Proportional representation is considered more democratic than majority voting because it prevents parties with less than 50% of the popular vote from taking control of parliament. However, David Williamson and Simon Oches The nature of coalition formation shows that policies supported by minorities often become law under proportional representation.
In early July, a new Dutch coalition government was formed. For the first time in 20 years, it has a minister with a clear responsibility for fisheries. This symbolic but expensive name change (which could cost more than €25 million) was part of the coalition agreement. However, only one party, which received less than 5% of the vote, included it in its manifesto.
At the same time, the parties that won a majority in the parliament to be elected in November 2023 opposed the pension reform passed in the previous legislative period, but the coalition agreement conspicuously did not include any provision to reverse this pension reform.
Why do ruling parties block policies that the majority supports from becoming law, while passing policies that most do not? In both cases, this behavior is driven by the dynamics of coalition governments: parties negotiate coalition agreements that specify which policies the government will and will not pursue.
Frustrated majority, powerful minority
A core criterion of democratic governance is that policy changes supported by only a minority should not take precedence. A coalition government can frustrate majority rule if it decides to make a policy change supported by a minority into law and not pursue a policy supported by a majority. This poses a significant challenge to democratic responsiveness.
In a recent study, we quantified how often coalition governments thwart majority rule. To do this, we used a dataset that included all budget-related policy proposals made by the Dutch governing party in its election manifestos over the five elections and linked these to policies included in subsequent coalition agreements.
We show that minority policy decisions are common under coalition governments. The number of policies included in coalition agreements is fail Gaining majority support is practically Bigger More than the number of policies supported by the majority party in parliament. At the same time, more than 30% of the proposals supported by the majority party were not included in the coalition agreement.
Obstacles to majority rule
If the distribution of seats in the legislature reflects the distribution of voters’ preferences, then the median seat will reflect the majority preference of the population. A spatial model of legislative policy making with a single-dimensional policy space and single-shot decisions predicts that the median legislator’s position will be the policy outcome, meaning that the majority of the public will win in the legislative process because that position cannot be defeated by other policies in a majority vote.
However, a majority-rule electoral system can give a majority of seats to a party that receives support from a minority of voters, which means that the legislative median may differ from the popular median position. This is a particular concern when parties fail to converge on the position of the median voter.
This is often cited as a reason to avoid majority-based electoral systems and instead favor proportional electoral systems. However, we propose and explain the existence of additional empirical concerns about the implementation of majority rule in legislatures, even when they accurately reflect voters’ preferences. This is a coalition agreement.
In a parliamentary system of government with a coalition government, policy decisions are made primarily by the coalition government, and actual decisions are made in coalition negotiations, where coalition parties reach blanket agreements, such as deciding not to pursue certain policies.
Since all parties in a minimum winning coalition government have the right to veto policy changes, especially during the coalition agreement negotiation stage, policy changes favored by the majority in parliament may not be reflected in the coalition agreement. In this case, we would observe that: The frustrated majorityThat is, it means a parliamentary majority that cannot prevail even under the majority rule.
However, if all coalition parties vetoed any policy change they did not agree with, the government’s legislative agenda would be brought to a halt. Alternatively, coalition parties could engage in a policy “logroll” in which some coalition parties’ preferred policies were accepted by other parties, in return for similar support for policies favored only by other parties. Thus, policies that do not receive majority support in the legislature can become law, and minority rule.
Count policy proposals
It is difficult to systematically observe all policy changes in a country. The peculiarity of the Dutch political system allows us to overcome this. Political parties in the Netherlands submit their election manifestos to the Netherlands Bureau of Economic Analysis.Central Planning BureauCPB). This estimates the budgetary impact of all policy measures proposed here.
To be included in these calculations, the parties must make specific policy proposals. After the government is formed, the CPB applies the same procedures to the coalition agreement. Given the politically neutral and respected role of the CPB, the budget impact estimates produced by the CPB play a key role in coalition negotiations.
Since the policy proposals presented in the manifesto and the coalition agreement are scored in the same way, we can observe what each party wanted in terms of policy changes and how much of this was included in the coalition agreement. This allows us to assess how frustrated the majority party is in the House of Representatives and how much minority rule occurs. Let’s look at five coalition agreements from 2007, 2010, 2012, 2017 and 2022.
In the following sections, all references to plenary/parliamentary majority refer to policies supported in the manifesto by the party with the majority of seats (i.e. wholehearted support). Table 1 shows the percentage and number of policies included in coalition agreements with and without wholehearted majority plenary support. The average proposal included in a coalition agreement was supported only by the minority party in parliament, and only 32% of those who met the basic ideal of majority rule. The median vote for policies included in a coalition agreement was only 63, well below the plenary majority (76).
table 1: Policy of the Coalition Agreement
Note: This content has been edited by the author.
Table 2 shows that parliamentary majorities are regularly frustrated. Policies that have a wholehearted majority in parliament are generally excluded from coalition agreements. For every six policies included in coalition agreements, one such policy is excluded. The wholeheartedly excluded policies are nearly half of those included with majority support, and only 70% of all policies included with majority support.
table 2: Frustrated Majority
Note: This content has been edited by the author.
Violation of majority rule
Analysis of a unique data set of policy commitments and negotiation outcomes shows that coalition governments often break the majority rule: over a 20-year period, nearly a third of majority-supported policies were excluded from coalition agreements.
A frustrated majority party is problematic, but it can arise for reasons other than the minority party’s veto, such as budget constraints. Policy changes supported only by a minority party that successfully overcomes the inertia of the policy-making process are normatively more problematic. However, plurality The number of policy proposals included in the Dutch Union Agreement is as follows: ~ No It had the hearty support of a majority of the parliament.
Different understandings of democracy place different importance on directly translating citizens’ policy preferences into policy, but no vision of democracy favors minority rule. There seems to be a trade-off. Proportional representation generally avoids the failure of majority rule by converting electoral minorities into parliamentary majorities, but this comes at the cost of majority rule failing at the legislative level.
In addition to allowing a wider range of input into the decision-making process, proportional representation leads to greater minority rule, as coalition governments are much more likely to form. Given that parliamentary governments experience coalition governments more than 70% of the time, the concerns raised here are broadly applicable.
For further details, please see the authors’ attached paper. party politics
Note: This article presents the views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the position of EUROPP (European Politics and Policy) or the London School of Economics. Featured image source: European Union
