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Comment by nickff | Hacker News Reader

I am not an American either, but there is a great deal of work on this subject, and the two-party system is actually one of the most resistant to single-individual or single-party takeover. The reason is that multi-party systems are vulnerable to having a party in power 'promoting diversity' (or something similar), in order to disempower all their opponents, while making it look like they're allowing for more views. Examples of this include quotas for minority representation, and (strategically designed) multi-member voting districts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Political_Surviva...

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I have that book and am a big fan of it, but I think it needs some expansion in the light of the last few decades - not just in the US, but considering Brexit and both major parties subsequently burning through strings of short-lived leaders, coalition politics in places like Europe and Japan etc.

well this book was written in 2003 and current day events in USA clearly contradict this statement : "two-party system is actually one of the most resistant to single-individual or single-party takeover."

With lots of examples of contrary , where multi party system has not devolved in one man shit show.

North Korea, China, Russia, Uganda, etc. are examples of one party taking over; the USA is just a country that has one party (you don't seem to like) with most (but not all) of the political power at the moment.

Japan occupied Korea from 1910 until 1945, at which point administration of the country was split between the USA in the South and the USSR in the north. Following an indecisive war lasted from 1950-53, the Korean peninsula ended up witht he situation we see today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_North_Korea

China's history is more complicated, but is also the product of military conflict following colonial imposition by Japan. To suggest that either country's political system is the outcome of inherent structural weaknesses in multi-party democracy is absurd.

I didn’t say that either of those two were the result of multi-party democracy; I was trying to give the GP a variety of examples of single-party government, with different origins.

Please note that the comment I replied to has been substantially modified since I posted.

I'm sure I'm missing something from the GGP being edited, but when you said 'are examples of one party taking over' it's hard to read that outside of a parliamentary/electoral context.

In multi-party systems, the parties focus more on weakening their opponents and horse trading, as voters are divided and winning elections is dependent on an already razor-thin voting share. Look what's going on in India, for instance.

Parliamentary systems of other countries usually have the advantages of lessons learned since the American revolution. The necessary feature of the American system is countervailing powers, but as a uniparty for corporations or one weakened, it ceases to function and cannot be easily reformed or competed against with a new party. These are flaws addressed to some degree by parliamentary systems where new party(ies) can challenge incumbents more easily.

There are plenty of examples of democracies which began after the American Revolution, and subsequently devolved to single-party states.

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