Most of the anglosphere outside the US inherited the Westminster system from the UK. Look at France instead, for example. It totally avoids that issue, but instead there are too many different (along more than one axis) parties not willing to collaborate with each other, so forming a government and passing a budget is very difficult
so forming a government and passing a budget is very difficult
I feel like that can’t be the core problem of their system, since budgets do get passed, governments do get formed, and policies do get enacted. Somebody is clearly getting their way.
A look at their Senate indicates a giant block of the sort of sort of squishy Conservative Liberals that European countries are all well-known for (SR), a smaller group of squishy centrists somewhat to their left (UC), and then a variety of different socialist parties, with a few seats going to other centrists of different stripes. The ruling government in the national assembly is formed from two liberal parties and a pro-EU liberal-conservative party. It’s supported by a socialist party and a “center-right to right-wing” party, neither of which seems to have sufficient influence or will to meaningfully alter the status quo, and opposed by RN, the largest party in the National Assembly, which has almost as many seats as all three governing parties combined, alongside some socialist parties that weren’t interested in playing ball and a handful of fringe regional parties whose policies are impenetrable to me as a non-Frenchman. Which seems about in line with the various non-America anglosphere countries in terms of who has power and who doesn’t.
Most of the anglosphere outside the US inherited the Westminster system from the UK. Look at France instead, for example. It totally avoids that issue, but instead there are too many different (along more than one axis) parties not willing to collaborate with each other, so forming a government and passing a budget is very difficult
I feel like that can’t be the core problem of their system, since budgets do get passed, governments do get formed, and policies do get enacted. Somebody is clearly getting their way.
A look at their Senate indicates a giant block of the sort of sort of squishy Conservative Liberals that European countries are all well-known for (SR), a smaller group of squishy centrists somewhat to their left (UC), and then a variety of different socialist parties, with a few seats going to other centrists of different stripes. The ruling government in the national assembly is formed from two liberal parties and a pro-EU liberal-conservative party. It’s supported by a socialist party and a “center-right to right-wing” party, neither of which seems to have sufficient influence or will to meaningfully alter the status quo, and opposed by RN, the largest party in the National Assembly, which has almost as many seats as all three governing parties combined, alongside some socialist parties that weren’t interested in playing ball and a handful of fringe regional parties whose policies are impenetrable to me as a non-Frenchman. Which seems about in line with the various non-America anglosphere countries in terms of who has power and who doesn’t.