[Swizec]

That's why real democracies have more than 2 [real/major] parties. Governments are a lot more interesting and concensusy when they're made up of 23%, 27%, 24%, and 26% for example. Suddenly there's no single majority to ram its will down everyone else's throat.

[saretired]

Except that cases are hardly rare where a small minority party becomes crucial for forming a government and winds up wielding power far beyond its numerical support among the population. And its not rare for countries to be unable to form a government for months or even years.

[Eupolemos]

That's probably because their system is flawed.

In Denmark, we never have to wait for long. Whenever those in power want to pass something big or important in parliament, they seek a broad support - otherwise, it'll just get repealed whenever they lose power.

Everything certainly isn't perfect here (yes, it can be darn annoying when center parties hold too much power - but then again, it is a stabilizing factor), but healthy mechanics can get you a long way with democracy.

I feel a lot of people in this thread point out cases where democracy doesn't work. That's easy. But maybe it would be better to look for cases where it does work and learn from it.

[douche]

Part of the problem with the US is that it is just so damned big and so diverse. I' not sure democracy scales well.

To take your example of Denmark; Denmark has less population, and half again as much area as Massachusetts. Comparisons between the US as a whole, and individual European countries don't always make the most sense; the more appropriate comparison would be to the EU, to have the same kind of multitudes of disparate people under a common banner.

[794CD01]

It's much easier to agree on which cases are failures than which ones are successful.

[eli_gottlieb]

God forbid society should invest in the interests of small minorities occasionally to win their support for the majority interest?

[x0137294744532]

Imagine party A has 23%, party B has 28%, and party C has 49%. Party A and B join forces; they decide per consensus on how they would vote in parliament. Since they have together 51% and vote as one, they don't need to consult party C, even though it's the party with the most votes.

We have again a situation where 51% crushes the 49%.

[Someone]

That's only true if party A and party B agree on every decision, in which case you simply have two parties, "AB" and C.

Also, in some countries, there are way more than 3 factions (over a dozen in Belgium and the Netherlands), making it less likely that the same subset of parties will find itself in agreement every time.

The effect of having that many factions is that the majority part of parliament will always take the minority opinion into account because they know that, in the next vote, they may be part of that minority.

Of course, that is not a guarantee; I think it is part of a nation's culture. Other countries may value the short-term "let's win this vote" way above the longer term "we have to live in this country together".

That certainly seems the case in the USA, where "in four years time, we might end up with the shorter straw." doesn't seem to play a big role in politics (?anymore?)