There's European countries who can have several different prime ministers in the span of three months

And Americans only have to pick one out of two opposing parties. How hard can it be?
- The problem is two-fold. The majority of Americans are passively informed, and the majority of our news publications are compromised by wealthy owners.
  Also, it’s two months, not three. Early voting ballots go out in the end of September.
  
  and the majority of our news publications are compromised by wealthy owners
  This is true in the vast majority of European countries too. If anything, you usually find an exception in a public broadcasting channel, which may or may not be influenced by political officials.
  
  Passively informed is an understatement, also we're supposed to be available to work at a moments call, with limited time off availability. Am I gonna just tell my boss I'm leaving early to go vote?
  
  It goes deeper than that. Those same news Publications are financially incentivized to prolong and protract the election seasons. They work incredibly hard to not talk about policies are issues but to focus on process stories. They've created this notion that there's not enough time for an election.
  That's why you seem to think two months isn't enough time. When it's plenty.
- People making a choice isn't the hard part. All 51 different territories having different rules for their elections is the hard part.
  
  skill issue
  
  All 51 different territories having different rules for their elections is the hard part.
  How is that the hard part? Each state organizes their own elections, they only need to abide by their own rules. No one is involved in organizing elections in all 51 territories at the same time.
  
  At least they don't have 51 different constitutuons. Unlike ESSU.
- After enough elections, you get tired of picking the party that aligns with you on 4% of issues because it's ever so slightly higher than the other party which aligns with you on 0.5%.

You can get rid of your prime ministers pretty easily if they suck. We’re electing what is now essentially a king for at least the next 4 years.
- Or hopefully, this time around, a Queen
  
  lol I get what you're going for here but this is the most vote-blue-no-matter-who Democrat thing I've ever seen.
  #girlboss #notenoughfemaledictators #lickheelsnotboots

my favorite UK shitpost was liz truss, very funny.
- Lasting shorter than a letuce
  
  lettuce liz baby!

More education, please. I'm American.
How does this process function?
How does it change the ratchet right effect seen in the US?
- In a parliamentary system, Prime Ministers aren't elected by popular vote, but instead chosen by Parliament. It's basically like if the Speaker of the House were also the President.
  Fun fact: the US system was originally designed to work sort of that way, except they wanted the President to be chosen by all the state legislatures instead of Congress, for extra Federalist separation of powers. That's what the Electoral College is for: they couldn't do "one state rep = one vote" because each state has different numbers of constituents per rep and such, so they needed a "compatibility layer."
  Then states immediately fucked up the plan by holding popular votes for Electors instead of having the legislature appoint them, and the rest is history.
  
  Also, in most European states (France is similar to the US in that point), the head of state (president, king) is not the head of government (prime minister, chancellor). The former may be elected by popular vote, and has mainly representative tasks, the latter usually is elected by the parlament and drives the political decisions.
  
  This makes sense. I'd add that the system of government in the US didn't function as intended in many facets and almost immediately. In respect to the electoral college today, American exceptionalism prevents us accepting that a direct democracy in choosing our President would sentence us to the mediocrity we fear most. We don't understand why we've an electoral college because we broke it before railroads and the cotton gin.
  I appreciate the parliamentary system so far for its simplicity relative the US system. But, the good and bad consequences really depends on the nuance.
  What compromise must be reached to prevent another election?
  What offices are reelected? The entirety of parliament?
- There are also semi-presidential republics, which function differently. In those systems, the US-style president role is split into two different roles, president & prime minister. President handles foreign policy, the army and selects the prime minister with the approval of parliament, and the prime minister handles everything domestic. This separation of roles means the amount of damage an individual can do is much more limited.
  Edit: Oh, I missed somebody already talked about the French system, which is a semi-presidential system. Oh well, leaving this up for posterity.

It's not the time that's the issue. It's the eye-watering sums of money you cunts donate to let a politician run a campaign.
What the fuck does someone need $450m for?! Use that to provide support for the homeless, feed the poor, and protect children that need a stable home. You could do so much with that money.
- if it was up to the average american, we wouldn't have that shit. unfortunately our society is puppeted by the rich to a very unhealthy degree at the moment. i hope that changes soon and maybe give us the opportunity to revolution some of them away.

It is kinda trolling how you can just call an election when you think your party will do best
- But it can also go horribly wrong. For example, Cameron called the Brexit referendum without wanting Brexit, which did not go as planned
  
  I honestly believe that he was pro brexit and used his position as the lowest rated politician st that time so that left leaning people would vote against him rather than the policy. Even if that wasn't his intention (I believe it was) It was what happened.
- Not sure it really works like that in many countries.

Some countries end up with a great PM because everyone else was made inelligible. Looking at you, New Zealand.

And then there's Belgium, which apparently holds the world record for longest time without a government. At least introduce time limits for negotiations, guys…
- One positive on the Dutch coalition talks. We can always say that our southern neighbours take even longer...
  On a more serious note, the last three coalition talks in the Netherlands took over 200 days, with one taking 299 days. Sure, not even close to over 500 days in Belgium, but how the hell does this happen?
- It was possible because of how Belgium is structured with its 6 governments and overall, a strongly federalized state. The historic background is the sharp regional divide between the Flemish-speaking North and the French-speaking South. Therefore, in the case of Belgium, it proved that a federalized state with extensive regionalized competence is on its own stable enough to function well with all its capacities without a federal government for an interim period.

Let the Americans have their fun. They love plot twists, a bit of pageantry and pizazz. While they certainly don’t NEED a year-long election cycle, most Americans actively seem to enjoy it.
It creates opportunities to vigorously debate the opposition, run some nice smear campaigns, do a bit of backstabbing, schmooze the big donors, kiss a few babies and add in the odd assassination attempt. You just can’t fit all that drama in a one month cycle like we Europeans like to do.
- I wish it was only a year. Lately it’s been about a 4 year cycle for the presidential race

If american democracy was good, other countries would be using it.

The US also has 5 times as many people as France.
Europe can have snap elections, but we don't try and have elections for every European country at once, with two leaders trying desperately to visit each one to win support.
- You can have 5 times more people counting votes and organizing things. I dont understand this excuse. Democracy can scale, especially nowadays with technology.
- European Parliament elections were like a couple of months ago.
  
  Fuck it. Elections will be a couple of months ago.
  
  For reference
  EU population (2023) 448,922,216
  US population (2023) 339,996,563
  Not that European Parliament is going to just have new elections like that
- They wouldn't need to visit each country, they don't even bother caring about more than 4 states in the US!
  
  That presumes the EU would be dumb enough to try the electoral college on for size again
  That's right we know where that shit came from you HRE and PLC descended fuckers!
  
  Given the events of the last week, I can certainly see them being a bit more picky about lines of sight from nearby tall buildings.
- Russia. Try to visit every city in four years.

France is not the EU. This doesn't happen in other European countries because there are rules and proper times to make proper campaigns. I don't even think this is a good thing to joke about Americans because what was done in France was just plain stupid
- And Belgium, and Holland, and...
  This happens all over europe
  
  Though a coalition failing to form doesn't usually cause an immediate election.
  I mean it'd be rather odd to ask people who they want in government, and then ask them to do so again before any government was formed.
- Per te la Repubblica Italiana è uno scherzo?
  
  I only speak A2 italian and even i understood that rage.
- France is great at revolutions.
- Didn't the Netherlands have a year of five premiers?
  Also, Tories, y'all might want to disown them but the Brits are still euros as far as everyone else reckons, save maybe for a particularly unionist canadian or aussie.
  Y'all might have rules about it but that doesn't change that snap elections basically guarantee no incentive to figure anything out because you can always just hit the do-over button until someone's base is the last one standing without turnout fatigue and someone secures an outright majority or a purely ideological coalition.
  The idea of governing coalitions is kinda old fashioned anyways, just hold a STAR or approval vote for each of the cabinet positions including for premier and voilà, now you never have to engage in horse trading just to form a standing government, and the stress of negotiations can be reserved for law making or inter-departmental cabinet affairs.
  
  We finally got rid of the previous prime minister after 12 years, what 5 premiers did I miss?

Sounds unstable and scary.
edit: calm down, I'm sure 90% of the time it's a much better system than the US, but the way it is described in the title does not sound stable.
- Usually we just vote, they find a coalition and it stays that way for a few years
  About coalitions: they mean that the parties in power need at least 50%, so if there's not a single party with over 50% ("absolute majority") they need a partner. The big parties in my country usually get 20-30%.
  
  Usually we just vote, they find a coalition and it stays that way for a few years
  laughs in Italian
- Better an unstable government than an unstable guy at the lead.
  
  Not everything has to be a zero sum game
- I've read that in Belgium (the worst offendor in this regard), the regional governments have so much power that not having a national government for a year or so isn't much of a problem.
  
  Belgium is a federal country, like Germany or the US. The regions have control over some things, not everything. Plus the current federal government stays as caretaker until a new government is formed.
- I'd argue that political stability consists of and depends on at least rule of law, separation of powers and democratic representation. The EU and its member still have a lot to progress in this regard, though. Coalition building is kind of a comprise towards building pluralistic quasi-consensus based decision-making.
  IMO, coalition political systems have the potential to politically deal better with long-term issues as small parties can influence governments beyond a single term. Green parties, but unfortunately also far-right parties, for example can thus push for their topics.
  The US also had a coalition, the National Unity Party during its Civil War.

Ah yes classic European elitism on display once again
- Because it's better
- well-earnt comment without context, inaccurate with context (of degree of democratic representation)
- elitism
  I must be old, I remember when being ‘elite’ was considered a good thing.

Some European countries have lower populations than a single US city.
Some European countries are small enough that you can drive the entire length in a single day.
Must be nice to have prime ministers who represent fewer people than the mayor of LA
- Don’t be so American aka uneducated. They still have to have a full government and local governments. Just because they’re smaller than Texas doesn’t mean two guys can run the whole society. You guys really deserve Trump.
  
  It's anecdotal but I was told that Americans (and Europeans) obsess on the happenings and circus at the federal level but much of it doesn't really affect the average Americans on the state level. Not sure how but my guess it's because states have their own laws and cultures which offsets some of the federal level shenanigans.
  
  The United states has federal, state and local governments. And often county governments as well in the more populated states.
  Just because i don't know if Serbia is a representative or parliamentary democracy doesn't make me uneducated. It means your backwater country is completely unimportant to the global community
- Every European country is small enough that you can drive through it in a day.
  Do you mean the electoral collage still travels by house to Washington? What is your point?
  
  Do you mean the electoral collage still travels by house to Washington?
  Maybe they travel by tra... They don't have train, do they?
  
  The point is, it's easier to organize a national election when you don't have to do it across 50 federated entities and 5 time zones