[icebraining]

We have a Parliamentary system with six parties with at least one seat. For the most part, I'd say it barely has any effect, except maybe on some important social issues (same-sex marriage and drug use decriminalization), but which could have passed without them.

The problem is that the two major parties coalesce the broad ideology-less voters, and while the others have a solid core of supporters, they can never really get a meaningful number to really force change.

I mean, even during one of our worst economical crisis, with unemployment and poverty hitting record highs, the polls barely show any increase for the other parties.