Multi Party Democracy in a Presidential Republic

In the English Speaking World, there are some multi party democracies, but with few exceptions, they are parliamentary systems. Jamaica is two party and is parliamentary, and English Speaking, as are the Bahamas, but it's pretty rare that you hear about them in the context of political discussion unless you have personal ties with them.

In contrast, the most well known presidential republic, the United States, is strongly two party, and while a couple of places which also speak English predominantly also have presidential republics like Zimbabwe (not that democracy is really a value of Zimbabwean politics), it's a lot less often used as an example of where most people genuinely expect a thorough political system to survive longer than any one individual and where politicians are interchangeable for many people.

But a presidential republic doesn't have to be two party only. Brazil has several dozen parties in their Congress, and each state has a diversity of parties in their legislature, governors of states and mayors of cities are also from a wide range of parties. Most of Latin America actually has this feature. A couple of the newer presidential republics are leaning towards this direction too, Kenya's last legislative election had the Jubilee Alliance only barely merging into a single party, and that isn't assured to last. Indonesia also has a presidential system and a multi party system. 

There are a number of things that can help guide this process. A legislature with a proportional electoral system would be a major win for this. The Constitution of America doesn't prescribe whether districts can have multiple members or not, and when it was enacted, many states did have multi member districts or at large districts. The Supreme Court has ruled that they can have an influence on racial minority enfranchisement but they assumed that the voting system was plurality at large, not anything proportional. And in the past, Americans had enthusiasm for this type of electoral system, it was a popular way to get rid of machines like Tammany Hall in New York, which alongside other movements like the civil service system and the New Deal making machines harder to use locally, helped to end municipal bosses. 

None of this determines the identity of the president. The president is elected whether the Congress wants them to or not and can only be ousted by impeachment and conviction or by the president's own advisors the president appointed and can dismiss, and if challenged, needs 2/3 of both houses to agree to the 25th amendment removal process. 

In contrast, a prime minister is supported by the parliament in some meaningful way, and any threshold is no higher than an absolute majority to remove them, though some special rules may exist such as the requirement that you agree on a successor, which is the rule in Germany and Spain, and the legislature is necessarily at least to some degree supportive of the cabinet. 

Part two is coming next. 

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