Atlantic Sentinel

Tag: Multiparty Democracy

  • Swedish Center-Right Adapts to Rise of Far Right

    Ulf Kristersson Gabrielius Landsbergis
    Swedish Moderate Party leader Ulf Kristersson listens to Gabrielius Landsbergis of the Lithuanian Homeland Union during a meeting of European conservative party leaders in Brussels, June 20 (EPP)

    Sweden’s center-right Moderates have broken ranks with other mainstream parties by holding talks with the far-right Sweden Democrats.

    The Moderates, who most recently governed Sweden from 2006 to 2014, had until now backed a cordon sanitaire around the Sweden Democrats, who are still seen as beyond by pale by centrists and leftists.

    But years of political isolation haven’t made the Sweden Democrats less popular. On the contrary. They have risen from 13 percent support in last year’s election to 25 percent in opinion polls, tying with the ruling Social Democrats and ahead of the Moderates, who are at 17-19 percent. (more…)

  • Moderates in America Should Not Give Up on Political Reform

    Washington DC
    View of Washington DC with the United States Capitol in the distance, February 17, 2015 (Matt Popovich)

    Regular readers know I believe the two-party system in America is one of the root causes of the country’s many political problems: extreme partisanship (but weak parties), polarization, a politicization of the judiciary and an unwillingness by lawmakers to rein in presidents of their own party, to name the four most urgent.

    What are moderates to do? I propose reform.

    Ideally, these various changes would break up the Democratic-Republican duopoly. Countries in Northwestern Europe prove that multiparty democracy produces better outcomes. (more…)

  • Five Parties Are Better Than Two

    United States Capitol Washington
    United States Capitol in Washington DC (Shutterstock/Orhan Cam)

    In my most recent column for World Politics Review, I argue that other European countries should welcome the chance to be “Dutchified”. Political fragmentation is often interpreted as a sign of political crisis, and indeed the transition from a two- to a multiparty system can be a bumpy ride, but the Netherlands proves it produces better outcomes.

    There is no reason this shouldn’t be true for the United States as well.

    Forcing Americans to make an either-or, left-or-right choice every election has bred extreme partisanship (but weak parties) and polarization. It has politicized the judiciary and led to a stalemate in Washington, where lawmakers are unable to tackle major issues, such as entitlement reform, and unwilling to rein in presidents of their own party.

    If the only alternative to extremism in your own party is the other party, most will choose extremism.

    But what if there was another alternative? (more…)

  • Spain Better Get Used to Multiparty Democracy

    António Costa Pedro Sánchez
    Prime Minister António Costa of Portugal greets his Spanish counterpart, Pedro Sánchez, in Lisbon, July 2, 2018 (Governo da República Portuguesa/Clara Azevedo)

    With no party or bloc winning a majority in Spain’s Congress on Sunday, the country’s politicians need to finally come to grips with coalition politics.

    The center-left Socialists and center-right People’s Party are used to alternating in power. They split 80 percent of the votes as recently as 2011. But Spain hasn’t been a two-party system since 2015, when Podemos (“We Can”) on the far left and the Ciudadanos (“Citizens”) on the center-right took one out of three votes between them.

    This pattern has now been confirmed in four elections in as many years and still the old parties continue as though nothing has changed. (more…)

  • Spanish Parties Break Cardinal Rules of Coalition Politics

    Pedro Sánchez
    Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party leader Pedro Sánchez answers questions from reporters in Madrid, January 22, 2016 (PSOE)

    Spanish parties have broken the cardinal rules of coalition politics. As a result, the country may need to go to elections for the fourth time in as many years.

    Outgoing prime minister Pedro Sánchez has one last chance to stay in power. If the far-left Podemos supports him after all, and the Catalan independence parties abstain from today’s investiture vote, he could scrape by with the smallest possible majority.

    But if either sticks to its guns, the Socialists would either have to nominate another candidate (unlikely) or call snap elections in the autumn. (more…)

  • Political Fragmentation Need Not Lead to Paralysis

    Swedish parliament Stockholm
    Parliament House in Stockholm, Sweden (iStock)

    Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Alina Polyakova write for the Brookings Institution that Europe’s political fragmentation threatens to lead to paralysis.

    With anti-establishment parties, mostly of the right, taking a quarter of the vote, remaining parties are forced into ever broader and more unwieldy coalitions that fail to address such complex issues as sluggish economic growth, immigration and defense. As voters become frustrated with a lack of results, they could be tempted to try the “more effective” strongman models of China and Russia. The authors give Germany and Sweden as examples.

    I think this is too pessimistic. (more…)

  • Britain’s New Centrist Party Needs Electoral Reform

    London England
    Aerial view of Big Ben and Westminster Abbey in London, England (Unsplash/Ricardo Frantz)

    Britain’s youngest political party is growing. The Independent Group (TIG) has attracted eight lawmakers from Labour and three from the Conservatives. A ninth Labour member of Parliament, Ian Austin, has left his party but not (yet) joined the new centrist group.

    Polls give TIG between 8 and 14 percent support. (more…)

  • Don’t Fear Dutchification

    The Hague Netherlands
    Mauritshuis and Dutch government buildings in The Hague, June 11, 2018 (Shutterstock/DigitalPearls)

    The Financial Times argues that the big political story in Europe is not so much the rise of populism as the fragmentation of electorates and the parties that represent them.

    • In Spain, once-dominant conservative and socialist parties must compete with liberals, nationalists and the far left.
    • Neither the center-left nor the center-right bloc has a majority in the Swedish parliament anymore and neither is willing to allow the far-right Sweden Democrats to become kingmakers.
    • The far-right Alternative and the left-leaning Greens have eaten into support for the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats in Germany.
    • In what the Financial Times describes as “the most extreme example of such fragmentation,” the Netherlands, it now takes four parties to form a government.

    This isn’t wrong per se, but I would like to offer two nuances. (more…)

  • Why Sweden Still Doesn’t Have a Government

    Stefan Löfven
    Swedish prime minister Stefan Löfven leaves an EU summit in Tallinn, Estonia, September 29, 2017 (EU2017EE/Raul Mee)

    Two months after parliamentary elections, Sweden is still without a government. Neither the traditional left-wing bloc, led by outgoing prime minister Stefan Löfven’s Social Democrats, nor the center-right, led by Ulf Kristersson’s Moderate Party, has an outright majority, forcing the parties to explore other options.

    I asked our man in Sweden, Johan Wahlström, to enlighten us on the situation. (more…)

  • Two-Party System Leaves Anti-Trump Republicans in the Lurch

    Donald Trump Giuseppe Conte
    American president Donald Trump and Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte arrive to a NATO summit in Brussels, July 12 (NATO)

    Janan Ganesh argues in the Financial Times that, after Donald Trump, America’s Republicans must become more like the European center-right: shed their small-government, low-tax, free-trade ideology in favor of a pragmatism statism. The state can be an instrument of national togetherness.

    Perhaps. But what of the Republicans who still believe in small government, low taxes and free trade? (more…)

  • In Defense of Multiparty Democracy

    United States Capitol model
    Scale model of the United States Capitol (Andy Castro)

    Scott Lemieux sees two problems with ending the two-party system in the United States:

    1. It would split the Democratic coalition and do nothing to remedy conservative overrepresentation in the House and especially the Senate.
    2. What do you do about presidential elections?

    As somebody who believes strongly in multiparty democracy (read my case for constitutional reform), let me respond. (more…)

  • German Election Shows Stabilizing Effect of Multiparty Democracy

    Angela Merkel
    German chancellor Angela Merkel waits for other leaders to arrive at the G7 summit in Bavaria, June 8, 2015 (Bundesregierung)

    The headline-grabbing news from Germany this weekend was the return of the far right, which won seats in the national parliament for the first time since 1961.

    But the bigger — and more reassuring — story of the election was the fragmentation of the German political landscape.

    The Christian Democrats and Social Democrats, once faraway the two largest parties, won only 56 percent of the seats combined. A record seven parties (counting the Bavarian Christian Social Union separately) crossed the 5-percent election threshold. Four parties will probably be needed to form a coalition government — another first in postwar German history.

    This might look like instability, but it actually underscores the resilience of multiparty democracy. (more…)

  • What Good Is a Two-Party System If It Doesn’t Provide Stability?

    British parliament London
    Westminster Palace in London, England at night, December 21, 2011 (Ben Sutherland)

    There is a lazy assumption in much of the British election coverage that the return of two-party politics was the only good news of the night.

    Between them, the Conservatives and Labour won 82 percent support on Thursday, up from 67 percent in 2015.

    Yet neither party has a majority. The biggest party is in disarray. The second has no way to form a government. It is quite likely there will be another election later this year or next. (more…)