from EU: left and right are pretty volatile concept, they don't apply the same worldwide. Simply because all parties (nearly) accept public healthcare in a country, doesn't mean that country is more "left" than another.
It’s more of an American concept which has unfortunately spread. Which is sort of silly considering that virtually every European country has several political parties, some is which sometimes form government coalitions across “the middle”.
In Denmark we currently have a government formed of what has been the two major political parties in Denmark for the past few decades + a third. During the election one would be leading the “blue side”, the other leading the “red side”. So it was sort of hilarious when they joined to form a government and the media graphics didn’t work. Of course after a couple or days they just kept the “red” vs “blue” thing and started talking about when it would fall apart and how they were still “enemies” despite being in a joint government.
That being said, it is sort of true to say that most European countries are much more “left” leaning than the US. In Denmark the US Democratic Party would be to the far right of 94% of the votes for political parties cast here.
Left and right as concepts actually originated in the french revolution. When seating the parties in an assembly you have to go with some order from left to right.
Of course what the political tribes are, and what their actual positions are changes. Republicans went from the party of Lincoln to the party of Trump.
Indeed, you touch upon a crucial point that is often overlooked in political discourse. The simplistic transplantation of ‘left’ and ‘right’ labels across different countries is not just misleading; it’s intellectually negligent. The political spectrum is not a one-size-fits-all template that neatly categorises societies based on a single policy like public healthcare. In many European nations, universal healthcare is a settled matter - a consensus that transcends traditional partisan divides. To assume that this places a country further to the ‘left’ ignores the complex historical, cultural, and social nuances that shape each nation’s political landscape.
Although you probably agree: If someone wants to describe politics with a one-dimensional scale, left-right is not so bad. And that's why and how it developed.
Also from EU, additional tidbit: Not being a first-past-the-post two-party system allows for political parties to be more nuanced than a simplified left-right spectrum.
It depends on the country though. France is effectively first-past-the-post. Technically (rarely in practice) you can even get 3-4 candidates in the second round if the turnout is very high.
Two-round is not fundamentally a huge improvement and de facto is what US has with party primaries (of course unlike in France third parties can't really survive in such a system).
Arguably of course having a three way stalemate might be occasionally preferable than 1 party having near absolute control because of controlling 50%+1 seats.
Thankfully US has all sorts of checks and balances and it might take a while for a single party to get control of the House, Senate, White House and the Supreme court (for instance in the UK where there are basically no checks an balances and the parliament has absolute power if a pseudo-Fascist party somehow managed to win they could more or less do anything they wanted and they'd only need 30-40% of all votes for that).
IMHO electoral systems matter but extreme polarization is the real problem. Back in the 70s even a Republican president like Nixon could somewhat effectively work with the Democrat controlled congress. Yet now a split congress can't even pass legislation that technically both parties support (e.g. the border billy)
> Thankfully US has all sorts of checks and balances and it might take a while for a single party to get control of the House, Senate, White House and the Supreme court
The fact that "it is good when government is deadlocked and ineffective" is an actual argument people use is baffling to me, but for the sake of the argument and out of assumed mutual respect, I'll do my best to stay objective for following:
> IMHO electoral systems matter but extreme polarization is the real problem
I absolutely agree that extreme polarization is a major issue.
I believe that FPTP inevitably leads to extreme polarization, when given enough time: FPTP inevitably converges to a two-party system (due to strategic voting), and a two-party system inevitably leads to extreme polarization (due to strategic politicians playing into strategic voting).
The argument for the latter goes something like this: Disenfranchised voters can be coaxed to vote for a least-worst option when the most-worst option looks worse enough. So it becomes more politically effective to demonize your opponent rather than argue your own politics.
Additionally, it is politically beneficial for you when things stay bad while your opponent is in charge, and especially so if things get worse. You can use their perceived incompetence as ammunition to further demonize them. So it becomes beneficial to use what government power you might have in order to hinder your opponent's attempts at improving things, even if what they're trying to do is something you agree with and would yourself do if you were the one in power.
Depending on your preferred political party, I'm sure you can think of examples of the above.
> a two-party system inevitably leads to extreme polarization
There isn't much difference in practice. German politics is extremely polarized, far moreso than in the UK where there's FPTP. Look at how the older political parties have reacted to the rise of the AfD and you won't see any of the famed coalition building that's supposed to make PR fair and reasonable. Instead you see bizarre dysfunctional coalitions, lots of illegal suppression tactics and a level of hysterical rhetoric that makes the USA look relaxed by comparison. Nor is it different elsewhere in Europe.
The left reacts badly to conservative pushback in any system, any country, any culture. These things transcend national boundaries. It doesn't matter what voting system you use. The results are always the same.
> The fact that "it is good when government is deadlocked and ineffective" is an actual argument people use is baffling to me
I mean.. I don't think its good per se. Just better than the alternative in a society that's already extremely polarized and more or less evenly split. Unless that changes IMHO ideally we'd at least want as much decision making to move to the state level.
> I believe that FPTP inevitably leads to extreme polarization,
There aren't that many datapoints e.g. it hasn't yet happened in Britain (it sort of did in France, although it's more complicated) and I'm not that sure it was entirely true even in the US between 1940 and 1980 either. So I think its hard to prove empirically.
> So it becomes beneficial to use what government power you might have in order to hinder your opponent's
Is it radically different in multiparty systems, though? If you are outside the government coalition you have similar incentives.
I wonder how effective would the Northern Ireland consensus/power-sharing based system if it became more widespread. On one hand it did seemingly led to a huge reduction in political polarization. On the other hand it's not particularly efficient and it's unlikely that any country would implement outside of extreme circumstances/being force to by a third party (unlike in Lebanon where it has failed entirely the conflict in NI was entirely political rather than religious)
Granted, I don't follow it closely, but from what discourse I've observed things on the other side of the pond don't seem quite harmonious to me.
> I'm not that sure it was entirely true even in the US between 1940 and 1980 either.
Which does not necessarily disprove the argument. Things were arguably less polarized and better working in the past, but my argument is exactly that the political incentives of a two-party system will eventually cause things to degenerate. The fact that things were once "reasonable politics" but have, over the course of decades, degenerated to "our policy is whatever is the opposite of their policy" is exactly the issue.
> Is it radically different in multiparty systems, though? If you are outside the government coalition you have similar incentives.
Similar, yes, but not necessarily the most effective political move.
If a disenfranchised voter can vote for a third (or fourth) party without their vote "being wasted", a strategizing disenfranchised voter no longer "has" to vote for a "least-worst" option in order to avoid the "most-worst" option.
In that case, painting your opponent as "even worse" does not necessarily win you votes. If it does, it likely also gives votes to the other parties in your political sphere, and if they get enough votes to make a coalition government without you, why should they bother to include someone whose primary policy is being a troublemaker?
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To be clear, no system is perfect. I don't know what the best is, I just know it's not FPTP. The primary argument I am trying to make is that the polarization we see now is the inevitable (long-term) outcome of a two-party system, and that a two-party system is the inevitable outcome of winner-takes-all FPTP.
Left and right are political concepts that have broadly held since they were created in the French Revolution (with the names originating to where the people were sitting in Parliament) and still shape politics today.
In France, the main change occurred during the 19th century that started with the right being more Monarchist and the left staunchly Republican and ended with basically everyone being Republican.
But overall, right and left do mean something and that is still the case throughout Europe and the world and the difference are mainly relative to the centre.
I'd actually say the US is moving in the direction of Europe -- historically "left" in the US was social-democratic, whereas "right" was classical liberalism (again, these labels get wonky across cultures -- what Americans call libertarianism). That US picture does at least point to two different ends of something that's basically the same spectrum.
In Europe "left" mostly means socialist, and "right" mostly means nationalist. But socialism and nationalism aren't opposites, and can often go together, so you see things like the author of this article pointing out that the "right" doesn't want to completely dismantle the social safety net.
The US is, however, in the process of realigning to the European style.
Historically most countries Europe had generally been "tripartite". With progressive and/or classical liberals in a weird spot between left-right. But even then I think it get's very messy when we leave Britain.
Traditionally in most continental countries you usually had two major (social-capitalist/paternalist) Christian Democrats and some Social Democrat style parties. But in reality they often shared more with each other than with various fringe left(Communist, radical-socialist), right(reactionary conservative but almost (pseudo-modernist) Fascists) parties all of which usually had some weird-missmash of traditionally left and right policies.
e.g. Weimar Germany was an extreme example republic where it was Christian Democrats + Socialists + Liberals vs everyone else regardless of exact social/economic policies. But modern France, Italy and Germany are kind of similar (of course both the fringe and the centrist parties are still thankfully a lot more moderate).
I guess you can fit all of the on a single left-right axis if you squint hard enough but you'd really need 2-3 axes to get a somewhat accurate/meaningful picture.
In Europe, "right" usually means EPP, or center-right. Their member parties may call themselves conservatives, christian democrats, the national coalition, or something like that. They tend to be economically similar to US Democrats but often less progressive.
Then there is S&D, or center-left, with their members typically calling themselves social democrats or socialists. They are another big traditional mainstream group. And even the ones who call themselves socialists are more like social democrats.
The third traditional mainstream group is currently called Renew Europe, which consists mostly of various centrist / social liberal parties. Some of which are socially quite conservative.
Then there are usually two center-left to left, mostly progressive / liberal, mostly environmentalist parties. The differences between them vary from country to country. Their current groups at the EU level call themselves Greens and The Left. Some actual socialists exist within these groups, but they tend to be mostly harmless weirdos who didn't get the message that the 80s already ended.
The conservative / nationalist right mostly emerged in the last ~15 years. They often resemble US Republicans. Their EU level groups tend to split and merge all the time, because they often make very different conclusions from the same ideological positions due to historical and geopolitical reasons. Such as whether Putin is a good guy or a bad guy.
Most of Europe is varying degrees of Social Democracy. We pretend we have conservatives, socialists, “climatists”? communists, neoliberals, populists and so on, but for the most parts it’s all just Social Democratic parties with a flavour.
As far as I can tell, In the not so distant past, you were either in favour of rule by the monarch and the aristocracy or you were a Liberal. Pretty much every party in a modern democracy is a flavour of Liberal. Its only because liberalism comprehensively won that we find it useful to separate out the different strands.
