Introduction to American Politics online course discussion – Dahl

I’m trying to study for my Political Science course and I need some help to understand this question.

Read chapter 11 “Varieties III: Parties and Electoral Systems” by Dahl and respond to his points and arguments. Also, comment constructively on a classmates’ posting.

(I will attach Chapter 11 by Dahl)

Here is classmate’s posting from question. Please reply in 1st person point of view.

Classmate’s post

Good evening everyone!

Chapter 11 of our textbook was very interesting and posed some questions that I did not even have in regards to our parties and electoral systems. For instance, in the second paragraph of this chapter, Dahl states that in the perspective of a “citizen of a country where only two major political parties contest elections, a country with a multiplicity of parties may look like political chaos” and a citizen “in a multiparty country, having only two political parties to choose from may look like a political straitjacket” got me thinking (Location 1877). I never really thought about how other countries may view us as we do have other parties, but we mainly focus on the Democratic and Republican parties. It seems as if our other parties do not matter as we are, in my opinion, always focusing on the goals and interests of these two parties.

We tend to stray away from the other smaller parties that are present in the United States. I believe that because it’s always been Democrats v.s. Republicans, we never get to understand or learn more about the other parties because we aren’t exposed to it.

Dahl, Robert A., and Ian Shapiro. On Democracy. Yale University Press, 2015.