What's the worst major party in the world?

[Benj]

I can't think of any major party in the developed world that is worse than the U.S. Republican Party.  

The GOP has some pretty vile elements and has been on a long downward spiral for some time, but how is it worse than actual fascist parties like Jobbik and Golden Dawn?

Are these major parties?  Do they hold power?  Do they affect policy-making at the highest levels?  And besides, until you mentioned them, I never heard of them.  

Jobbik and Golden Dawn are significant in their relative countries (Hungary and Greece, respectively), but they're still third parties who have never and probably never will form a government, although they do matter in multi-party systems like Greece and Hungary.


Anyway, if we're considering "parties which have a chance of forming government" as major and limiting it to only democratic systems:

Fidesz (Hungary)
Republican Party (United States)
BJP (India)
ANC (extremely sad to put them on this list, but in their modern form they count)
LDP (Japan)
PRI (Mexico)
Likud (Israel)

The above are in no particular order. There are probably more that I'm not thinking of right now.

LDP in its modern incarnation isn't so bad. There are worse major options even within Japan (the JRP, and to an extent New Komeito). Though the LDP stands for everything and nothing, they aren't openly anti-democratic, bigoted, wildly corrupt or just generally nasty like the other parties on the list. I suppose the BJP is maybe comparable, but the BJP is way more corrupt, way more changeable in its beliefs, and holds bigotry as a central tenet of the party. Their most comparable party is Fianna Fail, which is also a Bad Party but not in the sense of the others on the list.

The PRI is also less bad than in the past, but it's way worse than the LDP.

Of the worst parties currently leading a democratic government, Zimbabwe's Zanu-PF obviously wins. I'd say after that it's probably close between Hungary's Fidesz, Venezuela's PSUV and Russia's United Russia (if Russia is a democracy, but they're at least comparable to Zimbabwe in that department). The next tier would be Mexico's PRI, Israel's Likud, Turkey's AKP, South Africa's ANC, Switzerland's SVP and Singapore's PAP.

The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt probably fits in there somewhere, too, but it's hard to really place them as they haven't really done much governing, and democracy is so tenuous in Egypt at the moment that I'm not sure I'd call Egypt a democracy yet.

[Benj]

Zanu and UR are too corrupt to be properly considered 'democracies'.....

To be honest, we're talking about a pretty sliding scale at that point. Russia is probably less of a democracy than Zimbabwe. Is Singapore more or less of a democracy than Zimbabwe? Than Russia? What about Turkey, where a large minority is basically disenfranchised? India, where the parties are fragmented, districts are woefully malapportioned, and politics mostly depends on who gives/gets the most handouts? Israel, where enormous swathes of territory and population remain militarily occupied but unintegrated into the political structure? Thailand, where the "wrong party" winning frequently results in a coup that immediately restores "democracy"?

I identify four categories of non-democracies for this purpose:
1. Don't even claim to be democracies (Saudi Arabia, Swaziland, China)
2. Obvious sham democracies (Belarus, Kazakhstan, North Korea)
3. Borderline sham democracies, though this is contentious (Iran)
4. Fledgling democracies where the future of even nominal democracy is far from guaranteed (Burma, Egypt, Palestine, Pakistan)

Only number 3 is really worth debating, and there I can't think of any examples except Iran. Iran is definitely less free in its elections than Venezuela or Russia or Zimbabwe, but it's not clear whether that difference is significant enough to be a clear line. Personally, I'd rather not debate where exactly the line is drawn for this purpose, as we could be here forever.

I suppose coup-prone democracies, mostly in Africa, could be a fifth category, but that leaves you with the tough question of whether that makes Thailand not a democracy as well. Turkey doesn't fall into this category any more as the military has become much weaker, but it might be the future of Egypt and is arguably the present of Pakistan.

[Benj]

1. Don't even claim to be democracies (Saudi Arabia, Swaziland, China)

China claims to be democracy.

One of the qualifications for claiming to be a democracy is actually holding national elections. China does not. Even North Korea holds national elections, though of course they're a total sham.