Comment by vkou
5 days ago
That's the case in any country where a parliamentary body is split so closely.
When you need every vote to get legislature to pass, because you control 51% of a chamber, backbenchers on the ideological fringe of a party, (DINOs and RINOs) have a lot of power.
When you have a majority with comfortable margins, you can care a lot less about what the Sinemas and Manchins and McCains of a party think.
You're looking at the world with your American blinders on. The rest of the world's elected representatives vote with their party or they leave their party. What you're describing is a fundamentally American phenomenon.
But parties typically have to compromise with other parties in their coalition, so it would seem to amount to the same thing (compromise is required to pass legislation)?
Correct. The difference between FPTP and PR systems (Or countries with very strong regional parties) is that in a multi-party PR system, the coalition happens between party, in a FPTP two-party system, the coalition happens within the big tentpole parties.
There are many reasons for why two-party FPTP sucks, but this phenomena is present in multi-party systems, too. And, of course, sometimes politicians end up crossing the aisle, much to the chagrin of the party whip.