[vog]

That's strange. Here in Germany it works out quite well. Sure, we do have two large parties as well (SPD and CDU), but there are several smaller parties which do have significant results, and hence significant influence.

The classic example was the smaller party FDP some decades ago. Although SPD and CDU each had many more seats than FDP, both needed the FDP to have more than 50% of the seats. So whoever the FDP joined with, that party became part of the government, while the other became opposition. Some people even subjected that this was too much power/influence for such a small party. (Then, more smaller parties received a significant amount of votes, and things became even more complicated, but also more interesting!)