I noticed.

Yeah, those were different days... but they are well behind us. Like I said, I don't know much about Norwegian politics but I strongly doubt Haakon has the power to reject a PM who has the support of a majority in parliament.

I don't really know that that's the kind of thing your maxim about extremes applies to... and Dom did a pretty good job there of undermining my entire point by making Canada sound even worse than Israel and the Netherlands in terms of stability. Or as bad, anyway. Still, in most cases the rule applies. I'm not sure there's any single democracy system that is really superior to the others - it depends on your country to begin with, and they've all had their good and bad days.

I'm well aware, but as you point out yourself, those exceptions all fit one or both of the categories of exceptions predicted in the model: brief-lived third parties, and regional third parties. The US is probably the strongest two-party duopoly in world politics - after all, the UK does have a serious nation-wide third party that has been around ever since the days when it was the second or indeed first party, and as for Canada, well, see Dom's smackdown of my post. It must have to do with force of habit as well as some smaller details (gerrymandering and the inherently two-party system of your Congress come to mind).

I would think it's an important thing to be aware of, even for an American, at least if that American is going to be facing "Hitler was a leftie" arguments on a regular basis.

The relation between the American right and the European far-right is interesting to follow, sometimes - the way the European far-right leaders are sometimes embraced in America and sometimes spat out, depending on the subject and the circumstances. Mostly they are ignored, though, which is probably for the best.

Definitely so - large-scale multiculturalism in its current sense, in many though not all European countries, dates back only to the sixties, exactly when the American civil rights movement was breaking down (institutional) racism in the US.

And no, you definitely should not take that for granted.


Fair enough. Belgium would only really have five or six if not for that little detail of having two of each political stripe what with the language thing. Much as I hate to say anything that might make Belgium sound like an example of good politics...