[ChocolateGod]

> the two party system in most Western countries

Pretty sure Europe is mostly multi-party systems where coalitions are the norm, so including North America the only two western countries where dual-party is the norm is the United Kingdom and United States (both use first-past-the-post which encourages dual-party systems).

That said, I agree on two party systems promoting toxicity, the Brexit debate in the UK which was a near-perfect 50/50 split was an extremely toxic period in UK politics and heavily influenced the 2019 election. It has got somewhat better in the last couple of years though.

[mike_hearn]

Brexit wasn't a party issue, it was a referendum, so citing it as an example of two-party politics is a bit odd. Other European countries have also had referendums on aspects of the EU that were extremely bitter, often because the pro-EU side lost and then simply ignored the results/asked again.

It wasn't a near-perfect 50/50 split either. It was 52/48, which yielded a large margin of ~1.8M more votes to leave. Referendums in societies that only have them rarely will always be somewhere around the middle point, of course, as if there was already a clear majority in favour of one direction then it'd have been implemented already without the need for a referendum.