Coalition Government as a Reflection of a Nation's Politics and Society

A Comparative Study of Parliamentary Parties and Cabinets in 12 Countries

Matt Evans

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781138392113
• eBook ISBN: 9780429748776
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Through examination of parliamentary governments in twelve countries, this book demonstrates the ways in which study of the parties in governing coalitions, and their parliamentary opposition, provides insight into numerous aspects of countries' cultural values, societal schisms, and the issues of greatest contention among their people.

Each chapter analyses the political parties in a different country's parliament and illustrates how they represent the country's competing interests, social divisions, and public policy debates. Coalition and opposition parties are also shown to reflect each country's: political institutions; political actors; political culture; and societal, geographic, and ideological rifts. In many of the countries, changes in the constellation of parties in government are emblematic of important political, social, and economic changes.

This book will be essential reading for students of parliamentary government, political parties, electoral politics, and, more broadly, comparative politics.

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Coalitions through a comparative politics lens

Parties and political culture

Matt Evans

What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?

Alexander Hamilton and James Madison (1787)

Following elections in parliamentary democracies, a few news articles appear in the foreign press concerning the coming role of the prime minister, which party won the election, and perhaps some mention of negotiations to form a governing coalition. Once a government is formed, the prime minister becomes the face of the country in the eyes of most of the rest of the world, and very little attention is given to the other parties in his/her coalition or to the opposition.

However, as will be illustrated in this book, study of the coalition of parties that govern with the prime minister, as well as the parties in the opposition, helps discern a country’s most contentious cultural and societal issues about which the country’s people are most passionately divided. Unlike presidential systems, parliamentary elections rarely produce winners. Parliamentary elections generally result in multiple parties, with no single party claiming a majority of the legislature. Consequently, prime ministers, their cabinets, and the policies they pursue reflect compromises negotiated by political parties that represent different segments of the population with divergent values and interests.

The ways in which the political parties in coalition governments and their parliamentary opposition denote a country’s most controversial and divisive issues is studied in this book through twelve parliamentary democracies. The basic question guiding the analyses in each chapter is: How do the political parties in the coalition and opposition reflect a country’s political culture, societal divisions, and most critical policy debates?

Since political culture and society comprise a unique aggregation of historical, geographical, and demographic factors, this question is addressed through examination of each country’s political parties and government in accord with the following basic assertions:

1. Political institutions determine which groups and values will be represented by controlling the number and type of parties in parliament and government. A country’s electoral system and rules for forming a government are among the institutional factors most important for determining whether political parties represent socioeconomic, geographic, or demographic concerns. Institutions also determine whether smaller parties, representing niche issues, will be represented and how much influence different parties will have on decision-making.
2. Political institutions are determined by, and reflect, a country’s history, cultural norms, and societal values. Institutions evolve and change in reaction to key events within a country and in accord with the citizens’ primary values and concerns. Thus, for example, the rules for electing parties and forming governments are often developed in reaction to a break from previous types of regimes or other historical national occurrences.
3. Examining the parties in a parliament provides insight into a country’s most pivotal conflicts. Since parties usually align themselves on one side or the other of the country’s most divisive issues, the parties in the coalition and opposition reflect their society’s leading schisms.
4. Coalition and opposition parties reflect both traditional and contemporary cultural and societal mores and rifts. The refusal to include a particular party in a coalition is often attributable to a rejection of ideas or values that are considered unacceptable. Exclusion of parties from coalition consideration is frequently indicative of cultural values rather than competition for power.

Thus, the answer to how parties reflect a country’s political culture, societal divisions, and most critical policy debates varies in the book’s chapters in accord with each country’s history, values, demography, and the most pressing contemporary problems it faces. Examination of each of the countries’ political systems, parties, and societal schisms is carried out through the following common framework in each chapter:

1. Political system – institutional framework
2. Political parties: representation of demographic and ideological divisions III Political culture: cleavages and policy debates
3. Coalition and opposition: policy debates as a reflection of sociocultural divides

I. Political system – institutional framework

Executive/legislative relations

Whether the head of government is a president or a prime minister, one of the most fundamental institutional safeguards in democratic systems is the ability of different branches of government to check each other’s power, prevent abuse, and protect democracy. Parliamentary systems, however, do not have the same separation between the executive and legislative branches that is normally found in presidential systems. Prime ministers, and other cabinet ministers who together make up the executive branch, have in most cases been elected to serve as representatives in the legislature. The government cabinet is therefore composed of senior legislators and leaders of the political parties that usually hold a majority of seats in parliament. While in some countries parliament members (MPs) who have been appointed to a ministerial position in the government cabinet must resign from the legislature, in most countries they continue to serve as both members of the legislative branch – voting with other members of parliament – and the executive branch. Additionally, as party leaders, ministers have tremendous influence on how their parties’ legislators vote.

Although parliamentary systems lack the separation between branches found in presidential systems, countries have developed different institutional rules in order to constrain executive power. One of the formal checks on power in parliamentary systems is the no confidence (or censure) vote. Through a no confidence vote, a majority of members of parliament (usually just the lower house in a bicameral system) can vote a government – the executive branch – out of power. While this appears to be a powerful legislative check on executive power, most MPs will not vote no confidence in their own party’s leaders; hence, such motions only succeed when coalitions do not maintain a parliamentary majority.

There are several variations of the no confidence vote found in the parliaments around the world. Some constitutions require a constructive no confidence vote, in which it is not enough for a parliament to vote against a government, but a majority must also support an alternative prime minister and cabinet. In cases of a divided opposition, it is very difficult to reach agreement on new leadership and hence governments with these systems are unlikely to fall. In some countries the investiture or confidence vote empowering a government requires an absolute majority, while in other countries only a relative majority (of those voting rather than of the total number of MPs) is needed. In a number of countries, the head of state may appoint a prime minister and/or government to remain in power (until the next scheduled elections), as long as there is no successful vote of no confidence. This is often referred to as negative parliamentarism since the government does not need a positive vote of support, but can be brought down by a negative vote (Bergman 1993, 57). Frequently, such systems have minority governments.

The rules for when and how different types confidence votes may be held vary between countries and are affected by both formal and informal institutions. Among formal institutions are constitutions, laws, and parliamentary rules that either strengthen opposition parties or limit no confidence motions. Informal institutions include national norms and traditions that enforce certain behaviour through shared values (Evans 2007). In many cases, such mechanisms reflect a country’s unique history and political culture. For example, in some countries, governments may resign following a legislative defeat, despite there being no formal legal requirement to do so. Additionally, limitations on parliament’s ability to bring down a government often signal a preference for stability in response to historical events or a cultural inclination toward consensus building. The chapters in this book elucidate how political institutions shape and are shaped by a country’s history and values and thus determine how these are reflected in the political parties in the government coalition and its parliamentary opposition.

Electoral systems: who is represented

How is it that the United States with a population of 325 million has only two political parties¹ in its legislature, while Germany with 83 million has six parties, and the Netherlands with 17 million people has fifteen parties in its parliament? Of the three, the United States has greater socioeconomic disparity and the most ethnically diverse population spread over the greatest geographic area. However, the political institutions in the Netherlands and Germany allow for more political parties that reflect a greater range of groups and interests. Among the institutions most important for determining political representation is the electoral system.

Electoral systems determine the number and nature of parties, what type of electorate they represent, and how. Advocates of the different varieties of electoral systems have argued that certain systems or rules are better, fairer, or more efficient.² In countries with a majoritarian/plurality (also referred to as “first-past-the-post” or “winner-take-all”) system, voters choose individuals affiliated with one of the parties to represent geographically divided constituencies. Among the countries that use this as their sole method for selecting their legislature are Britain, Canada (lower house), and the United States. Since only those who receive a majority (or sometimes plurality) of the votes in each constituency are represented, most voters avoid wasting their vote on candidates from smaller parties that have no chance of receiving enough votes. Consequently, the political system in such countries is generally characterized by two large parties (Duverger 1964).

The two main parties in such systems usually encompass a plethora of values, interests, and policy goals, one to the left of centre and the other to the right. As Anthony Downs’s (1957) median voter theorem indicates, neither party adopts positions that are too far from the constituency’s political centre in order to appeal to (or at least not alienate) the majority of voters. Hence, a common complaint in such systems is that the two main centrist parties tend to be rather similar and offer voters little genuine choice. In this type of system, a voter may support a party based on, for example, its security or immigration policy, despite disagreeing with the party’s position on economic, social, or environmental issues.

The other main type of electoral system is proportional representation (PR). This system awards parties – rather than individual candidates – seats in parliament according to the share of the vote that they receive. In proportional systems, there is less fear of wasting votes since parties with a small percentage of the votes can gain representation. As a result, parliaments chosen through proportional systems have more political parties than those that use a majoritarian system.

There are many variations of proportional electoral systems with different rules that also affect the number of political parties and how constituents will be represented. Some hold a country’s entire electorate in one national constituency, while others provide representation proportionately within geographically divided districts. The former method will usually result in more political parties than the latter. The number of representatives chosen in PR constituencies is referred to as district magnitude. The smaller the district magnitude, as measured by the number of representatives in each district, the less proportional a system will be and the less likely that smaller parties will be represented.

Another variant that determines the number of parties is the electoral threshold. Countries that employ a proportional system usually only allow representation for parties that receive a certain share of the vote. Parties that do not pass the threshold are not represented and their share of the vote is distributed among the parties that have made it into parliament. Increasing an electoral threshold decreases the number of parties. Among the countries in this book, the electoral threshold ranges from no threshold to 5.0 percent. Electoral thresholds are used to limit the number of smaller parties and make government coalitions more stable. Although small political parties often provide important representation to marginalized groups or voice new ideas, in some cases small parties may represent extreme ideologies or fan the flames of contentious societal divisions. Consequently, electoral thresholds are sometimes used to prevent smaller, radical parties from entering parliament.

Several of the countries in this book have different kinds of mixed electoral systems that combine proportional representation and majoritarian voting. The advantage of a mixed system is that it allows for greater representation and accountability while producing larger centrist parties around which the smaller parties can coalesce. Thus, mixed systems may offer more stability than PR systems and greater pluralism than majoritarian systems. The various types of electoral systems are often adopted due to historical developments or solutions to particular problems that have arisen in different countries. Each of the twelve countries in this book has different methods of choosing leaders that reflect specific aspec...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Introduction
• 1 Coalitions through a comparative politics lens: parties and political culture
• PART I Typical coalition governments, with weakening pillar parties
• PART II Coalition governments with uncoalitionable minority parties
• PART III Minority governments and negative parliamentarism
• PART IV Third-wave countries, economic crisis, and political changes
• PART V Anti-establishment party leads government
• Conclusion
• Index