General Politics Discussion

[danbrotherston]

I mean, it’s clear you dislike the concept of parties. But have you any examples of democratic national governments of countries (not micro states) that don’t have parties?

Shortcuts like parties make the governments work. We get away without it at a municipal level because it is small.

Indeed, Montreal and Vancouver have parties. Maybe Toronto should too, but it keeps on getting messed around with by the province.

Federal parties have been funded proportionally to their vote share, though not anymore. So they have been acknowledged in legislation.

I was reading about the history of non-confidence votes and it was pointed out that NZ governments were a lot less stable before there were parties. You just don't know when you are going to lose a confidence vote if you don't have parties. US parties are also much more fractious.

Indeed...a two party system is clearly worse than a more than two party system...(Canada, in alignment with our singular national identity, works to be ever so slightly better than the US in this regard by having 3 main parties)...but having no parties is effectively having 338 parties after the election which is...difficult to manage. Ironic given that a common complaint about European governments is that having 5-10 parties is "too unstable"...(although I've come to believe that that viewpoint is actually "I don't like democracy because working towards consensus with people is hard and it's easier/more effective to just elect a dictator")