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Bipartisanship

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Clarissa

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Spaniards were very happy to break out of the bipartisan system they had existed in throughout its entire post-1975 democracy. Finally, not 2 but 4 parties have obtained enough votes to disrupt the hold that the two major parties had on the government!

Of course, now Spain has no government at all because the 4 parties can’t figure out who’ll be the president and how to form a coalition. This goes to show that there are potent reasons to hold on to the seemingly limiting bipartisan system. Maybe most human beings find anything that contains more than two ingredients to be way too complex.

6 responses to “Bipartisanship”

  1. Dreidel Avatar
    Dreidel

    The last thing the American political system needs is a parliamentary system that would allow fringe extremist parties to have a say in running the country, and perhaps even exercise veto power over the mainstream party in power.

    A prime example of how badly this works in practice is the Israeli government, which at times is at the mercy of the fanatical ultra-orthodox parties in the ruling coalition.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Exactly. This sounds like a good idea in theory but then you see it in action and it sucks.

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  2. matt Avatar
    matt

    That’s not totally fair because they must (i am pretty sure all major european countries have this) have a parliamentary system where you don’t directly elect a president, but instead elect a congress – like body who then chooses their leader.

    We don’t face that issue because of direct election of president.

    Woudn’t it be great if we had a president and then he had 4-5 or even more (or ideally no parties…) to negotiate. If you didn’t have two party loyalty Obama is likely to have gotten MUCH more of his agenda passed. Now, I am probably happy that he didn’t, but without the institutional constraints of a 2-party system we would have less gridlock.

    But I agree many parties (or no parties) without direct election of president / head leader is a problem.

    But ulitmately to get multiple parties or even better yet no formal parties you need publicly funded campaigns. Maine is one of the few examples I know of. Best thing is this cna happen without a constitutional ammendment which makes it a least THEORETICALLY possible, where a constitutional ammendment is much less likely on campaign finance reform.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      In Spain, there is already gridlock, and nobody has had a chance actually to govern or propose doing anything yet.

      As for no parties at all, that’s simply childish.

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      1. matt Avatar
        matt

        Humor me how no parties is childish? As long as there are other funding mechanisms, tell me how the interests of anyone not already in the power structure benefits from parties?

        Again, can’t happen without some form of pubic funding / matching.

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          What would those other mechanisms fund, exactly?

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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