I have zero familiarity with the French system. As for the UK, there seems to be no cognitive dissonance here about how a so-called 'democracy', can have a Monarch as Head of State. Also what is democratic about the second space in which laws get debated adn passed, the House of Lords being mostly hereditary. I say 'mostly' as some people usually super rich - get rewarded for their compliance with the government of the day, by being giving a 'Lordship'.

And then as you say, Bren, there is no proportional representation in th eUK.

So all in all, we have a fictitious democracy so that Westerners can feel superior to the more obvious tyrants in the so-called, 'Third World'.