Are not you frustrated by the lot many Scandals, Huge Money laundering by govt. officials?
IF your answer is yes read on.. and support the initiative.
We the people of India keep comparing our system of government with
that of the other large, successful democracy - the American one.
The two big questions that keep recurring in such discussions are -
a) Is the presidential form of government better than a parliamentary system
b) Is a two party system better than a multi-party system
I will try answering the second question in today’s post -
The US political landscape while essentially a two party system does
not mandate any candidate to have to belong to either of these two
parties to become part of the electoral process?
There has been a 3rd alternative that has never really been “viable”
but always thought to be a spoiler / the skew factor in what would
otherwise be a simple 2 legged race – remember Ralph Nader of the Green
Party in the 2000 presidential race? There are independent candidates in
America too.
Thus to think that there are only 2 parties in the US is incorrect.
What is correct is however that 2 parties dominate the election
land-scape. One of the reason these 2 parties continue to dominate the
voting landscape is because of the resources at their disposal. Over
these years they have built efficient systems to raise funds, to build
networks with voters and for information dissemination. Thus for any
party to survive and grow against such well entrenched opposition they
would need to have access to similar sources of funds, similar networks
of individuals and so on. Hence it is becoming increasinly difficult for
a third party to become a true alternative. The current alternatives to
the big 2 parties are local and not national phenomena.
In India the political landscape is dominated by 2 parties – the
Congress and the BJP. These parties have alliances at the state of
regional level where regional parties have a more relevant message. It
has been observed that regional parties are having a greater say in
national politics and this is because they provide a greater draw in
local political races.
Today we have a situation where we can create a new political party
because we feel that the existing parties don’t quite represent us and
this is a great freedom. We are not part of a system that creates
barriers of entry to new political parties and stifles their growth.
Freedom is about having the power to choose and having the ability to
choose an existing political party or form a new one is something we
enjoy today and since when did we start giving up our freedoms?
Proponents of the 2 party system do point out that a 2 party system
is inherently more efficient than a multi-party system. They have
pointed out that because people are not able to form splinter groups and
factions there is a chance of more stable governments. I am not an
expert on governmental efficiency or stability but will definitely
endevour to find measures for these parameters and evaluate the
performance of either system of government against the same. Can you
help? Do comment.
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