Your guess is correct. It is very common for us to have a coalition of three or more parties. Although the current coalition is one of two parties.

This was the result of so-called strategic voters. Left-wing voters people feared that the VVD (the liberals) would become the largest party and voted for the PvdA (labour party) en masse.

Interestingly this resulted in even more right wing voters voting for the VVD, instead of a smaller party. Right now we are stuck with two titans—that also happen to have opposing views.

Fortunately both parties were able to form a coalition. Albeit with the necessary financial consequences. The labour party let the VVD cut mercilessly on government expenses, although it pretty much decided who should get hit the most; the higher incomes.

Australia is a combination of STV & instant-runoff, and it's still mostly a two party system. Canada is a FPTP westminster parliament with two major parties (Liberal & Conservatives) and two substantial minority parties (NDP & Bloc). It might just come down to culture.

> It might just come down to culture.

And/or historical accident. Maybe it's like the appendix - not the result of any modern circumstance, but it's here to stay for the foreseeable future.

The fact that this works in the Netherlands may have more to do with Dutch culture and a good synergy with their shared values than with the specifics of their electoral system. Contrast it with Israel to see the other extreme of proportional parliamentary representation...

You're correct. Their voting system uses proportional representation, in which each party receives a number of seats proportional to the percentage of votes they received.

Edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_the_Netherlands#Pol...

In addition, the Netherlands does not have an election threshold. A party that gets 1/150 of the votes gets one of the 150 seats in parliament.

That is different from, for example, Germany, where seats are proportionally distributed among parties that got at least 5% of the votes.

So, the theoretical maximum number of parties in parliament is 150 in the Nethelands, but 20 in Germany.

It may just be the "this is the way we've done it in America" in me talking. But I'd probably be OK if we at least had some sort of instant runoff voting, or something similar which didn't make the voter strategize between choosing a candidate that they most agree with and choosing between the lesser of two evils.