None of that specifies how an actual country would work under such a system. When I mentioned totalitarian democracy earlier, it’s a system where the electors don’t feel and any need to act like representatives. They may be elected and consult on issues, the incumbency effect and having religious beliefs as part of their qualifications both bias them from being representative. Basically, you described something similar to the orginal idea behind Soviet council and their idea of council democracy. The problem is that democracy as formulated would destroy all foundations of liberal society and be totally tryrannical even if individual members had no power themselves or outside the council, but an all powerful council would still cause tyranny

I’ve even seen divides forming within the third parties of the US along the two-party line, with those in the third party who are more critical of the Republicans finding themselves adversaries of those in the third party who are more critical of the Democrats.

Even the third parties these days aren’t immune from the Left/Right division.

Stephen, I know that Timothy Snyder, in his book “on Tyranny” warns against the one party state. And according to the old model I would tend to agree with him. The Baha’i model offers a democratically elected assembly (voted through a secret election process to avoid campaigning, etc), and the assembly then has representitives at the local, national, and international level. Each assembly member has no more status than any other, and no outside status by themselves. When in chambers, the assembly consults on the different problems presented to it. Consultation is both a spiritual and practical process outlined by the Prophet-Founder Baha-u-llah. You can find more info on any Baha’i website searching “consultation”.

Where parties do not exist, criticism of the administration is likely to remain purely an individual matter; therefore the tone of the criticism is likely to be negative, carping, and petty, as it certainly was in the Confederacy. But where there are parties, the opposition group is strongly impelled to formulate real alternative policies and to press for the adoption of these policies on a constructive basis. … But the absence of a two-party system meant the absence of any available alternative leadership, and the protest votes which were cast in the [1863 Confederate] election became more expressions of futile and frustrated dissatisfaction rather than implements of a decision to adopt new and different policies for the Confederacy.

But despite heated arguments and no little friction between the competing political cultures of unity and liberty, antiparty and broader fears about politics in general shaped civic life. These beliefs could obviously not eliminate partisanship or prevent Confederates from holding on to and exploiting old political prejudices. Indeed, some states, notably Georgia and North Carolina, remained political tinderboxes throughout the war. Even the most bitter foes of the Confederate government, however, refused to form an opposition party, and the Georgia dissidents, to cite the most prominent example, avoided many traditional political activities.

In summary, absolute monarchy or countries that aren’t quite constitutional monarchies like Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Vatican City are non-partisan places where political parties are banned. With the exception of Vatican City, Arab Spring protests had lack of political parties as one of their grievances. The rare example of a non-partisan republic was the Confederate States of America. The unified system one party state has existed in 3 ambiguous, 1 big tent, 25 left-wing, 60 communist, 8 right-wing, and 67 fascist countries. Basically, unity in a unified system comes at the expense of all other values like freedom, liberty, fairness, proportionality, Justice, equality, etc…