[oblio]

Most European countries have a multi-party system, usually due to not using first past the post voting systems.

As a result you have more parties, more diversity of choice and less polarization and of course more competition. Parties can actually go away and they do, usually every few decades.

The downside is that you can get deadlocks as no party can get a majority sometimes, even after making coalitions with smaller parties.

Still better end result than the US end result, in my opinion.

[blorsh]

You also have two parties, the "government" and the "opposition". They are created after the election. At that point, the voters no longer get any say. The voters don't even know what they will get.

Consider a situation that starts with 12 parties. One gets 45% support, and the others each get 5% support. When the 12 parties merge into the 2 that will actually govern, that party with 45% may be the loser. The other 11 can merge to become a party with 55% of the power. The party which is most popular by far is thus locked out of power.

[chimeracoder]

First-past-the-post is bad, but it's not the problem here. Almost every city, state, and county election across the country is run under first-past-the-post rules, and only New York has the level of inter-party corruption that New York does. As I explain above, it's specific to New York and the way parties have written laws to preserve their stranglehold on power.

[walshemj]

You also get small parties extorting billions in pork for their support or pet project in the UK the DUP and Libdems in the previous coalition did this and likewise the greens in Germany.

[talideon]

We haven't had a single-party government in Ireland since the '50s, and it hasn't done us a lick of harm. Quite the opposite, in fact, as junior parties tend to be a moderating influence on the senior one. If anything, it's typically the junior party that gets shafted the most when the elections come.

If you want real pork extortion, then you need a minority government propped up by a deal with an opposition party. That's what you have with the DUP.

[walshemj]

Exactly my point though quite my comment was voted down I wasn't expecting many hardline brexiters on here.

And Ireland has had major problems like Bertie Ahern and Charles James Haughey?

[talideon]

Those two gobshites are more a consequence of political culture, especially within FF, than voting system.

[TheOtherHobbes]

The DUP and LibDems are examples of FPTP distortions in the UK.

The “extortion’ by the Greens doesn’t seem to have damaged Germany unduly, except by forcing it down the path to so-cheap-it’s-almost-free renewable energy.

[Paradigma11]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Germany "According to Forbes, the IEA reports that in 2015, German prices were 17.9 cents per kwh for industry, and 39.5 cents per kwh for residential customers, versus 7 and 12.5 cents respectively in the U.S."

[oblio]

In what measure is that a result of bad policy and or a result of a desire to promote thriftiness? After all gas in the US is cheap and in Europe it's expensive and I think a major part of the price are excises meant to discourage consumpation.

As a side note, the EU is also pushing heavily energy efficiency for homes, this might be related.

[walshemj]

Given that was the direct result of a panic over tsunami's in japan and guess what Germany doesn't have much of a coast line.

The early mothballing of Germanys nuclear reactor which where being phased out is the direct cause of the increase.

[germanier]

The German nuclear phase-out and funding of renewable energy development through electricity taxes was started in 2000, a decade before the Fukushima event and as a direct result of a (by then) two decade old environmental movement.

The German government decided to extend the lifetime of some reactors shortly before the event but that plan was immediately scrapped again. Risk of tsunamis itself were not the reason but rather that the public overwhelmingly did not trust the operators to follow safe procedures given that the Japenese operator didn't. But again, nuclear power was really unpopular even before that.

[walshemj]

no its just rare in FPTP compared to PR systems which can give minority parties an advantage their small vote does not deserve