Which countries are most politically similar to the United States?

[CumbrianLefty]

Hot take: France

Out of curiosity, why France?

Their political spectrum actually seems significantly different from the US, with their right wing being less freedom focused and more nationalism focused, with their multiparty system as opposed to the two party system in the US, with the centre having a stronger presence (Macron would be a moderate Democrat in the US but is a centrist in France) and the left being much further left economically and having a history of favouring openly socialist policies.

One other difference about economic policy is that the centre in France (as in, Macron types) is the most economically right wing - both the left and the right tend to be more economically left-leaning than the centre.

Trump's realignment of the parties has arguably culminated into an ideological tripolar realignment; I assume the US is further along in this process than the other Anglosphere liberal democracies. (Canada actually has 3 major parties but I'm not knowledgeable enough about Canadian party politics to assess how well the parties represent a distinct 'left', 'center', and 'right').

Maybe; I would argue that America's party system is slowly or rapidly becoming more like the current French tripolar system, but keeping on to the 2 party labels of D and R.

Currently France has a well defined Left, Center, and Right.

America has a very small Left (Squad/Progressives), fairly large Center (dominated by Democrats and a few Republicans like Murkowski, Meijer, Cheney, and Collins), and a robust, but alienating Right.

Our primary system has become very clearly a system defined by these three poles with Democrats fighting between Leftists and Centrists, and Republicans fighting between Centrists and Rightists (more like Establishment vs Trumpists). Primaries were not this ideological even 10 years ago (2008 or 2012 for both parties lacked this ideological divide).

It will be interesting to see how the Republican party handles power - I think the divide between the Center and Right will become more prominent when they take power again especially because it looks like the Right has been co-opted by the Trump celebrity machine.

Its a generalisation admittedly, but Tories are mainly right, Liberals centre and NDP left. This is pretty common knowledge and doesn't really require any specialist expertise.

[SInNYC]

You could say the US has 3 parties too. Democrats, Republicans, and southern Democrats --> religious Republicans. But these 3 dont line up with the 3 Canadian (or British) parties.

[mileslunn]

I would say Canada, but Canada is a lot more left wing than US and right only wins here sometimes due to splits on left.  Still left in Canada very much uses GOP as foil why one should not vote Conservative while Conservatives struggle between appealing to base who want Canada to be more like US and swing voters who do not.  Never mind many cultural wars here on the left originate in US.  Trudeau's first promise was to tax the top 1% more and that came straight out of Occupy Wall Street which is in US, not something organic in Canada.  Even on gun bans, much of that was to avoid mass shootings US frequently has while on abortion and health care, Liberals love to point to GOP even though Conservatives here don't plan to ban abortion like GOP and favor universal health care unlike GOP.

In other countries policies debated more on their merit and little reference is made to US.

[Pres Mike]

Brazil, by a lot

[LAKISYLVANIA]

Strong disagree with France.

Even on mainland Europe, it's actually not even the best candidate.

[Kamala's side hoe]

Strong disagree with France.

Even on mainland Europe, it's actually not even the best candidate.

What do you think would be the best Continental European candidate then?

Trump's realignment of the parties has arguably culminated into an ideological tripolar realignment; I assume the US is further along in this process than the other Anglosphere liberal democracies. (Canada actually has 3 major parties but I'm not knowledgeable enough about Canadian party politics to assess how well the parties represent a distinct 'left', 'center', and 'right').

Maybe; I would argue that America's party system is slowly or rapidly becoming more like the current French tripolar system, but keeping on to the 2 party labels of D and R.

Currently France has a well defined Left, Center, and Right.

America has a very small Left (Squad/Progressives), fairly large Center (dominated by Democrats and a few Republicans like Murkowski, Meijer, Cheney, and Collins), and a robust, but alienating Right.

Our primary system has become very clearly a system defined by these three poles with Democrats fighting between Leftists and Centrists, and Republicans fighting between Centrists and Rightists (more like Establishment vs Trumpists). Primaries were not this ideological even 10 years ago (2008 or 2012 for both parties lacked this ideological divide).

It will be interesting to see how the Republican party handles power - I think the divide between the Center and Right will become more prominent when they take power again especially because it looks like the Right has been co-opted by the Trump celebrity machine.

Its a generalisation admittedly, but Tories are mainly right, Liberals centre and NDP left. This is pretty common knowledge and doesn't really require any specialist expertise.

I understand that, but how big are the ideological differences between the Liberals and the NDP really? My lay impression is that the Liberals are considerably closer to the NDP than to the Tories.

Cody/Aurelius and ottermax's arguments against Canada make more sense when you consider that Canada has a parliamentary system and the impact Quebec regionalism has had on the Canada's political coalitions and electoral calculus.

[Pres Mike]

Brazil, by a lot

Dilma Rousseff=Hillary Clinton
Jair Bolsonaro=Donald Trump
Lula 2.0=Biden

[CumbrianLefty]

So who is their Obama and GWB?

[Pres Mike]

So who is their Obama and GWB?

Lula 1.0 was a combination of FDR and Obama

But the parallels in recent years was stark. Dilma was impeached in August 2016 after conservative backlash. Watch this documentary on Netflix. The rightwing movement to impeach her took a lot of inspiration from the American conservative movement.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6016744/

[SnowLabrador]

I'll nominate Israel. Both nations are settler-colonial states that allow indicted genocidal leaders to return to power.

[Red Velvet]

So who is their Obama and GWB?

Lula 1.0 was a combination of FDR and Obama

But the parallels in recent years was stark. Dilma was impeached in August 2016 after conservative backlash. Watch this documentary on Netflix. The rightwing movement to impeach her took a lot of inspiration from the American conservative movement.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6016744/

“Edge of Democracy” is a great Academy Award nominated movie about Brazilian politics between 2013-2018 specifically.

It captures what it was like following Brazil politics between the June 2013 protests (eruption of anti-politics and anti-establishment sentiment) and Bolsonaro’s election, which was the culmination of that revolt.

A movie about other periods would feel very different as they each had their own vibe. 2013-2018 is very specific in depicting the beginning of polarization and its peak in 2018 with Bolsonarism winning.

As good as the documentary is, it doesn’t fully capture all the details that broadly characterize Brazilian politics.

[Reactionary Libertarian]

Increasingly Brazil but this is much more true for the right than the left.

[LAKISYLVANIA]

Strong disagree with France.

Even on mainland Europe, it's actually not even the best candidate.

What do you think would be the best Continental European candidate then?

Poland.

To a lesser extent maybe Germany.

For Poland

Last election basically was two party system (two blocs). Left bloc was kinda like Democrats. Right bloc has a lot in common with Republican Party.
Media is highly influenced by who is in charge, and generally all media has a tendency to have a bias, one way or the other. And there was a FOX News equivalent there too
It's very religious & conservative (relative to Europe), so is USA.
Sizeable agrarian communities, sometimes called the grain factory of Europe (alongside Ukraine).

Poland is a bit like what if Texas was a country (but without the oil).

France doesn't make sense because of the strong labor unions and workers tradition etc. And that the left is different, but also that the far right has less in common with the Republicans there, being economically left-wing. Like it's in many ways different.

Maybe 100 to 200 years ago, it was a better answer but i'm not taking history too much into account.

Polish right wing also unlike for instance Hungarian right is more Republican-like in which sides it supports. And being more institutionally right wing. But it also has a decent left wing that still showed it's competing, but no real decently sized far-left like in many other European countries.

And it has its progressive cities like Gdansk etc.