Hacker News Reader

I don't think it can be figured out. Every democratic country has political parties.

True but I think much could be done to blunt their impact if we collectively put our minds to it.

People really love to create associations, and if "parties" are banned, "movements" or "clubs" that are "totally-not-parties" will take their place.

We are too gregarious to prevent emergence of political groups. A parliament of cats would probably be more individualistic, but not that of humans.

You don't need to outlaw parties, just remove any privileges and powers they have.

Voting system reform would probably mitigate the worst aspects of political parties.

Egypt after ousting Mubarak held an election where a third of seats were reserved for independents. Most winning candidates were just Muslim Brotherhood affiliated. I suspect the military interim government did that deliberately to justify their later coup.