Two parties and many

A fragmented politics, with multiple shifting coalitions, is far better, more efficient, and more democratic, than the "normal" two-party system

Mihir S Sharma 

Mihir S Sharma

One of the irritating things about democracy is that, every now and then, voters make stupid choices. This is not surprising: Nobody says that the majority is always right, merely that majority approval is required for legitimacy.

Yet even in the annals of stupid majority decisions, Brexit shines. Brexit would never have happened, or caused the sort of extraordinary chaos it has, if the standard and time-tested institutions of parliamentary democracy had not been bypassed by then British Prime Minister David Cameron in order to have a referendum that he thought he would easily win. But he ...

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First Published: Fri, January 18 2019. 20:05 IST