What are the differences between American and European political parties?

Answer 1

Europe in general, particularly Scandinavia, is simply more socialist than the United States. Where an American conservative would see the Democrat party as borderline communist, understand that from a European's perspective, the Democrats are barely left wing. They are marginally more to the left than right, and it all comes down to perspective. Saying that Democrats are Liberal and Republicans are Conservative would be disingenuous. These are only truths for those within the United States who have the same American perspective. The common example would be: Find me a Democrat within America, and I'll find a European right wing that's more liberal.

The main difference between American and European political parties is that with the primacy of the Parliamentary system in Europe (vs the Presidential system in the USA), Europe has a much larger number of viable parties in each country. That is, in practically all European countries, there exist at least 3 parties, and, in many cases, 5 or 6 parties can carry enough votes to win representation in the Legislature.

Thus, European parties tend to be more narrow in their political agendas, as they wish to appeal to specific interest groups; in a system with larger number of parties, the most successful political strategy seems to be to target specific interest groups, rather than go for larger broad-based appeal. Parliamentary systems generally work on the theory of proportional representation systems, where representation is relatively correlated with the amount of total vote that party received, so getting SOME vote will get a party SOME power. So parties tend to have a narrow political spectrum focus, which insure them at least a share of power.

In the 2-party American system, the opposite strategy works best: attempt to appeal to the largest possible group of ideals, as getting into power requires the majority of any vote - failing to win a majority means your party gets NO political power. So, American parties tend to have opposing general philosophies which then morph into much larger sets, in an effort to attract voters from the political middle ground (ideologically-speaking). American parties thus have much "wider" ideologies than European parties.

Also, as mentioned above, the actual ideals which the American major parties espouse do NOT fit well within the same-named European parties, for many cultural reasons. The American's view of Conservative vs Liberal is very, very different than the European view of the same terms.

Answer 2

American political parties tend to be more ideologically polarized, with the Republican Party on the right and the Democratic Party on the left. European political parties often have a broader spectrum of ideologies represented, with multiple parties from different parts of the political spectrum participating in the political landscape. Additionally, European political parties often have stronger party discipline and more centralized leadership structures compared to American political parties.