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The Swedish Election Shows the Potential Threats for Multi-Party Systems
The far-right wants to make Sweden great again.
I know, the US political system, with its two parties alternating in power seemingly endlessly, is bad.
It makes things impossible for third or fourth parties to appear. This eventually pushes both parties to become ruled by elites, more stagnant in their views and less capable or interested in actual change.
And when extremist forces take over one of the parties, the whole country is suddenly teetering on the edge, about to take an authoritarian plunge at any minute.
But multi-party systems come with their own problems. One is that, at times of rising tensions and changing configurations of power, making government coalitions can become impossible.
Just look at Israel and Spain in the last decade, and Belgium in the past 15 years. Citizens going to the polls once a year or more to elect and re-elect politicians incapable of forming a government. Nobody has enough power to do it, and nobody wants to compromise.
It’s not a functional system in normal times, but it’s especially problematic at times of distress such as during a pandemic, record-high inflation, or with a war on the continent.
