Marcus: Thanks for reading the TDG essay and your thoughtful comment.

I have just finished reading a political science book from a popular political scientist. Unfortunately, this field of study more or less sees political parties as a necessity to democracy. If we leave democracy to their hands, that part is not going to change.

One advantage of FPTP (Westminster) systems is that the people have a local represenative that has the responsibility of carrying their concerns of governance to the capital city. You and I know that this works better in theory than in practice, but that feature is there.

The local connection to governance is a lot more fuzzy with proportional representative systems. As I am read your suggestions, I am seeing this loss of local connection. But maybe there is more to your explanation.

The TDG retains the local connection. If a citizen has a grievance with government, the neighborhood representative is not too far away. If enough citizens voice a similar concern, many neighborhood representatives will be taking that concern to a higher level in government. And because all these representatives are not encumbered by partisan interests, they will be more effective in dealing with that concern.

Here is a link to a book review of an amateur political scientist who also wants to remove political parties from democracy:

https://davevolek.medium.com/solving-for-democracy-book-review-c32e1b9bd22c