Is the Parliament government system (Canada, UK, Israel) better than ours?

Lots of parties with every view represented.

Yet, often slim majorities and the need for coalitions.

Is that a better system than ours?

While there is a greater diversity of opinion there is also more chaos and governments collapsing all the time. Did you know that there are 13 parties represented in the Israeli Knesset right now? Things are always unstable there, and only once back in the 60s has any party had a majority. Even now Likud has less than 1/3 of the seats.

Here in Canada, things are more stable. Some of that can be attributed to the fact that the Conservative movement here has been so disorganized over the past few years that it's almost comical. Some real Canadians can tell you about that, I'm just here on a student visa.

Multiple parties often cause gridlock and nothing gets done. But I know there are many here who disagree with me. What I would like is a runoff voting system wherein you can vote for three candidates and the top candidate would emerge then. This way your vote wouldn't be lost if you chose to vote for someone not in a major party for your first choice because you could also choose two others if your candidate has the fewest votes.

in Aus. Oh, and by the way, what is wrong with nothing getting done by the legislature? If nothing was done in the current administration think how much better off everyone would be. (OK, finished my little joke now)

We have preferential voting here, so if there are five candidates, you mark the box 1 through 5. It works in a way like you described. I can describe it fully if you like. I think it's a good way to go (you can also just vote 1 for someone if you want too, no compulsion to participate in preferences)

Another good thing about Parliament (at least in UK and Aus) is question time, where the leader is openly grilled in parliament for a couple of hours a couple of times a week. Bush* would never, ever, have been elected if he had to face that, he would have been laughed right back to Kennebunkport.

basis. I don't understand why they can't. It really should be done.

I think any "party" system has grave problems. I wish "the party" had never materialized.

O

since I don't admire Tony Blair or Ariel Sharon, I'm not envious of countries with parliamentary systems.

Voters lose power - If you like traditional Labour party platforms, but don't like Blair, you don't get a choice in ousting him... IIRC, he's chosen by the Party elites to be the leader. In most Paliamentary systems, the voters are forced to choose between parties, rather than individuals.

There are other ways to ensure that alternate voices have an opportunity to be heard. For instance, Condorcet voting allows voters to specify their preference among all candidates, without a need for strategic voting, nor a need for truncated preferences.

About voting for a party rather than an individual. It's also complicated further because you vote for an individual locally, and the party that wins govt is the one with the most 'individuals' voted in, so you sort of vote for both.

Also correct about the party elites choosing the leader. This can happen at any time, for any reason. I'm sure that would be odd for people used to the US system.

Actually, if you want to see it happen, keep an eye on the upcoming Aus election. Howard is very close to retirement, and has a bloke called Peter Costello as his second. If Howard wins the election, he can (will?) resign the following day and make Costello the PM, even though Costello is currently guaranteed failure electorally speaking at the moment and the populace will not have voted for him anyway.

I'll admit my knowledge of Comparitive Politics is lacking, despite being in the class this semester (sorry, Prof. Eager!)... my understanding was that you voted only for a party in the British system.

I know the German system is two-ballot... you vote for a local representative (single-member districts), and for a party. Whoever wins the plurality in the single-member districts wins those seats... the proportion of votes for the party ballot is used to allocate the remaining seats, so that each party has roughly the same percentage of seats as they attained in the party ballot. This seems like a reasonable way to do things.

we inherited pretty much the entire system, we just changed the names of a few things.

Our country is divided into electorates of roughly the same number of people (I'm describing only our lower house here). People in those electorates vote to elect a local member. These candidates are elected as individuals but normally have a party affilliation.

The party with the greatest number of members of the lower house gets to form the government. The leader of that party gets to be the Prime Minister, and chooses cabinet from that (thats a pretty big difference to the US, who would vote for Rummy?)

is question period. The Prime Minister is subject to questions from the opposition, unlike the President of the US who is only answerable to ????.

Other than that, I do like that it is a multi-party system, it makes for more choices come election time. There is always the risk of a minority government but, that too, is very democratic because it says the public did not have solid confidence in the governing party.