{"id":10889,"date":"2013-02-26T12:49:03","date_gmt":"2013-02-26T11:49:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=10889"},"modified":"2013-02-26T17:17:34","modified_gmt":"2013-02-26T16:17:34","slug":"from-israel-to-italy-democracy-is-complicated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=10889","title":{"rendered":"From Israel to Italy, democracy is complicated"},"content":{"rendered":"

Israel has one of the simplest political systems in the democratic world [my explanation here<\/a>] – a single legislative chamber and a national list method for electing it – and yet the outcome of the recent general election on 22 January was so messy that five weeks later<\/em> the country does still not have a new coalition government.<\/p>\n

By contrast, Italy has one of the most complicated political systems in the democratic world\u00a0[my explanation here<\/a>] – two legislative chambers, each with its own bizarre method of election – and the outcome of the general election of Sunday and Monday is that one party has a bare majority in the Chamber of Deputies but nothing like a majority in the Senate (“the worst of nightmares,” said a columnist in the ‘Repubblica’ newspaper).<\/p>\n

Generally, first-past-the-post electoral systems are thought to produce clearer results, but Britain – my explanation of its political system here<\/a> – has its first coalition government, since the Second World War because no single party obtained a majority in the General Election of 2010, and the United States –\u00a0my explanation of its political system here<\/a> – has legislation gridlock because the Democrats control the Presidency and the Senate but the Republicans control the House of Representatives and have a filibusting minority in the Senate.<\/p>\n

The lesson? Democracy can and does take many forms, each system has its strengths and weaknesses, and all systems have their own complications.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"