Re: The Two Party System

Posted by Bruce Sherwood on Nov 08, 2012; 6:47pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/The-Two-Party-System-tp7580966p7580978.html

I'll comment again that in 1960 in Italy I was at first intrigued that parties actually stood for something, whereas Republicans and Democrats seemed Tweedledum and Tweedledee. However, at least at that time, Italian politics was pretty dysfunctional in part because the hard ideological positions of the many parties prevented compromise, and compromise is at the heart of functional politics.

Given our current situation in the US, gridlock would seem to be a property of hard positions, independent of how many parties there are.

And Italian politics is still dysfunctional.....

Bruce

On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 9:36 AM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

So I wonder what's it like in a true multi-party system like most of Europe has?  Is it effective? interesting? confusing? fun? Are the populations aware of Arrow?  Does it avoid grid-lock?

   -- Owen

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