One of the things that people want from government is certainty. Up until very recently, elections delivered that certainty in the four oldest democracies in the British Commonwealth, as well as in the United States. In 2000, the episode of the Hanging Chads introduced Americans to the idea that the day after the election, they might not know who would be President of the United States on January 20th of the next year, at 12:01 pm.
Australia today woke up to their election results, which ended in what parliamentary democracies call a “hung Parliament” (no jokes, please! This is serious.) That is, no one party can command a majority in the lower house of Parliament. What has not been remarked upon is that all four of the oldest members of the British Commonwealth are now governed by a party that does not command an absolute majority in the lower (or the only) house of their Parliament.
The Dominion of Canada is governed by a minority party, governing alone but with the tacit voting cooperation of other parties in the House of Commons. The United Kingdom is governed by a coalition between a plurality party in the House of Commons and the smallest of the three major parties in the United Kingdom. The Realm of New Zealand has been governed by coalitions since a new voting system, mixed-member proportional representation, was put in place in 1996. They have a unicameral Parliament. The Commonwealth of Australia, emerging from an election last Saturday, faces the prospect of a coalition government or a minority government supported by independent and one Green MPs—at this writing the outcome is uncertain.
To my knowledge, this is the first time that all four of these countries have had non-majority governments at the same time. The UK had a minority government after the first general election in February, 1974. When Harold Wilson called the second election, in October 1974, he gained a majority of 3. Previously there was a coalition government in the UK during the Second World War, where Churchill was, of course, Prime Minister and a Conservative, Clement Attlee was Deputy Prime Minister and the head of the Labour Party, and the same Parliament sat from 1935, when the Conservatives won a majority, until 1945, when the war ended and Attlee demanded a General Election, which Labour won.
In 1940, the Federal election in Australia was narrowly won by the party of which the Liberal party of today is the descendant, with a majority supported by independent MPs. When two of those independents switched sides in the next year, Labour then took over the government and increased their majority in 1943. The Liberal Party governments since 1943 have all been “coalitions” between the National Party and the Liberal Party. The Wikipedia article on politics in Australia and some of the subsidiary articles, such as the one on the National Party, are most interesting in their chronicling of the fissiparous nature of party politics in Australia.
Canada has been governed by minority parties for two periods in the last 30 years or so. In the election of 1979, Joe Clark’s Progressive Conservatives won a plurality, and governed alone until Clark called an election in early 1980, resulting in a Liberal government. In 2004, a Liberal minority government was elected, and then in 2006 a Conservative minority government was elected, and then reelected in 2008. The country does not seem to want to go to the polls again so soon after the 2008 election, so unless the government loses a vote of confidence in the House of Commons it seems likely to soldier on until the Prime Minister thinks it likely that a general election will succeed in returning him with a majority government.
Where am I going with all this? Minority and coalition government in democracies descended from Great Britain had usually been the exception rather than the rule. Two-party government, with each party alternating governments, have been encouraged by plurality first-past-the-post electoral systems, where the candidate with the largest number of votes in a constituency wins the seat, whether s/he has an absolute majority or not. Duverger’s Law says that the first-past-the-post system tends to favour such governments, while some sort of alternative vote system tends to favour multi-party government. The United Kingdom will vote next May on whether to introduce the alternative vote system for Parliamentary elections, where candidates are numbered according to the voter’s preference, in descending order. If no one wins more than 50% of first-preference votes, the candidate with the least number of first-preference votes is knocked out, and the second preferences of his first-preference voters are added to the totals of the other candidates. This continues until one candidate has 50%+1 of all votes,. based on this redistribution. It is often called the “Instant Runoff Vote”, as this process is similar to holding a runoff election, without the expense of actually doing so. The plurality Conservatives are against this, as it is likely to result in fewer Conservatives being elected to Parliament. The minority Liberal Democrats are in favour, as in many seats it could make the difference between a LibDem being elected and one being a close second. Labour used to be in favour of it, but now when they are in opposition, have decided they are not in favour of it, simply to be bloody-minded.
The question in my mind is this: What constitutes a fair picture of the results of an election? If in a UK election the Conservatives get 40% of the total vote, Labour gets 35%, Liberal Democrats get 20% but the Conservatives get 45% of the seats, Labour gets 40%, and the Liberal Democrats get only 8% (not the current numbers, of course; I just picked them out of the air for illustration’s sake) is this fair? Are the LibDem votes that do not result in a LibDem MP wasted if they do not help elect a LibDem MP? Is the uncertainty currently surrounding the Australian election result good for the country? Should the voting system be changed so that elections are more likely to result in a majority government?
I believe that there is one fact about coalition government that tends to make it a good government. When one party is in coalition with another, each party to the government has to temper its demands in reaction to the demands of the other party. In order to govern effectively, the coalition has to have internal debates, with give and take, negotiation, horse trading, and wheeling-and-dealing in order to formulate policy and get bills passed in Parliament. This sharpens the debate in the House itself, as debate and argument have already gone on internally. Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition often does not have this luxury, and with Labour currently eating itself alive during the leadership contest currently going on they definitely cannot take any position other than blind opposition to every proposal of the Coalition.
The unfortunate fact of coalition in the United Kingdom is that, despite all the signs with COALITION AHEAD!, BEWARE OF THE COALITION!, HANGING PARLIAMENT ABOVE!!, none of the three major parties seriously contemplated what they would do were a hung Parliament to be elected. So when they woke up the day after the election, the three leaders didn’t know what to do. Nick Clegg, the kingmaker and leader of the LibDems, finally cast his lot in with the Conservatives, as together they would command a majority in the House of Commons.
A coalition with Labour would have had two major difficulties. One of them was Gordon Brown, outgoing Prime Minister, who was clearly exhausted, repudiated by a majority of voters, prone to gaffes, and unsuited to continue in office. Replacing him, however, would have produced the UK’s second female Prime Minister in Harriet Harmon while Labour went through the cumbersome process (for them) of electing a new leader, who would take over. More uncertainty. The other was that a LibLab coalition would be a minority coalition, and would have to scrabble for votes from the Scottish Nationalists, Plaid Cymru, the Democratic Unionists of Northern Ireland, and a handful of independents and a Green. Labour as a whole was not up to the task of securing a majority for each bill they proposed—that kind of vote-chasing is tiring and would make government a pain for them. When John Major’s majority in Parliament evaporated in 1996 through deaths and lost by-elections, he had to scramble around for each and every vote and this contributed to the weariness of his government.
Now in government, the Liberal Democrats are still holding together, just. There have been rumours in the press that Charles Kennedy, the convivial and often tired and emotional former leader of the LibDems and MP for the Scottish Western Isles was contemplating a return to the Labour Party he left years ago. These have been hotly denied. I would not say that it is beyond the pale that other LibDems on the left of that traditionally sandal-wearing and free-thinking party might not join or re-join Labour. I am certain that Labour MPs are being encouraged to socialise with their LibDem MP friends in order to sound them out on the possibility of defection.
However, all of this avoids the reality of the situation. Much quoted lately, most recently by Julia Gillard, PM of Australia, is former US President Bill Clinton’s remark after the 2000 US Presidential election: “The American people have spoken but it’s going to take a little while to determine what they said.” In the UK and other British parliamentary-style democracies, each party runs on a manifesto (=US “platform”) which sets out, in detail, what the party intends to do if it forms a majority government. What the manifestos do NOT say is what the party intends to do if no party commands a majority in Parliament and it must explore coalition with other parties.
Not only do the manifestos not say anything about this, the electorate here does not understand the nature of negotiation in a coalition government. If I had a pound for every article I’ve read and every news report I’ve seen and heard over the airwaves scorching the LibDems for abandoning their stated manifesto pledges now that they are in government with the Conservatives, I’d be able to retire. Saying these things is stupid and unthinking.
The manifesto only applies when a party forms a majority government. When a party forms part of a coalition, its manifesto becomes aspirational, a basis for negotiation between the parties that are forming the government. While one can encourage one’s party to fight its corner in government, it is unreasonable to expect it to win every battle.
A week is a long time in politics (hackneyed phrase, but a true one). Who knows what will happen to the coalition here in the UK, or the government in Australia. Prime Minister Gillard may elect to continue on as Prime Minister of a minority government until and unless she loses a vote of confidence in the House of Representatives, although there is precedent for the Governor-General to dismiss a Prime Minister, it is very unlikely to happen and PM Gillard will remain as PM until and unless she resigns, as is customary in Parliamentary democracies. Prime Minister Harper of Canada has played fast and loose with Parliamentary procedures lately in order to deny opposition MPs the opportunity to investigate or call his government to account. The opposition has threatened to deny Harper the confidence of the House and force an election, but I believe they will wait until memories of the last election have faded a bit more. No one wants to go to the polls every two years in a Parliamentary democracy, and Canadians have trooped to a General Election in 2004, 2006, and 2008. New Zealand, as far as I am aware, has been ticking along nicely since the last election. But they have fourteen years’ experience of coalition government, so perhaps the New Zealand government has mastered the method of making it work, while we in the UK have yet to do so and the Labor Party of Australia has yet to have to try.