major political parties japan
Japan the flag flap incident

Is there any invisible force at play in ensuring that most democratic systems have exactly TWO large parties?

I’ve often wondered about this. It is true for all democratic set-ups in the world, at least as of now. Two major political parties dominate something like 70-80% of vote share and usually alternate to form power. The chances of a third front, when it rises suddenly is diminshed. France had a leader called Le Pen who had his peak of success in 2004 and then started “diminishing” again.

How the government is elected decides how many parties will have power. For example, the US and the UK are pretty similiar in their government structure, so that’s how you get those two parties in power. More specifically, the fact that you have to get a majority of the votes to win, over 50%, it automatically makes it so there can only be two viable candidates. The electoral system is also set up in a way that reinforces this: you have to get 270 electoral votes out of the 538, which is more than 50%, once again. If there were to be more than two viable parties, no one could win the initial race, and then there would have to be a run off election to vote between the two top vote getters.

It doesn’t have to be this way in a democracy by ANY means. Germany is a prime example of this and how it has a multiparty system. The ballot gives a list of parties, and you can choose a certain number out of those which ones you like, not just one. The number of seats awarded to a party depends on the percentage they got in the votes.

Israel is also a good example of multiparty systems, in which their government elects so many different parties that they have to end up coming together to form coalitions just to get things passed and get things done in their government.

The downside to multiparty systems is that you still end up having two parties that pretty much dominate the legislature, but the upside is that they HAVE to listen to the smaller parties in order to appease and get their votes on issues. So bills are shaped a little differently because these smaller parties do get a little say in the process.