American and European histories are intertwined. Not identical, but with many similarities.
I am a structural philosopher and I like to look at political structures. If we add Canada, US, and Mexico to the European soup of political systems, then the US is indeed quite fascinating, but still within the larger family.
In fact, the US system was so good that the Germans decided to mimic our political system. Okay, they adapted it in one spot to make it more honest. Today, Germany is that modern nation with the most experience in different political systems. And we should pay attention.
In the European North, Scandinavian countries have just one House — that’s it. They vote proportionally.
Germany, France, UK, vote in districts, though only the UK appears to mimic our two-party system with a coalition government on average just once a century. Other than that, just two parties like here. They do have two levels, where we have three (House, Senate, Presidency).
The French already said it: The more things change, the more they stay the same. So they have the most intricate levels (with a Presidency and a Prime-Minister vying for the lead). But they vote in two rounds and in the first round voters always vote their political color. Then, the parties negotiate with each other based on that outcome, and retreat their candidates in one district in exchange for getting a better chance to win in another district.
Germany’s democracy is totally cool (for a large nation). It votes in districts, but the overall vote is the guiding principle. If ten percent of the voters voted for Green, and Green won zero districts, they still get ten percent of the seats. They just add seats to the number of district seats. Very smart. This way, gerrymandering makes no sense at all. It’s totally honest.
To avoid too many little parties (Hitler benefited from that setup though he never won the majority of votes), the Germans put a 5 percent threshold in place. If a party doesn’t get 5 percent or more votes, they won’t get a seat. That automatically limits the number of parties and the ones that are present have some gravity to themselves.
Mix this in with many smaller European nations with full proportional voting in which all votes count, then you can see that in Europe particularly the UK voters don’t get their fair representation. Their system is much like our system (minus the presidency). They have a class society, more than other western European nations. We say we don’t have a class society, but let’s be honest, we do.
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Look at Canada and Mexico. Canada has two layers (and a paper queen), and since it is stretched widely and thinly north of our border (and because they have a strong and concentrated French population as well), they have four/five parties. That’s good for the democratic outcome.
Mexico has three national parties, and my guess is that both for Mexico and Canada, having the US as their all-important neighbor with just two parties makes them pick a third and fourth party just to be different. In our world, being different can be a benefit.
They vote in districts like we do. But they manage to avoid the duopoly.
In this large family of different political setups, only two nations have a duopoly: UK and US. Everything gets decided after people enter through just two different doors. That sets us up for limited representation. And that explains why the US leads the world (in red and blue) and lags behind the western world (in yellow and full color understanding).
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So, Umair, I like your philosophical article, but I am claiming you are stretching out the extremes a bit too far, while also doing an almost American thing with keeping it too simple in rather complex ways. You make red-and-blue strokes to tell us the story of the world (and your puppy), but you forget to color in the yellow.
You must color in yellow to make the story complete.
Are there ways to make our system be more honest? Yes, and it’s even US Constitution approved. But let me put the article about the Germans here:
Keep writing, Umair. Your heart is in the right place. All we need to do is add some yellow to your palette.
