An election system which encourages many relatively small parties getting seats
In systems where many small parties need to form a coalition in order to create a government, something like this happens organically. Since no party can get enough seats to pass a decision just by their own votes, they need to bargain with other parties: in the upcoming year, we will support your position X which is unimportant to us, in exchange to you supporting position Y that we care about.
The amount of demands that a party may require is roughly proportional to their size—if you got 60⁄200 seats and are bargaining for coalition membership, you can insist getting more things your way than the party that got 10⁄200 seats can—but it also means that a small party whose voters care really strongly about a particular issue can swing things their way by bartering themselves support on that issue in exchange for collaborating on everything else.
For example, the Swedish People’s Party of Finland was part of every government formed in Finland between 1979 and 2015 despite hovering around only 10⁄200 seats in each election, because their primary agenda was protecting the position of Swedish as Finland’s second official language and being willing to cooperate on almost anything else in exchange. (They got kicked out after the 2015 elections, when the right-wing True Finns party got lots of seats and didn’t want to collaborate with the filthy Swedish-speakers. But then after the 2019 elections, the SPPF was in government again.)
A big part of the motivation for this question was that I’ve had a longstanding anti-two-party stance, due to the apparent dysfunction of two-party politics in America. But I was talking with some people about it recently, who were of the opinion that many-party systems in other countries were not much more sane/effective. This got me thinking about ways in which my ideal could be compromised. Although my question mainly talked about a two-party scenario, the real motivation was to “avoid shenanigans” more generally.
The time-traveler example, in particular, was motivated by a claim that coalition governments of the sort you describe can give minority groups too much of a voice, if the minorities end up being tie-breakers for divisive issues.
So a very pertinent question, which I have little information on, is: do many-party systems have any statistically demonstrable benefits over two-party?
Another question I have: what primarily determines which places have many-party vs two-party systems, in reality? In theory, plurality voting and instant runoff both create two-party dynamics in the long run (for different reasons). But I’m not familiar with the practical differences in governments which have actually managed to sustain many parties in power. What kind of election do these governments use?
Mostly, I think, voting systems designed to ensure that parties get a share of seats that’s proportional to their number of votes (“party-list proportional representation” is what Wikipedia calls it). E.g. the D’Hondt method seems pretty popular (and is used in Finland as well as several other countries).
As for whether it’s actually better overall—well, I grew up with it and am used to it so I prefer it over something that would produce a two-party system. ;) But I don’t have any very strong facts to present over which system is actually best.
An election system which encourages many relatively small parties getting seats
In systems where many small parties need to form a coalition in order to create a government, something like this happens organically. Since no party can get enough seats to pass a decision just by their own votes, they need to bargain with other parties: in the upcoming year, we will support your position X which is unimportant to us, in exchange to you supporting position Y that we care about.
The amount of demands that a party may require is roughly proportional to their size—if you got 60⁄200 seats and are bargaining for coalition membership, you can insist getting more things your way than the party that got 10⁄200 seats can—but it also means that a small party whose voters care really strongly about a particular issue can swing things their way by bartering themselves support on that issue in exchange for collaborating on everything else.
For example, the Swedish People’s Party of Finland was part of every government formed in Finland between 1979 and 2015 despite hovering around only 10⁄200 seats in each election, because their primary agenda was protecting the position of Swedish as Finland’s second official language and being willing to cooperate on almost anything else in exchange. (They got kicked out after the 2015 elections, when the right-wing True Finns party got lots of seats and didn’t want to collaborate with the filthy Swedish-speakers. But then after the 2019 elections, the SPPF was in government again.)
Interesting, thanks!
A big part of the motivation for this question was that I’ve had a longstanding anti-two-party stance, due to the apparent dysfunction of two-party politics in America. But I was talking with some people about it recently, who were of the opinion that many-party systems in other countries were not much more sane/effective. This got me thinking about ways in which my ideal could be compromised. Although my question mainly talked about a two-party scenario, the real motivation was to “avoid shenanigans” more generally.
The time-traveler example, in particular, was motivated by a claim that coalition governments of the sort you describe can give minority groups too much of a voice, if the minorities end up being tie-breakers for divisive issues.
So a very pertinent question, which I have little information on, is: do many-party systems have any statistically demonstrable benefits over two-party?
Another question I have: what primarily determines which places have many-party vs two-party systems, in reality? In theory, plurality voting and instant runoff both create two-party dynamics in the long run (for different reasons). But I’m not familiar with the practical differences in governments which have actually managed to sustain many parties in power. What kind of election do these governments use?
Mostly, I think, voting systems designed to ensure that parties get a share of seats that’s proportional to their number of votes (“party-list proportional representation” is what Wikipedia calls it). E.g. the D’Hondt method seems pretty popular (and is used in Finland as well as several other countries).
As for whether it’s actually better overall—well, I grew up with it and am used to it so I prefer it over something that would produce a two-party system. ;) But I don’t have any very strong facts to present over which system is actually best.