World Politics
UK
Change in UK political party membership has not been uniform either between parties or over time. In the 19th century, Parties in the UK were divided by how much power parliament thought they should have. Later in the 19th century, the two main parties (Conservatives and Liberals), built more parties to appeal to more male voters (Orvis and Drogus 2018, 321). The Labour party party was founded in the 1900’s. “By the 1920’s, Labour had replaced the Liberals as the second major party and had led its first government” (Orvis and Drogus 2018, 322). The United Kingdom had a two-party system. Because of the high number of electoral votes a large party can receive, one of the bigger parties can form a single-party government. The Conservative party has historically been the party of the aristocracy (Orvis and Drogus 2018, 322).
Liberals became popular because they aimed to take away the power from the Conservative party, which is filled with the upper class. The Labour party was the party of trade unions. When class- based voting broke down, the Labour party shifted towards a centrist position which attracted more middle class voters (Orvis and Drogus 2018, 322). With a decline in class based votes, the two major parties lost a good share of votes. This would require parties to form coalitions to win more votes. This gave neither party a majority of the votes in parliamentary. Britain’s votes are spread out widely between parties now because of different parties gaining more votes in the popular election.
Germany
Germany has been viewed as having a two and a half party system. Because their first democracy was so bad, Adolf Hitler was able to come to power. The first two major parties that developed were the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats. The “half” party was the Liberal FDP which would be considered to have centrist ideas. It is calle...
