Comment by md_
5 years ago
Hey Chris,
Maybe tone doesn't come across well in written communication, but dismissing this as "clearly nonsense" without bothering to engage with the merit of the claim or, seemingly, even read the link seems disrespectful, to say the least.
Do you want to rephrase? :)
Because there’s sooo many counter-examples. People see the word ‘law’ and they think it’s like physics but it isn’t like that.
I wonder if you read the linked Wikipedia entry, which includes:
> In political science, Duverger's law holds that plurality-rule elections (such as first past the post) structured within single-member districts tend to favor a two-party system.... In the course of further research, other political scientists began calling the effect a "law" or principle.
(Emphasis, of course, added.)
The article goes on to note counterexamples, to drive home the point that this is not, as you say, like a law of physics.
Perhaps a more constructive phrasing you could have tried would be something like,
"As noted in the linked article, there are many counterexamples, so while as you say first-past-the-post may encourage two-party systems, it doesn't preclude more parties from existing."
This would have been a more polite phrasing, one that shows you read and comprehended both my comment and the article I linked to, and one that would not exhibit the logical fallacies your original comment does (to argue that the existence of counterexamples precludes any causal relationship between first-past-the-post and two-party systems).
Hope that helps. Have a nice rest of the weekend.
Aside from the UK (which does have two major parties) and Canada (which has only had one of two parties in power for almost all of its history), what other examples are you thinking of? There are very few countries that still use FPTP, the vast majority use some kind of preferential or proportional representation system.
> Aside from the UK (which does have two major parties)
In the UK:
A small but national party was in government a few elections ago. They had multiple ministers and could influence the policy narrative.
In the previous government, the DUP, a tiny regional party had a big influence on major policies that mattered to them.
The SNP, a regional party, has wiped away the national parties and now has many seats in the national parliament, and was recently part of frustrating the main party from doing anything.
This is all possible, even with FPTP.
Imagine if a party like the Greens, or the SNP, or the LD, but in the US, controlled a few seats in the Senate or the House of Representatives - think how much power they'd become king-making between the two parties. They'd be able to insist on a couple of their key policies for the deal and be able to enact real changes.
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