via Richard Winger at Ballot Access News:
Among the fifty most populous nations in the world, the only two countries in which only two political parties are represented in the nation’s legislative lower house are the United States and Nigeria. If “two-party system” is defined to mean a nation with only two parties represented in the national legislature, then it is clear that the “two-party system” has been rejected by governments and voters all over the world.
Among the fifty most populous countries, only one country bans all political parties and holds no legislative elections whatsoever: Saudi Arabia. Only one of the fifty most populous countries has non-partisan elections for the national legislature: Iran. Although political parties, both legal and illegal, exist in Iran, the election system is non-partisan.
Two countries ban all political parties except the ruling party: China and Vietnam. The May 1 2015 printed Ballot Access News will have a chart showing the number of parties represented in each country’s lower legislative body, although the chart will only include the 50 most populous countries.
Shame on the US establishment, inclding our poor excuse for journalists in the establishment media, for allowing this farce and facade game to continue this long as we become increasingly financially and morally bankrupt as a country.
The two party system is a con man’s shell game, much like Nigerian 419 scams and three card monte.
A cynical reader might suggest that an even more dubious distinction shared by the two countries is the fact that both the United States and Nigeria are currently experiencing some of the most widespread income inequality in the entire world, and that both nations currently have more than 43 million people living in poverty.
The U.S. will eventually surpass Nigeria in that regard.
Recent elections in both countries, of course, have been marred by unforeseen outside influences, as evidenced by the violent interference by the militant Boko Haram in the African nation of Nigeria and by Wall Street’s continuing and unprecedented influence over the electoral process here in the United States — a nation where cash is king.
China’s parliament has a few hand-picked independent members, but there are no parties in that body other than the Communist Party. Oddly enough, it is North Korea that has two dummy parties besides the ruling Workers Party in the legislature. However in North Korea there is always just one candidate on the ballot, and there is no secrecy at the polling place.
Right, I wouldn’t expect anybody to count China as anything but a one-party state. But if some PRC flunkie was challenged on it, the dummy-front parties are what he would point to.
USSR had “opposition parties” that were just dummy fronts for the Communists, and no one thought otherwise.
China does have a variety of minor “parties” that are nominally in permanent coalition with Communist Party of China, including a couple that have reserved seats in the various multi-layered cake of PRC legislatures. Vietnam used to have the same arrangement, but from what I could find doesn’t have any such “parties” today outside the Communist Party.
I was wanting to to find this figure for my last piece on multi-party politics, to underscore how unique the US really is in that regard. But I didn’t have the time or inclination to go digging through that many legislatures to do a count. Leave it to Richard Winger to do the number-crunching footwork and come up with an excellent point for third-parties in the US to use. Excellent job.