Timberwoof's Essays

Timberwoof Essays Paty Gap
Political Party Deficit

Growing up in the United States I learned the importance of the two-party system in providing an alternative to the single political party of the Communist regimes. I had heard that Germany had a few more political parties and suggested to someone once that the Republican and Democratic Parties should each split up into two, to better represent their separate constituencies. The person I spoke with looked at me in horror and objected, "But that would destroy the two-party system!"

I searched the Web and gathered information about the representative democracies of nine countries of Europe, North America, and Japan. For each country I tabulated the number of inhabitants, number of representatives to the upper and lower houses of parliament[1], and the number of political parties. Here's a chart of what I found.

Country	Population	Repre- sentatives in Upper House	Repre- sentatives in Lower House	Repre- sentatives Combined	Constituents per Repre- sentative in Upper Hosue	Constituents per Repre- sentative in Lower Hosue	Constituents Per Repre- sentative	Major Political Parties	10,000 Constituents per Political Party
USA	284,400,000	100	435	535	2,844,000	654,000	53,160,000	2	14220
Japan	126,800,000	247	480	727	513,000	264,000	17,440,000	7	1811
Germany	82,100,000	69	662	662	1,190,000	124,000	12,300,000	5	1642
Britain	59,800,000	1326	659	[2] 659	45,098	91,000	9,070,000	5	1196
Australia	19,400,000	76	150	226	255,000	129,000	8,580,000	4	485
Canada	31,100,000	112	301	413	278,000	103,000	7,530,000	5	622
France	59,700,000	321	577	898	186,000	103,000	6,650,000	8	746
Italy	57,900,000	315	630	945	184,000	92,000	6,130,000	4	1448
Ireland	3,800,000	60	166	226	63,000	23,000	1,680,000	6	63

A picture is worth a thousand words, so I made a bar graph.

It may be argued that since the American Senate and House of Representatives are the legislative bodies of the Federal Government, I should count the number of representatives in each state's houses of parliament. But the number of political parties would still be only two.

The other countries in this study have approximately ten to twenty million constituents per political party. The United States has a 140 million constituents per party. (I am not counting the minor parties because at the scale of the Democratic and Republican parties, they are insignificant.)

How can a country as large and diverse as the United States be served adequately by only two political parties? I believe that it can't, and thus I am in favor of destroying the two-party system.

[1] What in the United States are called the Senate and the House of Representatives server the same purpose as what in other countries are called Parliament. Surprisingly, Americans sometimes object when the legislative branch of government is called a Parliament, even though that is what it is.

[2] Since the members of the House of Lords are not elected, they do not directly represent their constituents. If they were counted, this number would be 3,010,000. The members of the Bundesrat, the upper house of Germany's parliamnet, are appointed by the regional governments. But since these governments are elected by the peope, the Bundesrat counts as an elected body.