A question about Parliamentary coalitions

Factual Questions
1

I’ll use the British Parliament structure but as a hypothetical example.

Let’s say that after the election, the Right Party gets 235 seats, the Middle Party gets 215 seats, and the Left Party gets 200 seats. So no party has the 326 seats needed to be a majority (Parliament having 650 seats in total), a coalition government needs to be formed, and a coalition of any two parties would be enough to form a majority.

Now Prime Minister Smith, the head of the Middle Party, is the incumbent PM so he gets first shot at forming a new government. Suppose he goes to the Right Party and says, “We prefer you guys to the Left Party and we know that you prefer us to the Left Party, so we’d rather form a coalition with you. But here’s the deal. I want to stay in power as Prime Minister. You can be a partner in the government but we’re going to be the more leading partner even though you have more seats. And if you don’t agree to this, we’ll just go to the Left Party instead. They prefer us to you and they’ll be willing to be the junior partner to us because they have less seats. And we’d rather be the leading partner in a coalition with them than the junior partner in a coalition with you.”

From the Right Party’s point of view, this is the best deal they’re going to get. They know that everything Smith said is true. They’d like to be the leading partner in a coalition but it’s not going to happen. They’ll either be the junior partner in a Middle/Right government or they’ll be the opposition to a Middle/Left government. With those two choices, accepting Smith’s offer is the best altenative.

But, here’s my question. Is such a deal possible? Can a party with more seats voluntarily agree to being the junior partner in a coalition government? Or is the largest party in the coalition automatically the leading partner (with the head of that party becoming the Prime Minister)?

2

Each party will make the best deal that it can. Having more seats puts your party in a stronger position, but there’s nothing automatic about it. I’m not aware of the junior party in a coalition having the PM’s post in a Westminster-style system, except for a short period after the death of the PM*, but there’s no legal reason why it couldn’t happen.

  • For example, in Australia, after the disappearance of Harold Holt, John McEwen, leader of the minority party in the Liberal-Country coalition, was PM for three weeks in 1967-1968 until the Liberals could meet and choose a new leader.
3

Yes. The composition of a coalition government is negotiated among those in the coalition. If the party with more votes has to allow the other party the prime ministership, then that’s how they will go (Usually, they will ask for big concessions in order to give it up, though).

We actually had a parliamentary system for a short time in the New York State Senate last year. The Democrats held a one-vote majority, but two Democratic senators joined the Republicans. No one was really sure who was in charge – the Democrats claimed they were in the majority because they were when the Senate first sat; the Republicans claimed otherwise. Eventually, the Democrats lured the two bolting senators back by naming one the majority leader.

4

That’s not the case in Canada; the party that wins the most seats in a general election gets the first crack at forming the government.

5

Basically, in a parliamentary system the choice is up to the head of state - in Britain, the Queen. She picks whoever is most likely to have the confidence of the house - i.e. a majority of the members’ backing.

the catch is - nobody voted for queen, so she should be very careful and fair about how she goes about this task. She does not want to look like she’s meddling in the democratic process or playing favourites. The usual rule of thumb is to start with the majority party and ask them to form the government. If no majority, then the largest minority. If they cannot arrange full backing, or if they lose the confidence of the house very shortly, then the next largest, and so on.

The parties can wheel and deal however they want. If a coalition of parties publicly announce they have a deal, and send a message saying so to the head of state, she may invite them to form the government. But out of courtesy, she has to ask the largest party first.

How they arrange their setup - who is prime minister, etc - is entirely up to the wheeler-dealers; the head of state just invites the party(s) to form a government.

In more bumpy democracies, like Israel and until recently, Italy, this process takes a while. The biggest party is given a few weeks to arrange a coalition or at least support from smaller parties. If they fail to get a confidence motion support, the next biggest is given a try.

The unofficial untested rule of thumb in Canada is 6 months or so. Recently the 3 smaller parties basically ganged up on the Conservatives after Stephen Harper basically poked them in the eye; they agreed to vote out the government and request the governor general (Queen’s representative) allow them to govern as a coalition instead of calling another election within 6 months. She instead granted the Conservatives’ request to prorogue parliament ( shut down) for 3 months. By that time, the agreement fell apart, the Liberals had a new leader, and the Conservatives smartened up as much as they could and still be conservatives.

OTOH, there was a situation in Australia in the 70’s IIRC, where the parliament and elected senate were stale-mated. The PM wanted to call a new election, but the GG instead asked the next party in the house to form the goevrnment. He took a huge amount of flack for that. What the (non-elected) governor general can do legally is a lot; what he/she should do beyond what the PM asks, is quite limited.

So short answer - Queen would invite Right to be government, and give Right a few weeks to demonstrate they had the confidence of the house. When that failed, if the other two parties informed her they had formed a coalition, she would give them the chance. A party can actually designte whomever they want to act as prime minister. (As has happened sometimes when the Prime Minister fails to win their seat…)

6

My question was based on an article I was just reading about the possible outcome of the UK elections. One of the things they mentioned is that the British precedent is that the incumbent PM gets the first shot at forming a coalition if there’s no majority party, even if his party isn’t the largest.

As a practical matter it wouldn’t make any difference in the situation I described in the OP. The Middle Party would still hold the power by virtue of being the preferred partner of both of the other parties.

7

I’m not aware that it is different anywhere else. After an election, the party with the most seats, majority or not, previously government or not, is offered first crack at forming the government.

Mind you, in places like Israel or Italy where the head of state is the elected president, rather than an unelected monarch, they may take a more activist role, secured by the fact that they too have a mandate to do a certain job. Much of this process is governed by years of tradition which may be different for different countries.

Ultimately, any government must win a confidence vote in parliament - meaning a majority of the members of the house vote that they have confidence in the government.

8

Hmm… This is where the usually-nominal convention that the Queen is the one who names the P.M. comes into play. She’s free to act as she sees best for the country. Some criteria:

– She is honorbound to summon only someone who can form a government commanding a majority.

– By convention, if there is any chance the incumbent P.M. will be able to put together a coalition, he traditionally “gets first dibs” at it.

– Her influence, sparingly dispensed, will occasionally mean the difference between being able to put together a coalition and not. E.g., suppose the LibDems surprise everyone and get more seats than the Tories. But Cameron, despite backbench urging, won’t form a coalition with them – and neither will Labour. None of the three leaders is willing to give the concessions the other two consider minimum conditions for joining a coalition. The Queen, apprised by behind-the-scenes means that there are 40 or so Tories willing to go into coalition, summons Clegg and commissions him to form a Government of his party and such Conservatives and Labourites as will support him. Her influence sways the 40 coalition-minded Tories and about ten other Tories and two Labourites with exaggerated regard for the Queen to reject the Tory (or Labour) whip and join that coalition, making a Government possible.

  • If it’s a brokered election with no obvious solution, she can summon anyone to form a caretaker government to hold office for a limited time until new elections can reasonably be held. This could be any of the party leaders, again with the incumbent being first choice if he has any chance of success at avoiding being voted out on a confidence motion; it could even be an elder statesman respected by all three parties forming an “all-in” government of whoever is willing to join. Say the Op’s hypothetical had been the result of the 1957 election – the Queen would have been entirely justified in summoning Churchill, retired but beloved, a Conservative who had once been a Liberal and with strong ties of affection to the leadership of both parties, to head a ‘caretaker’ government for a year to eighteen months.

– Failing a majority coalition being feasible, a minority government, by custom of the largest single party, is asked to take office. This is the present situation in Canada.

9

BTW: Israel IIRC has some weird system where the public also vote for Prime Minister. Then that person is given first crack at forming a coalition. Israel has proportional representation and a ton of small parties, so there is rarely a majority; and the biggest party is never guaranteed a majority of support anyway.

I have never heard of the tradition that the PM carries on in Britain, but it’s possible that is the way they work; but again, eventually it comes down to that first confidence vote. If you were party #3 and had a choice of propping up #1 or #2, there’s a huge number of political calculations that come into play.

10

That’s not a very accurate description of what happened around November 11, 1975.
(1) The House of Representatives (the lower house) and the Senate were stalemated. Both are part of the Parliament.
(2) The PM (Gough Whitlam) did not want to call an election – probably because he knew there was a good chance that he would lose it. It was the opposition, led by Malcolm Fraser, that wanted an election.
(3) The GG (John Kerr) dismissed the Whitlam government, and appointed Fraser as a caretaker prime minister, on condition that he immediately call an election.

But that situation isn’t really about coalitions: it raises questions about what the GG can and ought to do if the House of Reps and the Senate are deadlocked over a supply bill. There is a provision for resolving deadlocks between the House and the Senate – a double-dissolution election, followed by a joint sitting if the dispute remains unresolved – but the process takes far too long to deal with deadlock over a supply bill. In fact, the 1975 election was a double dissolution, but the deadlock over supply was not one of the bills technically triggering it, and if there had remained a deadlock after the election, the problem would have remained.

A similar situation can’t happen in the U.K. because the House of Lords cannot block supply.

11

Mmm … I’m not an expert on Canadian constitutional law, but I think you’re wrong. The incumbent P.M. gets a short time frame to try to put together a coalition to survive in office. If he can’t do it (probably the case if he was in with a majority and is now head of a minority party), then the party with the most seats gets to form the new government.

===========

It’s worth adding to all of this that in any country with the Westminster system in place, there are nuances to coalitions. You can agree to join if N of your people get cabinet seats, agree to support the leading party without anyone in cabinet (which may be your best choice if you predict your coalition partner is going to propose something unpopular and get slammed in public opinion for it), agree not to vote down confidence and supply motions for a stated period while retaining the independence to oppose all other Governent measures at your discretion, etc.

12

Yes, but the government still has to get a majority support in a confidence motion (or enough abstentions to not lose the vote). The interesting thing is how public perceptions play. For about 6 years, successive Canadian governments have been minorities. Every party has to consider how it looks if they force an unnecessary election, and what the polls say will happen if there is an election. As a result, the other parties hold their nose and support the government until they think they can win.

Stephen Harper deliberately tried goading the other parties into calling an election, the last year, but they all passed on it. The “who’s fault is this unecessary expensive election?” backlash is probably more painful; nobody has found an election issue so strong that they will persuade people the election was necessary before 4 years were up.

Political games…

13

Just a quick aside question - how is that upper house elected? We have a debate about reforming the (appointed) Canadina senate. An upper house elected at the same time as the lower house is a waste of time; fixed terms (say 1/3 every 2 years like the USA) is a good idea. but then the issue is what to do about deadlocks… which obviously the Australians had not (at that time) resolved… Allowing the lower house to flush the upper house into an election arbitrarily does not sound like a good idea either.

14

It was originally based on the U.S. Senate. Each of the six states has an equal number of senators, half being elected each 3 years for a 6-year term. Currently there are 12 senators from each state, plus 2 from each of the two territories, making a total of 76.

Originally, the senators were electged by a first-past-the post system, soi that it was common for all the senators from a state to be from the same party. In 1949 that was changed to a proportional representation system (using the Hare-Clark system), so that currently the party representation in the Senate is:

Labor (32)
Liberal (32)
Green (5)
National (4)
Country Liberal (1)
Family First (1)
Independent (1)

Liberal, National and Country-Liberal form a coalition, which has been stable for the last 60 or more years, including a change in name from Country to National, so they are 1 vote short of 50%. However, Labor has a majority in the lower house, so they form the government.

15

Hasn’t Belgium been struggling to form a government for the longest time now?

16

This is my understanding as well. At least, in minority situations, the incumbent PM gets first shot. If, on the other hand, the PM outright loses the election (i.e. someone else gets a majority) he basically has no choice but to resign.

ETA: This said, in most Westminster systems (the UK and Canada for one) coalitions are quite rare. If the OP’s scenario happened in Canada, I’d expect the leader of the Middle Party to resign as PM and the leader of the Right Party to be appointed as the new PM, with a government made up solely of Right MPs. The government would then govern with the unofficial/piecemeal support of the Middle Party’s leadership.

17

There’s a big exception in Australia where, as I’ve said, for at least 60 years there’s been a Liberal-Country or Liberal-National coalition, effectively forming one of the two main parties at the national level. The Liberal and Country/National parties have often not been in coalition is some of the states, however – particularly in Queensland.

18

I don’t see how that makes it a parliamentary system. The Governor wasn’t at risk of losing power because the majority in the Senate almost shifted.

I think the Israeli Prime Minister was directly elected for a short while during the 90s, but they soon changed it. Now it’s back to a pure parliamentary system.

Looking on Wikipedia, there were Prime Minister elections in 1996, 1999 and 2001.

Only the first of these cases I would call a “coalition”. In the second one, it depends if your MPs are sitting on the government or opposition benches (but if none of them are part of the government, I don’t know why they’d be on the government benches) and in the third one you’re definitely in the opposition.

They had one for some time, but I think the PM has recently resigned, so it’s back to the drawing board. In the case of Belgium, there’s the added difficulty that Flemings and Walloons have vastly different ideas about how the country should be governed, even (AFAIK) down to constitutional issues, and both of them have their own sets of separate political parties. So it is completely impossible for a party to get a majority, and to get a stable government it is necessary to include members from both Walloon and Fleming parties. Since they’re so divergent in ideas from each other, this is a very difficult step.

19

<blush> I took Wikipedia’s word for it, but looking at the source they cited doesn’t fill me with confidence, in retrospect.

Also, in Sept. 1925 Mackenzie King and the Liberals formed the government despite the fact that the Liberals had fewer seats than the Conservatives (but had the support of the Progressive party).

20

Yeah. I felt that was implied by the fact the thread was about Parliaentary coalitions. Obviously, if Party A has a Parliamentary majority their leader gets tapped to form a Government almost immediately. (Courtesy, again: the Queen/GG waits on the incumbent’s resignation before summoning him, but it’s expected by all concerned.)

What I was looking at is the case where Parties A, B, and C all have less-than-majority delegations. If Party A has the most members returned but Party B’s leader is the incumbent, the latter gets a few days to try to cobble together a coalition – if he can’t, then Party A’s leader gets the nod.