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Whether this is because of or in spite of their political system is another question. But we can at least describe accurately how their political system actually works, rather than rely on caricatures born of half-remembered newspaper clippings.

To be sure, the world is full of people, and parties, with unsettling views. But it’s too simple to ascribe these to particular electoral systems

How many parties, for starters, does one find in the typical PR-based legislature? There’s a range, depending (in part) on the size of the electoral districts from which they are elected. Remember: what distinguishes PR is the use of multi-member, rather than single-member, districts. The more members per district, the more closely you can match the number of seats a party gets to its proportion of the vote.

So at one end, you have countries such as Austria, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg and Sweden, all with six to eight parties represented in their legislatures — or about one to three more than Canada’s, with five. At the other, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands and Switzerland, with 10 to 12.

Virtually all of these countries have some element of local representation: only the Netherlands, whose total area is less than that of some Canadian ridings, elects MPs at large. And none uses the “strict” form of PR Gunter describes, known as “closed list.” Rather, voters can generally choose which of a party’s candidates they prefer, so-called “open lists.”

How unstable are these systems? Since 1945, Canada has held 22 elections. In only one of the PR countries mentioned has there been more: Denmark, with 26. The average is 20. It is true that the governments that result are rarely, if ever, one-party majorities. But, as you may have noticed, that is not unknown here. Nine of Canada’s 22 federal elections since 1945 have resulted in minority parliaments.