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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 14th, 2023

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  • I actually think a major part of the problem in US politics is that the balance of power is effectively upside down compared to most modern democracies.

    Here in Ireland for example, we have three levels just like you: the Dáil is like the House of Representatives, the Seanad is the senate, and we both have presidents. However the head of government here is the leader of the largest party in the Dáil, and the other two are really figureheads. It means that other parties are way more involved in government and lessens the tendencies for a single figurehead to run rampant, changing stuff to suit himself every 4-8 years.

    Ireland also uses PR, but we’ve actually gotten quite good at the vote counts, and we probably don’t have the same threat of bad actors in some other countries.

    It’s the same in the UK - parliament is the actual government, while the House of Lords and the king are at this stage vestigial. But they use fptp, which is making it difficult to remove a minority government for the last dozen years or so.