Are you better off remaining an autocracy?

[Mutsu Ara Ara~]

Think this is a bug with the new legitimacy system but the government ideology penalties basically make political parties a poison since different IG's coming to together means you're lucky to get to contested government in a democratic system.

Noticed this playing as the US and Russia, Russia was easy to keep my government legitimacy high and stable but the US is an absolute mess. Despite winning the 63% of the vote the Democrats in government produces a zero legitimacy government since IG groups coming together have conflicting views

[kgkong]

People aren't paying attention to the various ideologies and legislations that political groups have and how those can clash with each other. That's what ideological cohesion factor is all about it. Working your random events around to swap out political group leaders who have conflicting ideological traits from their party and other parties is quite important in helping to manage this.

Aside from a slight bonus to government legitimacy, and authority bonus, there's not much advantage to autocrat

You can switch to census voting or wealth voting, but they also get a different bonus that impacts legitimacy from the voting population. The thing, is, you need to make sure they're wealthy/educated enough so that you have a significant amount of your pop groups voting for that to benefit you more than the bonus to legitimacy from being autocratic.

[girolamocastaldo]

Anyway, this should be addressed in patch 1.2: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/victoria-3-patch-1-1-2-is-now-live-checksum-4971-not-for-problem-reports.1562135/page-4#post-28679294

[MJAnderson]

The issue is that they didn't fix the party system when they updated legitimacy. So the Democrat party itself is heavily contested but you have to put them in all together. Reality is those smaller groups shouldn't be in that party.

[kgkong]

Originally posted by MJAnderson:

The issue is that they didn't fix the party system when they updated legitimacy. So the Democrat party itself is heavily contested but you have to put them in all together. Reality is those smaller groups shouldn't be in that party.

No they did fix it 1.1.2. It's just if you have limited society research and restricted number of available parties, a lot of the times the political groups will side with another group even with ideological cohesion issues. This results in a political party that clashes with itself, reducing the party's positive impact on legitimacy.

[shiggies713]

I've found it best to avoid merging parties together at all cost. Like for example i get the industrialist and inteligencia in government preferably. If the trade unions or petite bourgousie want to join, they can kick rocks because they ruin the legitimacy, so i just never let them join the party if possible.

[Mutsu Ara Ara~]

Which makes no sense, big tent parties are a thing. Think lowering the penalty for ideology differences could fix this issue

[kgkong]

Originally posted by shiggies713:

I've found it best to avoid merging parties together at all cost. Like for example i get the industrialist and inteligencia in government preferably. If the trade unions or petite bourgousie want to join, they can kick rocks because they ruin the legitimacy, so i just never let them join the party if possible.

This isn't causing low legitimacy. Not having ideological cohesion for the type of party (Liberal vs Radical Liberal vs Communist vs Democrats) between the political groups that make it up is often why those mixed group political parties result in bad legitimacy rating. Really got start taking advantage of the opportunity to influence the ideologies of political group leaders through the events that pop up.

[shiggies713]

Yes it is, i guarantee it. You merge the parties, instantly almost 0 legitimacy. That is absolutely the exact reason.

[kgkong]

Originally posted by shiggies713:

Yes it is, i guarantee it. You merge the parties, instantly almost 0 legitimacy. That is absolutely the exact reason.

Not because of what you think. It's because those groups that make up that party lack ideological cohesion and have contradictory positions on a lot of legislation. They join each other in the same way political parties will form coalitions so that the group can achieve governing majority. They have some sympathy towards the other group making up the party but they're more or less not actually vibing together in actual similarities.

EDIT You also have the type of governing body (monarchy, theocracy, republic etc) and the type of voting system (autocracy, oligarchy, census voting etc) that impacts legitimacy factors for better or for worse, based on a variety of factors. Check the info on those legislations to see how they impact legislation. Look at your social research as well. Not having a lot of social research can negatively impact your legitimacy if you only have a limited scope of parties and especially of those parties don't properly align with the group's that make them up. IE Landowners being in a Liberal or non-Democratic/Patriotic party.

[Dray Prescot]

Try holding off on the (Political) Laws that allow Parties to form, until your research into Social Techs allows additional Parties (when they do form).

That when you do enact a Law that allows the formation of Parties, the various IGs can go into several Parties instead of just 1 or 2 Parties that have IGs that very different from each other.