Talk:List of political parties by country/Archive 2006

message: I completed the Index of political parties project, so now I am able to include in this list an overview of the national parties in the listed countries. The new intro explains which parties are included.  - Electionworld 21:51, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: This party was not forgotten, but is very small and does not fulfill the criteria for listing in this list.Electionworld 19:08, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comprehensive list 

message: Should political alliances between parties (such as the Concertación or Alliance for Sweden) also be included on this page? Both Concertación and the opposition Alliance for Chile are included in the List of political parties in Chile page but not on Chile's section on this page. I have added Alliance for Sweden on the Sweden section, but do say if it is wrong to put it there. Tamino 17:21, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alliances? 

message: I filled this page with the parties in october last year. It helped to get a comprehensive set of articles on political parties. But to update it frequently remains very much work. Therefore I reverted the page to the version that only included links to list of parties by country. It is less work to keep the lists updated in this way. I hope you can agree. Electionworld = Wilfried (talk 22:27, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That sounds very sensible. Tamino 08:22, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Too much work

message: I agree that a list of parties for each country is an overkill for this page. However, I am wondering if it would not be good to include the type of political party composition (Multi-party, Two-party, Dominant-party, Single-party, No-party). This classification seems to be included on the individual country pages (e.g. China and Sweden), and a partial list is provided on Two-party_system (which I think is not the best place for this listing). 
Including this information would add some self-contained content to this page, instead of it serving only as an index (not that an index is not important), and I believe that it should not be that hard to update. While parties come and go, countries do not change between these systems so easily. 
Any thoughts on whether this would be a good or a bad idea?
Torfason 21:25, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Information about the type of party system 

message: Template:Political party list
I made this template 6 months ago & used it on some minor political party pages: people did figure out how to use it; now it just needs more use, lol. Cwolfsheep 20:52, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Template usable on articles 

message: I feel that the US should be listed as multi-party. It is legally a multi-party system, so it should be listed as such. Obviously two parties are much more powerful than the others, but many other parties hold positions at the local and state levels. There's a note to say that there are multiple parties, but listing it as a two party system is misleading. I changed the US to a multi-party system but left the note to explain that two are dominant. I'm not completely sure on the rules here, so if I did something improper by changing it before a consensus is reached please just revert it. I also changed the US Virgin Islands to multi-party, as the article says there are three. --SodiumBenzoate 05:02, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Because this does not concern the legal situation but the real situation. There are no countries that are legally bipartisan. If two parties divide nearly all political posts, are the only ones that hold seats in both houses of parliament and are the only ones to stand a chance at presidential elections, you're two party. (See for instance Arend Lijphart Patterns of Democracy 1999 Yale University Press, p.77). I have reverted this edit. C mon 15:07, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  US two party? 

message: The article says it is multi-party, with so many major parties no single party can gain power without a coalition. Why, then, is it listed as "dominant party"? --SodiumBenzoate 05:15, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Because out of the 167 seats 114 are held by Fifth Republic Movement after the 2005 elections. In the previous elections it held 91 seats. This means that this party dominates parliament. I have reverted this edit. C mon 15:07, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That is a misunderstanding of what is meant by a "dominant party" in this list.  Just because a party wins an overwhelming majority of seats at one (or two) elections does not make it a "dominant party", and the system would still be described as "multi-party".  Such a situation also applies in the United Kingdom, where the Labour Party has won an overwhelming majority of seats since 1997 (three elections), but the system is still clearly "multi-party".   A "dominant party" system is one where the ruling party can be expected to win every election, largely because other parties are denied full access to the media, are not allowed to operate freely, or are forced into subordinate coalitions.  That is clearly not the case in Venezuela, and the entry should be returned to the "multi-party" category. Skinsmoke 13:44, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

text: I base my definition of dominant party on external sources like Alan Ware's standard work Political Parties and Party Systems (Oxford, 1996) p.162 where he defines dominant party system as "More than one 'relevant' party but only one party controls the legislature" and Arend Lijphart Patterns of Democracy (Yale; 1999) p.67 where he gives several examples of dominant party systems: "Examples of the former are pre-1990 Italy with its dominant Christian Democratic party and the three Scandinivian countries with strong Socialist parties". They both point a numerical condition or the way power is organized within the parliament. If one party is very large compared to the other and is thus able to control the legislature it is a dominant party system. I think Venezuela fits into this category very well. C mon 14:17, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

text: No Venezuela doesn't fit this into this category at all well.  The point about pre-1990 Italy was that the Christian Democrats had held power for 45 years.  Similarly, in Scandinavia, the Socialist parties had won the overwhelming majority of elections over a period of 50 or 60 years.  In Venezuela, the ruling party scored a landslide victory in a single election.  That could easily be reversed at the next election (as has happened, for instance, in Canada.  For it to become a dominant party system, it would have to score similar crushing victories in a series of elections over a period of time. Skinsmoke 16:38, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

text: I agree with Skinsmoke on this; apart from that, none of the Scandinavian countries feature a dominant party system as of 2006, incidentally. —Nightstallion (?) 23:16, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Venezuela