Among the fifty most populous nations in the world, the only two countries in which only two political parties are represented in the nation’s legislative lower house are the United States and Nigeria. If “two-party system” is defined to mean a nation with only two parties represented in the national legislature, then it is clear that the “two-party system” has been rejected by governments and voters all over the world.
Among the fifty most populous countries, only one country bans all political parties and holds no legislative elections whatsoever: Saudi Arabia. Only one of the fifty most populous countries has non-partisan elections for the national legislature: Iran. Although political parties, both legal and illegal, exist in Iran, the election system is non-partisan.
Two countries ban all political parties except the ruling party: China and Vietnam. The May 1 2015 printed Ballot Access News will have a chart showing the number of parties represented in each country’s lower legislative body, although the chart will only include the 50 most populous countries.
Excellent, excellent stuff there. Such a chart would help show the rabidly partisan spoiler theorists among the Democrats and Republicans just how much of an anomaly their precious two party system is in the world, assuming their rabid partisanship hasn’t made them blind to anything except the official party line.
The EVIL and VICIOUS minority rule gerrymander monarchs/oligarchs in the USA AIN’T that much different than the Stone Age regime in Saudi Arabia.
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P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
Technically, China doesn’t ban all other political parties, and there are officially eight other parties outside the Communist Party which do participate in political life in some fashion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China That said, these parties are pretty much subordinate to the CPC in all matters.
International Parliament’s Third Vote of Confidence 4/10/2015
https://youtu.be/m2CDcswdZtQ
North Korea nominally has four parties, but they’re all members of the same popular front and are essentially the same. There are nominal differences, such as who the members are, but they’re effectively all the same. Not only that, the system is rigged so each district only has one candidate. And once they’re elected, they all have to do what Kim Jong-Un says if they want to live. Occasionally they don’t.
And technically North Korea allows write-ins, but that requires you to go to a special booth and cross-out the candidate’s name, then write in whoever you want before dropping it in the ballot box. Defectors have described this as too risky to even contemplate. In other words, you have two choices – vote for the candidate on the ballot or die a horrible painful death.
North Korea has a unicameral legislature (at least nominally) though, so I’m not sure how you’re counting them. They’re the 48th most populous country, so they should be included, but they have no lower house. It’s just the one.
There are a lot of countries that are unicameral. For all those countries, I treated the one house as though it were the “lower house”.