The problem isn’t the two party system. The “perfectly democratic” EU countries are electing fascists en-masse, and when they’re not, the socialdemocrats that replace them apply similar policy. There is no EU country free from austerity policy, rising military budgets, undermining of worker rights, rising of retirement age, support to the genocidal Israeli entity and complete inaction in terms of affordability of housing, energy and food. The problem is capitalism, not “first past the post” or other technicalities of electoral systems. They all produce the same outcomes, so the root of the problem is deeper.
Oversimplification, but: In Romania, with proportional representation, if AUR (pro-Russia) gets 49%, the remaining 51% can form an alliance to shut them out of government, no matter how many parties.
In the UK, Reform can get a majority of seats with just over 30% of the vote. In fact, Labour did just that in 2024.
Didn’t the pro-Russian candidate in Romania get removed from elections? Not the most openly democratic example in my opinion.
the remaining 51% can form an alliance to shut them out of government
This can happen with leftist parties too, and as a matter of fact we see it happening in France, with the most voted party being "cordon sanitaire"d. Again, there is no functional democracy if the policy applied over 15 different countries, regardless of party elected, is indistinguishable.
And yet, no one party has all the power. A party is always forced to make a coalition to form a government, and we’ve seen how the right wing is woefully incompetent at doing that.
The problem isn’t the two party system. The “perfectly democratic” EU countries are electing fascists en-masse, and when they’re not, the socialdemocrats that replace them apply similar policy. There is no EU country free from austerity policy, rising military budgets, undermining of worker rights, rising of retirement age, support to the genocidal Israeli entity and complete inaction in terms of affordability of housing, energy and food. The problem is capitalism, not “first past the post” or other technicalities of electoral systems. They all produce the same outcomes, so the root of the problem is deeper.
The power of my cordon sanitaire compels you!
Oversimplification, but: In Romania, with proportional representation, if AUR (pro-Russia) gets 49%, the remaining 51% can form an alliance to shut them out of government, no matter how many parties.
In the UK, Reform can get a majority of seats with just over 30% of the vote. In fact, Labour did just that in 2024.
Didn’t the pro-Russian candidate in Romania get removed from elections? Not the most openly democratic example in my opinion.
This can happen with leftist parties too, and as a matter of fact we see it happening in France, with the most voted party being "cordon sanitaire"d. Again, there is no functional democracy if the policy applied over 15 different countries, regardless of party elected, is indistinguishable.
And yet, no one party has all the power. A party is always forced to make a coalition to form a government, and we’ve seen how the right wing is woefully incompetent at doing that.
And why does that matter? If we see uniform policy results in the EU-wide, regardless of coalition in power, where’s the democracy?