&gt; the Parliament as an institution is arguably more functional<p>This is a very interesting point. I had thought the greater freedom of Congressmen in the US to vote as they wished, even if it was against party lines, was strictly more democratic and therefore better, but I&#x27;m not sure that&#x27;s necessarily the case.<p>For a given issue raised, there are generally several distinct solutions proposed. These proposals have advantages and disadvantages, individually each is probably aligned with the ideology of one of the major parties, but let&#x27;s say it is not necessarily obvious that one proposal is strictly better than the other. There should be discussion and deliberation, but in the end a well-functioning government should pick one of these proposals and stick with it.<p>Without strict party discipline a party will have to lobby it&#x27;s own members and, since it&#x27;s generally trying to push through multiple proposals at once, choose its battles and compromise. As a consequence, rather than one of the well-thought out original proposals, a compromise combining elements from several is what will eventually be passed. While either proposal individually would work well, such a mixture can easily become an incoherent mess, and strictly worse than either individual original proposal.<p>With strict party discipline, the party decides in the party room what proposal to advocate, and then it expects party unity in pushing it through parliament.<p>It&#x27;s somewhat counter-intuitive, but I think that in many situations it&#x27;s more important that a coherent and well-considered decision is made than it is that all viewpoints and positions are accomodated.