What is a "coalition government"?

Factual Questions
1

With all the folks from other countries asking all sorts of questions about our current election, I began to wonder. I’ve heard about coalition governments and have a vague notion of what they are, but what is it exactly?

Does anyone at the SDMB live in a country that has/had one? How does it differ from other forms of government (that you are aware of)? What are the advantages/disadvantages of this form of government?

~~Baloo

Moderators: I don’t know if this belongs in IMHO or GD, but I want responses from people who have actually observed a coalition government in actin to tell me what they know, rather than someone’s Poli-Sci definition. Thanks.

2

[sub][Taking the question to be what is a “coalition government”. If you are using quotes in the thread title, don’t use preview][/sup]I’m Australian and we have a coalition government.

Our head of government is the prime minister, who holds executive power by dint of the confidence of the lower house of parliament. Our current PM is the leader of the Liberal Party (the main conservative party). They do not by themselves have a majority in the House of Representatives. Their coalition partners are the National Party (a mainly rural socially conservative party). They are a smaller party but they get people in the ministry and cabinet in return for supporting the Liberal Party. In effect they do a deal to jointly be the government.

picmr

3

As long as we don’t get into “what’s the best form of government”, which would be a Great Debate, this question is fine for GQ.
Meanwhile, I changed the title to what looked like your intent; if you wanted something else, let me or manhattan know, and we’ll change it back.

picmr, you might want to go into a little more detail there. I think that what you Aussies mean by “government” is a little different than the American meaning of the term. Here, “government” refers to all members of the legislature, the courts, and the executive branch, wheras if I’m not mistaken, in Australia, the “government” is only those parties making up the coalition in power, no?

4

In a parliamentary system, if one political party wins a majority of seats in the legislature, they govern, and fill all the cabinet posts including Prime Minister. This is called a majority government.

If no party wins a majority, the largest single party may be able to form a government without promising any cabinet posts to members of other parties. (They need a majority of votes to do this, but they can get votes from other parties without inviting them into the government.) This is called a minority government. Canada has had minority government several times in its history, including 1972-74 and 1979-80.

If no single party wins a majority and if the cabinet posts are shared between two or more parties, this is called a coalition government. Saskatchewan has a coalition government, as does Israel (I think).

Keep your eyes on the Canadian national election later this month. It could result in a minority or coalition government. By the way, in Canada, the members of Parliament who are not in the governing party or parties are called “Her Majesty’s loyal opposition.” That cracks me up every time I hear it.

5

In Washington this is called gridlock. If you have a 401(k) made up of stocks or mutual funds this may be good for you. Wall Street seems to love gridlock.
Really, we’ve had coalition governments for a long time. Clinton only got a majority government in 1993-94. It didn’t seem to do very well, come to think of it.

6

NZ’s got a really interesting coalition government after their election dramas. It was the first election held under MMP and no one party got enough votes to govern. My brain hurts and I can’t remember who the Labour Party linked up with although I do remember that the Green Party holds the balance of power.

And for the love of the Pink Unicorn, don’t ask me to explain MMP. I voted for it, I like it but I was deeply confused by it.

7

Do explain. You know, the “we’ve had coalition governments for a long time” part.

8

Actually, I thought I fixed that before I posted the topic. Sorry! And thanks!

~~Baloo

9

This only seems to happen in countries that use proportional representation (at least in Europe.) I’m glad it isn’t used in the UK, coalition governments always seem weaker at times of crisis as the different parties try to have their own way. It is useful in Northern Ireland though where the New Assembly is a coalition of sorts. If any one party were left out of local government there would be plenty of trouble which is sort of what caused the Troubles in the 1970s. The first past the post elections resulted in a complete lack of representation for the Catholics of the country.

10

Coalitions aren’t a distinct form of parlimentary democracy, they are a power sharing arrangement. They become virtually inevitable when you have more than two political parties with sufficient support base to win electorates.

They may have a formal basis or simply be “marriages of convenience”. When the political parties in the coalition have common ideologies the arrangements can be very stable. In other cases to get a magority may involve joining disparate parties and be liable to fracture.

The current Australian Federal government, as pointed out by picmr, is a long standing coalition. What makes this arrangement a little unusual is that the coalition has been maintained during periods when one of the coalition partners (the Liberal Party) has sufficient seats to govern in their own right.

After an election no party (or Coalition) has a magority in it’s own right, the leader of the largest party would be approached to see whether they could form a coalition with one or more of the minor parties to form a magority government. If they were unsuccessful, then the leader of the second largest party would have the option. If neither were able to form a government with a working magority, fresh elections would be called.

On Chronos’s point (though I’m sure picmr can/will answer) in the Australian Westminister system “The Government” would be taken as the elected members of the party(s) who form the magority in the House of Representatives, the residual being “The Opposition” or those unaffliated who sit on the cross benches (maybe in another post!).

“The Government” does not include the judiciary nor the public service, nor the government appointees, which IIRC the American system terms the Executive. [as an aside, the Australian system is a hybrid between the UK and US systems and is moving more to the US with political appointments]

The government is formed by the party that can maintain a magority in the House of Representatives. Currently that is the Liberal/National party coalition. Legislation originates in the House of Reprsentatives from the Government. It could come from any party or member, but only the government has the numbers to pass it. The legislation is then taken to the Senate for ratification.

In Australia this gets a bit interesting because the Government, even in its coalition, does not have a magority in the Senate. Therefore to get the legislation ratified, the Government needs to negotiate with one or more of the minor parties represented there. In fact, the electoral system used for the Senate means it is unlikely that any Government will have a magority in the Senate. It could be a recipe for gridlock, but the Government seems to get most of its legislation through, after a bit of horse trading.

11

The U.S. is nearly unique in its separation of president and congress. The overwhelming number of republics in the world are parliamentary. In a parliamentary republic, the voter does not specifically vote for the representative (Minister of Parliament, or MP) that the voter personally prefers, but the candidate from the party that most nearly represents the voter’s philosophy. (This is one reason that most countries have so many parties: any goup who is disaffected by the hijinks of one party may start a new party. If the U.S. used a parliamentary system, it is likely that the Republicans would have divided into two parties in the 1970’s: the religious right and those fiscal conservatives who were also intent on maintaining the separation of church and state.)

The voters never directly elect the Prime Minister. Instead, each party engages in bloody internecine warfare to find out who will be the party’s leader. Then the voters all go to the polls and vote for the party that they think will best represent them.

If party A has a clear majority of MPs (or in the lower house in a bi-cameral arrrangement), that party’s leader becomes the Prime Minister and then “forms a government” by picking a handful of MP’s and assigning them duties as his cabinet. (Such decisions are generally made long before the election. Each party–even those who are not in power–maintains a list of the members who would assume which cabinet positions if they suddenly gained power. I believe that these ministers-in-hope are called the “shadow government” with no sinister implications in the name.)

Of course, often party A cannot get enough members elected to have a clear majority in the Parliament. On those occasions, the Prime Minister will go to other parties and ask if they will (temporarily) join forces with party A so as to prevent Party D from getting too much power. Part of the bargaining that goes on during these discussions involves arranging which cabinet positions will be given to which minority party MPs to entice them to join with party A. When party A has enough members in their coalition of parties to be a majority, the government is “formed” with each of the selected MP’s assuming the various cabinet positions.

One good feature of a parliamentary system is that the executive officer is never from a party in direct opposition to the rest of Parliament (such as we have seen under Clinton for the last few congressional terms). Of course, the disadvantages are that if a coalition is in power, minority parties can manage their own form of gridlock by threatening to pull out of the government if they don’t get their way, forcing the Prime Minister to call for new parliamentary elections. If opposition party(parties) (those parties not in the government) have been gaining popularity, the PM must risk losing power, completely if the parliamentary elections go against his party. (If the rest of his party feels that the elections were a mistake, he will be voted out of his position of leadership, so the PM has a vested interest in keeping the the little parties in his coalition happy. This can (not must) result in small parties holding the government hostage to their demands for policy.)

One aspect of this that is hard for U.S. folks to comprehend is that “the voters” never vote directly for the PM. They only vote for the Minister of Parliament for their district, choosing the party that currently has the leader that they would prefer see “run” the country.
(It could be argued that U.S. voters have as little say in picking the party leader as in a parliamentary system–particularly in the days of brokered conventions and “smoke-filled rooms”, but with our current Primary Election system, we have an illusion that the people have a say, whereas in a parliamentary system the leader is picked specifically by the already-elected MPs.)

Better? Worse? Hey, it works. Could a congressional system country switch to be a parliamentary system, or vice versa? Possibly, although it would be a real culture shock to any who tried.

Given my understanding of the parliamentary system that you just waded through, I am confused by pushkin’s comment. Is there a system in place in the UK to prevent the formation of coalition governments? I was not aware of any way to avoid them in a parliamentary system (other than to simply win majorities at each election). What have I been missing?

12

[technical nitpick]
The necessity to form a coalition is actually independent on whether you have proportional representation, preference voting or “first past the post” or any other voting system.

However, “first past the post” and “winner takes all” electoral systems tend to prevent minor parties winning palimentary representation and hence, in the case of a tight election, being able to deliver the balance of power.[/technical nitpick]

13

Okay, a couple of things. First, sorry for the coding stuff up in my first post.

Yes AND no. “Government” means both the government of the day and the parliamentary system, depending on the context. Also the doctrine of the separation of powers under the Westminster system gets a little strange, since cabinet members are also members of the House of Representatives or the Senate.

NZ has just had its second election under MMP (mixed member proportional) The first was a National Party led government (Prime Minister Bolger) with the New Zealand First party as coalition partner. The new Labor government is led by Helen Clarke.

MMP is not hard to understand (it’s got nothing on the Hare-Clark “point-voting” system of Tasmania for example). Each voter gets two votes for the unicameral system. One is for the local area, one is a national vote. MPs are made up of the winners of the local votes (half the seats) plus nominees from the various parties depending on their share of the national vote.

[/quote]
Advantages and disadvantages? Well it’s important to distinguish between countries where no party getting a majority is possible and where it is nearly certain. In Italy and Japan (and now NZ) the likely outcome of any election is that no party will have a majority. In the UK coalition is certainly possible - it would simply require the Tories and the Labor party to fall short of a majority in the Commons and have to deal with the Lib/ Dems - but fairly unlikely given first-past-the-post rather than preferential or proportional voting.

Every non-direct democratic political system (ie everywhere since the Athenian town meeting) is a compromise between representation of a broad spectrum of views and decisiveness. A system where the winner takes all and does not have to deal much at all with other views has obvious advantages in decisiveness. A system like Italy or Israel where no one party can really hope to get sufficient votes to govern in its own right runs the risk of indecisiveness but guarantees that a variety of views have to be taken into account in arriving at policy.

The hope of the NZ system (which is how it was sold there) was that more of the actual compromising business of government would have to be done on the floor of the parliament and that the losers of an election would not feel that their views could be safely ignored until the next election. (I guess the necessity of talking to both sides in the US is what Doug Bowe meant about the US having had coalition government for a while).

There are two potential downsides. One is the “gridlock” that has already been mentioned. Mind you in the absence of a crisis, some would say that gridlock has a fair appeal. And to the extent to which parties are willing to deal (which they would if the necessity for compromise were the norm) then you may get better policy in the sense that not only would the majority have to gain by policy but there would have to be some protection for the losers.

The other potential downside is the possible emergence of a particularly powerful coalition player. The experiences of Italy and Japan are telling here. Japan’s LDP has rarely held government by itself, but has always controlled it since WWII. There is a fair argument to say this has had a profoundly corrupting influence on Japanese politics and the bureaucracy.

[/quote]
Coalition governments are only an outcome of particular governmental and voting systems, they are not themselves a system of government. They can arise in parliamentary systems from systems of proportional representation (NZ), from stratified voting blocs (Israel) or from a combination of geographic political diversity and preferential voting (Australia). Either way they mean that there is no “winner takes all” element - the government of the day has to deal with its opponents between elections. I think this is familiar to Americans already - and if it isn’t it soon will be.

picmr

14

You’re right, Tom. There is no formal mechanism to forbid coalition government in the UK; in the last election there were serious discussions about the Liberal Democrats gaining enough seats that Labour would enter coalition talks. It never happened in the end, and it’s still pretty much seen as a two-horse race. On the other hand, the relationship between the Conservatives and the Ulster Unionists has always been close, with the former relying on votes from the latter in the Commons on a few occasions.

15

"I am confused by pushkin’s comment. Is there a system in place in the UK to prevent the formation of coalition governments? "
Oops. Technical nitpick accepted, I sort of fluffed the post. Of course there isn’t a mechanism to stop it, its just that in living memory all Westminister governments have had been one party governments like the current one. Proportional representation allows smaller parties to catch up and upset the balance enough to create the need for a coalition to stop the creation of a government without the majority it needs.

16

tomndebb writes:

It should be noted that the Westminster system hadn’t jelled at the time that the U.S. Constitution was written; the first vote of confidence in the Commons only came in 1782, the crown held substantive power, especially in foreign affairs, into the middle of the 19[sup]th[/sup] century (and it can be argued that the easy surrender of the last of that power was due to more to Victoria’s withdrawal after Albert’s death than to any principle), and Parliament had to be dissolved, and new elections held, at the death of a monarch until 1867. Even had the drafters of the Articles and the Constitution wished to perfectly emulate the British system of the time, the results would have had no particular resemblance to current parliamentary systems.

Also, Western Hemisphere republics were created, and principally remain, “presidential”, as opposed to “parliamentary” (the astute observer will note that Canada is technically not, and never has been, a republic). The reason for this, of course, was that when the Latin American nations gained independence early in the 19[sup]th[/sup] century, there was only one substantial republic to emulate: the United States.

17

Since it’s been mentioned a few times in the thread, I thought I would quickly explain how the coalition in Israel operates.

Israel has quite a few major parties, and it is absolutely impossible to gain a majority in the Knesset, so they form coalitions in order to get anything done. Additionally, several parties may form a coalition to create a larger party which runs its own platform. The current PM, Ehud Barak, is a member of the Avoda (Labor) party, which has formed a coalition with two other smaller parties to form Yisrael Echad (One Israel). So he was actually elected as a member of Yisrael Echad, which is very confusing. The problem with the majority coalition in Israel is that the parties compromising it cover the entire political spectrum, and one of them is always threatening to quit the coalition over something. Meretz was going to quit if Shas was given the Education Ministry. Shas was going to quit if Barak did…something, I don’t remember. Yisrael b’Aliya was going to quit if someone looked at Natan Sharansky funny.

To say politics in Israel is chaotic is a huge understatement. That’s what makes it so much fun. :slight_smile:

18

picmr wrote

NZ has just had its second election under MMP (mixed member proportional) The
first was a National Party led government (Prime Minister Bolger) with the New
Zealand First party as coalition partner. The new Labor government is led by
Helen Clarke.
Nope. Bolger won under the last FPP election. He was governing when we had the referendum to decide whether it was going to be MMP or FPP. NZ First were the coalition partner until they weren’t. The shenanigans were weird and wonderful to behold.

19

The most prolific example of coalition Government in the western world is probably Italy where coalitions have pretty much been the rule since the end of WW2. For examples of coalition’s styled on the British Parliamentary system it is difficult to beat the example (as has been said) of Israel.

Obviously, the US is not natural territory for coalition style Government as your system is (for all intents and purposes) two party only. A coalition under these circumstances is actually a ‘National Government’, IMHO i.e. there is no opposition party.

Is coalition Government good ? – interesting question. In countries where proportional representation is constitutional, coalition is the staple diet of politics – the system is better designed and politicians more experienced and prepared for compromise and the wheels move more easily.

If we assume the primary purpose of elections in first past the post democracies is to elect representatives to implement their manifesto with (relatively) unfettered certainty, then coalition isn’t too great as it hamstrings politics with uncertainty and policy compromise. It can also be, however, a truer reflection of the intentions of the electorate. My conclusion: Could be good, could be bad but best to avoid it if possible.

20

Just as an interesting “close but no cigar”, consider that the US Senate will contain (roughly) 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats. If the Green Party, instead of wasting its time and money on Nader, had managed to get one or even two senators elected… they would hold the balance of power. We don’t quite have “coalition” governments per se, but wouldn’t they Democrats AND the Republicans be wooing those one or two Green Party senators on various issues? And wouldn’t the Green Party senators be in a great position to make demands and obtain concessions (“Yeah, I’ll vote for your tax bill if you’ll also push through my pet bit of legislation.”)