Matthew Ing's List: Decline of Parliamentary Democracy

• In a parliamentary system, the executive must, by definition, command a majority of the legislature — even if, as in minority or coalition governments, it is not all of one party.
• In a presidential system, the executive and the legislative branches are separately elected. Each may be controlled by a different party, and each may legitimately claim to represent the people.
• o work, then, the U.S. system depends upon a measure of bipartisanship.
• If in the U.S. the executive and the legislative branches are deadlocked, in Canada the executive has almost wholly consumed the legislature:
• Both have become hostage to small groups of voters, the objects of vastly disproportionate amounts of the parties’ time and attention. In both, the parties are sharply divided on regional lines.
• • nullEach democracy is held hostage to small group of party MEMBERS - those who can muster the numbers to control the primaries.
    
    In Canada, the power brokers are the executive-cum-party-leadership. In the States, it's whatever faction sways the party vote. -- 2013-10-12
    Re regional lines:
    Canada: west vs. east over natrl resources and equalization; Quebec vs the rest over federalism. Other regional differences are inconsequential, given the distribution of seats.
    
    US: broadly, north vs south. Though gerrymandering throws a wrench into everything. -- 2013-10-12
    
• suggest these trends are not accidental, but have to do with a feature the two share: the first past the post electoral system.
• • Canada and the centre: I agree that this is where elections are won. But why?
    
    Is it because we have higher voter turnout? Because our politics are not as polarized? 
    
    US and the fringes: I do not understand. Is it because the US has become too used to a two-party system? Is it that, in so gerrymandered an electoral map, it is nigh-impossible for a third party to get in edge-wise and reflect the values of disaffected voters?
    The argument of polarization cannot hold too much water; in Canada, the right appears to have, if not solidified, then at least to have formed a rather resilient alliance. It's an alliance held together by a number of different threads (bordering, maybe of Wittgenstein's family resemblances): fiscal conservatism, old-values Conservatives (playing up the patriot card?), social conservatives. On a regional level, it's the unification of the right-wing West with the red Tories and remnants of the Harris Tories in Ontario.
• • He overexaggerates the situation in Canada. Our riding boundaries are determined by independent commissions.
    
    I do not have the data to prove it, but I dare say we do not "write off" swathes of ridings to the extent that the Americans do. After all, if we seek to appeal to the masses in the centre, how can we afford to ignore those very ridings where they live? I speak, of course, of the crucial suburban ridings in which the Tories have a commanding lead and where pressure must be brought to bear.
    
    Ontario, in general, is the battleground. Quebec comes into play, too, as parties jockey to become home to the federalist vote.

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