By Ethan Hollander, Wabash College
Parties can factionalize and divide, or they can coalesce and merge around a broader set of interests. Which out of the two does a multiparty system promote? And, in such a scenario, are multiparty systems better? Read on more to find out.
The Multiparty System
The United States has two dominant political parties not because people necessarily want it that way, but rather because the way we hold elections disincentivizes us from voting for small political parties, for fear that we’ll be throwing away our vote.
If the United States had parliamentary coalitions and party-list voting, new political parties would almost certainly emerge. And if the Netherlands went to majority voting, the parties there would likely consolidate, knowing that if they don’t get a sizable chunk of the electorate, they might not get anything at all. (The Netherlands uses a variant of the party-list system, and consistently has a dozen or so political parties in its House of Representatives.)
Promoting More Opportunity
And yet, is that something we should want? Is the multiparty system really better? The answer would be- not necessarily. Although it’s true that a lot of people find the multiparty system appealing, they like that it’s proportional. Multiparty system promotes broader coalitions and provides more opportunity for compromise and consensus. Most of all, it gives voters a lot of choice.
One is a socially conservative tree-hugger? There’s probably a party for them. Another one wants less regulation in the economy but also legalized marijuana? That’s what the Libertarian Party is for—and in a multiparty system, they have a realistic chance!
This article comes directly from content in the video series Democracy and Its Alternatives. Watch it now, on Wondrium.
Lack of Choice in a Two-party System
Hypothetically, let’s presume a voter, one that can be described as a ‘social-justice Catholic’, they want to see restrictions on abortion, but also oppose the death penalty. What’s more, they want to see the government fund private religious schools, which their kids attend, but also want to see more public support for the poor, and for immigrants, in the current two-party system, they are bound to be disappointed. Right now, there just isn’t a political party in the United Sates that represents the full complement of their political interests.
Multiparty systems, on the other hand, gives voters like them more choice. With a dozen political parties, they’re more likely to find a group that represents their particular combination of political interests. Or they might even find one political party that represents the narrow set of issues about which they’re particularly passionate.
That’s probably why multiparty systems usually have higher voter turnout, and higher levels of engagement, than two-party systems. The relative lack of choice in a two-party system can lead to apathy: People get tired of compromising their values, and of voting for what they see as the lesser of two evils. In multiparty systems, political parties can get away with catering to a small but passionate subset of the electorate. And this has a way of enhancing political participation.
Giving Everyone a Voice
Still, the multiparty system’s greatest assets—diversity of representation, proportionality, and choice—these things are also its biggest liabilities. The problem with giving everyone a choice is that you also give everyone a voice. For every 50Plus political party (in the Netherlands) that caters to pensioners and every green party that caters to environmentalists, there’s probably a communist party, or a fascist party, or a party with fringe extremists that want to put an end to the democratic system itself.
The German Nazis rose to prominence in a highly factionalized multiparty democracy. Probably, that’s why people today are so wary of seeing small, populist political movements—of the right and the left—gaining political power. Extremist views often start off as fringe views. And just as the multiparty system gives small factions disproportionate influence, it also gives them a stage—and a path to enter the mainstream.
Representing Extremist Segments
We see this in the multiparty parliaments of Hungary and Poland; Greece and Spain; Austria and Germany; and even the Netherlands, one of the oldest and most stable democracies in the world.
When political parties represent narrow segments of society, they have a tendency to represent extremist segments of society. But then again, no political system is perfect: The two-party system can promote gridlock and us-them thinking, and that too offers a sad path to democratic decay. Ultimately, two-party and multiparty democracies both come with risks and rewards. The choice of which is better remains one of the enduring questions of comparative politics.
It is important to underline an important fact about federalism. It is the administrative division of a country into smaller constituent units. And while it aims to accommodate diversity, it can also complicate decision-making and exacerbate differences.
Common Questions about the Multiparty System
The multiparty system promotes broader coalitions and provides more opportunity for compromise and consensus. Most of all, it gives voters a lot of choice.
Multiparty systems usually have higher voter turnout, and higher levels of engagement, than two-party systems.
The relative lack of choice in a two-party system can lead to apathy: People get tired of compromising their values, and of voting for what they see as the lesser of two evils
