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nice how everyone is part of it, whether they like it or not
Luckily, I have just watched this yesterday to be able to understand it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co7FsOYSxMo
TL;DW (weird typing this after a ‘TLDR news’ video): The Danish parliament got rather fragmented after the latest elections.
Honestly, a fragmented parliament is a good thing. It means there’s lots of parties, each representing different people’s needs, instead of forcing people to choose from two parties, usually based on a single, key issue.
With multiple parties, you get coalitions where each party gets their say, but also has to compromise. And what’s a better outcome for democracy than a compromise that everyone finds acceptable, yet everyone is equally unhappy about? That’s proper equality.
Obviously certain issues can’t easily fall into that simplistic approach, but in most non-extreme topics, the ability to agree to an outcome even if it’s not wholly your preferred one. Why? Because such approach leads to communications, and amicability to another’s point of view. It’s usually the inability or unwillingness to understand one another is what leads to extremism.
Honestly, a fragmented parliament is a good thing.
There’s a balance to strike though. As long as there are enough parties willing to collaborate that you get a kind of semi-stable majority coalition, all is good. There have been situations though (e.g. recently in Belgium I think?) where no-one is able to build any kind of stable coalition, and you just end up with a government that’s unable to get anything done.
The Danes have a long history of having very many parties in their parliament (I think their cutoff for “equalisation mandates” is at 2 %), so their politicians are generally quite good at finding compromises and building coalitions. I think that long-term, having this kind of parliament is healthier for the political climate, since it forces everyone to compromise much more often, as well as making it easier for voters to express more nuanced opinions, and forcing voters to consider a broader spectrum of options.
For my own part (Norwegian), I’ve only ever voted for left-wing parties, but which of the parties I vote for can change between elections. I know that these parties will typically collaborate on most topics, so I can use my vote to push that block in the direction I want. It also becomes easier to get cross-block collaborations, because you can have cases where e.g. the “environmentalist” party on the left and right collaborate, or where the more centre-leaning parties of one block collaborate on certain issues with the other block.
Here in Sweden it used to be praxis for parties in parliament to abstain rather than voting no if they opposed a proposed government for whom they had no better alternative.
Then the nazis came into parliament and threw that praxis out the window and thus ruined a system that had worked great for over half a century.
With multiple parties, you get coalitions where each party gets their say, but also has to compromise.
in the best case scenario. Worst case scenario is constant gridlock
The worst case scenario also being the most common.
Okay, but it’s Denmark, one of the most efficiently run countries in the world.
In fact, the top rankings of global economies by living standards are completely dominated by multi-party democracies, while two-party semi-democracies and dictatorships find it much more difficult to pass effective legislation.
Then Hopefully it will go well.
Out of curiosity, I understand it was set up by the party in charge to cement their power due to the us antagonism over Greenland, did they succeed?
Not really though. The USA issue wasn’t discussed much if at all during the election campaigns, because parties from both sides are in agreement on this. It wouldn’t have moved any votes.
Also, the foreign minister who managed the issue well is not from the party in charge. Perhaps he personally benefitted from it, but all the parties in the previous coalition (including his) lost votes, mainly because voters didn’t like the unusual coalition. They’re going to do it again though. She surely didn’t call the election for his sake.
The timing probably had more to do with local news than international. The topics of water pollution, animal welfare, climate and food prices were already recently present before she called the election. It made sense that way.
The social democrats were leading a coalition in the previous government. Their leader called an early election in the hopes of capitalizing on the Greenland issue. They perhaps did not perform as well in the recent election as they hoped, but they are poised to lead the next coalition government nonetheless.
seems like an OK outcome, thank you for clarifying, and understanding the shitty way I posted that question.
I was thinking rather similarly. While I’m definitely not happy seeing far right parties emerge this vehemently, I’d rather have something like this than the quasi two-party system we have in my country where you either vote for pure corruption and Orwellian shit, or the only other option which might be somewhat
betterless shit (or the other few parties under 5%, potentially decreasing the less shit party’s chance to finally take control from the authoritarian crap).However, in my experience, these situations usually gravitate toward another quasi two-party system, but it might be just a local thing.
The German pride flag is half brown these days
Somewhat fake news as the partys aren’t shown in their chosen color, but in the color that is associated with their behavior.
Label it.
They’re shown in the colors chosen by Die Tageszeitung, the 7th largest German newspaper.
The TAZ isn’t fake news, they’re well-researched and follow the press codex for fair and truthful journalism.
They’re just not centrist “all sides are equal” news either.The issue is you posting this image without sufficient context. The TAZ using it is perfectly fine and definitely not fake news. The issue only starts when you remove context and try to show that more than half of the seats are virtually brown when the party colors just don’t line up.
If only the SPD got more votes it’d be your national flag
It used to be like that in West Germany from 1949 till 1990. The good old days.
Only the CDU (black), SPD (red) and FDP (yellow) ever made it into parlament.
But then those pesky Green punks appeared and ruined everything!
They even wore sneakers in the Reichstag, can you imagine?How unpatriotic! Sad!
not many parliaments are a source of pride these days…
I guess it’s time to stop doing coalitions for the Danish.
If you think this is an effective form of government, you’re insane.
A country with a government that represents the varied opinions of its populus? No I want two shitty parties so that I don’t have to think, and have almost no real choices in elections.
Yeah, we all know what a dysfunctional government Denmark has, compared to countries with 2-party systems.
Yeah but the US runs on a dysfunctional system by design.
Laughing hard in Danish
Notices user comes from .ml
What’s your ideal type of government ? The one perfect party ?
Broad coalition governments have proven to be some of the most stable globally, as well as significantly more representative of the nations they represent.
I’d love to hear your arguments about what specifically make you think it’s ineffective, and why other popular forms of government don’t have that problem
Dictatorships have very effective governments.
Stable, too. At least until the dictator dies.
I definitely think there are things to be learnt from how eg. China does government. But not copied verbatim
Any political party has a variety of “factions” that have different opinions on different topics. The kind of system you’re seeing here is what happens when these “factions” have a lower bar for splitting out and forming their own party. In practice, this means that instead of having a binary or ternary split in the parliament, you get a smoother transition between the extremes, so it’s much easier to find parties that will collaborate.
If you have only two or three parties, the distance between them will typically be so large that they can’t really collaborate on anything. However, when you have 6-8 parties, you’ll typically be able to find a group of 3-4 parties that are able to form a majority compromise on any given issue. Collaboration becomes more fluid (instead of constant “us vs. them”), compromises become easier, and voters get to express a more nuanced opinion at the polls (not just “left vs. right”, but “I want left-wing tax policies, combined with this specific environmental profile, and these specific stances on education”).
This only becomes dysfunctional if the parties/politicians are unable to collaborate and compromise effectively. However, countries with a parliament like the one you see here will typically foster politicians that are able to collaborate and compromise. You won’t survive as a politician in this kind of parliament if you’re a hardliner that refuses to budge on anything.
