• Fedizen@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Canada disproves Duverger’s outright. The law doesn’t say ‘there will only be two parties that negotiate a PM position’. The 3 parties of canada all have regional strongholds and a variety of powerful positions.

    • Auli@lemmy.ca
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      8 hours ago

      The only powerful position the NDP had was since the last election when they had to form a minority government. Other then they even the opposition has no power.

      • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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        5 hours ago

        I would argue the premier of BC is a fairly powerful position. Especially since, regionally, the NDP or Liberal party have been in contention for BC since the early 90s- over 30 years.

        I would say that duverger’s is “true-ish” but it doesn’t capture the correct mechanism and fails on a predictive level enough that it at least should not be called a “law”.

    • merc@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      The only powerful position in a parliamentary system is to be in the party in power. No third party has ever been in power. At best, they’ve been a part of a minority coalition, and even those are relatively rare. Canada definitely supports Duverger’s law.