Firstly, the similarities of the two electoral systems in the Unites States and France should be examined briefly. Essentially both countries use a first past the post, winner takes all style of electing their Presidents. The United States uses an electoral college to select a President from available nominees. Each state has a certain amount of electors in the electoral college, this number is equal to the number of Senators and Representatives it is entitled to in Congress. When election time

1. Two parties are in a position to compete for an absolute majority of seats in Congress.

2. Sorauf, Frank J., Party Politics in America, Little, Brown and Company, 1984. Pg. 40.

2. One of the parties wins a sufficient majority.

The United States party system follows the above conditions almost flawlessly. The Democrats and the Republicans compete for the majority of seats in congress. At times the state of the governmental process in the United States can have the two houses controlled by the same party, while having the Presidency controlled by a different one. This can lead to gridlock, because the passing of legislature is near impossible in this situation. The two party system can be understood by three general ideologies: institutional, cultural and consensual. These three ideologies can explain how and why the American's use such a system taken that most 'first past the post' systems are two-party systems. With this in mind, proportional representation would result in a multi-party system. This does not follow through in the case of France, as it is a multi-party system which also uses a plurality, winner takes all electoral system. This could not be used as a reason for why the two systems differ. "The American election system offers no reward of office to any but the plurality winner and, so the theory goes, thus discourages the chronic minority parties."2 Contrasting this with a proportional representation system, the chronic minority party would be facilitated and proliferation would be attainable. On the other hand, France will join coalition parties in order for a larger voice to be heard, in France small parties do flourish and become larger more influential parties. Another institutional reason for two-partyism in the United States are the laws which have been passed by the only two parties in power. These laws attempt to protect the duopoly. The laws themselves outline how a party qualifies to have their name on a state ballot and what amount of federal funding they would qualify for. "To qualify to appear on the ballot many states requires either a specified percentage of the vote to have been obtained in a previous election or the submission of a petition signed by a stipulated number of voters....This can entail obtaining vast numbers of signatures."3 Obtaining such vast amounts could and would cost millions of dollars, money that most independent parties do not have. Financing parties during elections is a very costly undertaking, restrictions have been put in place that see independent parties limited to a thousand or so dollars per candidate, per donation. With the limited following an independent party would have, this restriction limits the independent party drastically. The individual candidate would essentially be responsible for his own financing. This is very different in France where any group can run on the first ballot without a major intrusion of laws and stipulations governing party involvement. The shear population size of the United States, over two hundred and seventy million, lends itself more directly toward a two-party system because of the difficulty and expense required to reach and inform its population. In contrast, France with a population just over fifty seven million, informing and educating the population is less expensive and more capable of being handled. The second cause of two-party success in the United States can be associated with cultural theories. "It attributes the two-party systems development of a political culture that accepts the necessity of compromise, the wisdom of short-term pragmatism, and the avoidance of unyielding dogmatism...in other words, they are willing to make the kinds of compromises necessary to bring heterogenous

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Approximate Word count = 2528
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)