section_path: Party systems/Multi-party systems
section_name: Multi-party systems
paragraph_text: Multi-party systems
  
  Multi-party systems are systems in which more than two parties have a realistic chance of holding power and influencing policy. A very large number of systems around the world have had periods of multi-party competition, and two-party democracies may be considered unusual or uncommon compared to multi-party systems. Many of the largest democracies in the world have had long periods of multi-party competition, including India, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Brazil. Multi-party systems encourage characteristically different types of governance than smaller party systems, for example by often encouraging the formation of coalition governments.
  
  The presence of many competing political parties is usually associated with a greater level of democracy, and a country transitioning from having a one-party system to having a many-party system is often considered to be democratizing. Authoritarian countries can include multi-party competition, but typically this occurs when the elections are not fair. For this reason, in two-party democracies like the United States, proponents of forming new competitive political parties often argue that developing a multi-party system would make the country more democratic. However, the question of whether multi-party systems are more democratic than two-party systems, or if they enjoy better policy outcomes, is a subject of substantial disagreement among scholars as well as among the public. In the opposite extreme, a country with a very large number of parties can experience governing coalitions that include highly ideologically diverse parties that are unable to make much policy progress, which may cause the country to be unstable and experience a very large number of elections; examples of systems that have been described as having these problems include periods in the recent history of Israel, Italy, and Finland. Multi-party systems are often viewed as fairer or more representative than one- or two-party systems, but they also have downsides, like the likelihood that in a system with plurality voting the winner of a race with many options will only have minority support.
  
  Some multi-party systems may have two parties that are noticeably more competitive than the other parties. Such party systems have been called "two-party-plus" systems, which refers to the two dominant parties, plus other parties that exist but rarely or never hold power in the government. Such parties may serve a crucial factor in election outcomes. It is also possible for very large multi-party systems, like India's, to nevertheless be characterized largely by a series of regional contests that realistically have only two competitive parties, but in the aggregate can produce many more than two parties that have major roles in the country's national politics.