Article content continued

If Germans were in a state of shock and confusion, however, the same could not be said for certain observers on this side of the ocean, who greeted the news with a weary, told-you-so satisfaction. You see? they sighed. This is what happens under proportional representation. It’s nothing but chaos, paralysis, revolving-door governments. Say what you will about our first past the post system, but at least it delivers strong, stable majority governments. Thank goodness we were spared that sort of uncertainty.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or

And if that is what you already believed, that is what you will believe. If, on the other hand, you are halfway interested in the facts, you may be less easily persuaded. There is first the small matter that this is not remotely typical of proportional representation systems, least of all Germany’s: it was in fact the first time negotiations had failed to produce a coalition — though they still might — in the history of the Federal Republic. That’s why it came as such a shock. In every one of the previous 18 elections (that’s four fewer, by the way, than Canada has held in the same period) any negotiations had been concluded successfully.

It’s true that coalition negotiations in other PR countries have occasionally stalled for a period. It’s rare in any individual country, but since there are so many countries that use some form of PR and therefore so many elections and subsequent negotiations to conclude, it might be easy to form the impression that this was more prevalent than it was — especially since PR opponents seize on each one as proof of a general tendency.