked, control half the apparatus, and can disrupt large parts of the other half.
Countries with maybe 10+ parties in parlament like many European countries have, will never have a single party with control of half the apparatus responsible for the checks and balances.
This is a huge reason first past the post is bad for democracy, apart from also not representing the population as fairly as is possible with numerous parties of influence.
This problem permeates throughout the entirety of the system, including the judicial, where judges belong to one or the other party, enabling an imbalance with total control for one party in for instance the supreme court.
With a multi party system, a single party would NOT be able to take control in the way we have seen happen in USA, which obviously shouldn't be possible, and also doesn't help to prevent corruption.
Do you know how many parties had members in the parliament of the Weimar Republic when Hitler was named Chancellor?
I learned in school – not sure if this part is entirely accurate but its an interesting idea anyway – that this situation was precisely why there is a ~5% of votes, lower barrier for parties sending representatives in many modern European democracies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_threshold
No I didn't, that's very interesting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_political_parties
What I don't get is, how Hitler managed to take control with that many parties? He should not have been in a position with power to do that?
Trying to remember what i learned in history here, i hope i get at least most of it right:
Thanks that's a very nice summary.
It's interesting because I've always considered multiple parties to be an important way to protect democracy.
But I guess that ultimately it depends on the people being willing to protect it.
Still having 10 parties represented, makes for a better chance that minority views are represented. And I still believe it helps against corruption and strengthen democracy relative to only 2 parties.