04/4/10
FILED UNDER:VOTING, WOMAN UP, INTERNATIONAL, UNITED KINGDOM
It looks increasingly likely that the British general elections will go right down to the wire. While the opposition Conservative party led the incumbent Labour party by as many as17 percentage points last year, in recent weeks the race has become much more competitive. Many are now predicting that the election -- which must be held by early June -- may end in a hung parliament.A hung parliament is a situationwhere no single political party has a majority of members of Parliament (MPs) in the House of Commons. If this happens, two or more parties may decide that they have enough in common to form a coalition government. Alternatively, another general election may be held in the hope that it delivers a more decisive result. While common in multi-party democracies like Italy and Israel, minority governments are exceedingly rare in the U.K., having occurred only four times since 1900.
In a sign of just how seriously this eventuality is being taken by the sitting Labour government, on Tuesday Whitehall drew up contingency plans that would give Prime Minister Gordon Brown extra time to form a viable administration if there is no clear winner at the general election. This road map even went so far as to stipulate the queen's role in the event of a hung parliament so as to ward off a constitutional crisis.
So far, at least, the conventional wisdom seems to be that a hung parliament would be undesirable for Britain, if not downright dangerous. For starters, there's a concern about political instability. As Fraser Nelson, editor of the right-leaning Spectator magazine argued recently, minority government just doesn't "suit" a "first past the post," winner-take-all electoral system like the U.K.'s. (As in the U.S., whoever wins the majority of votes in a given electoral district takes the seat, rather than allocating seats proportional to a party's vote share, as you find in countries like Italy or Israel.) Because this majoritarian electoral system favors single-party rule, coalition governments have been exceedingly rare in Great Britain -- and quite short-lived when they did occur: Of the four hung parliaments since 1900, none has lasted more than two years.
Many also worry that as a result of such political instability, markets would react negatively to a hung parliament, triggering a run on the pound. Sterling recently hit a new nine-month low against the dollar, which experts in London's financial sector attributed to fears that the upcoming elections might not deliver a clear winner.
Finally, because coalition governments require, by definition, a great deal of compromise, there is also concern that a hung parliament would impede the passage of big, radical policies. And since nearly everyone agrees that whoever comes in to power will need to push through controversial plans to rebuild the British economy, it's not clear that a hung parliament could deliver the goods.
But is all this worry warranted?
Let's take the instability argument. In a country like Israel -- where proportional representation tends to favor coalition governments -- the largest party in power must often make concessions to smaller, often extremist parties in order to govern. (Think of the current turmoil in Israel over building housing settlements in East Jerusalem, which many perceiveas a gesture by Netanyahu towards the more right-wing elements in his coalition.)
But the opposition party that would be in play in Britain -- in either a Labour- or Tory-led minority government -- is the Liberal Democrats, a center to center-left socially liberal party. Yes, it might be a challenge to get folks to see eye to eye in a Lib-Tory alliance. But would it result in extreme policy measures? Not hardly.
Then there's the empirical aspect. There are loads of countries that have managed to do just fine with minority governments -- where "just fine" is defined as the ability to pass major legislation without falling apart. Scotland's been doing it for several years now and has managed fairly well, all things considered. So has New Zealand. Even in the U.S., the political science literature shows that important legislation is equally likely under a unified government (where the same party controls Congress and the presidency) as a divided government (where it's split.)
But perhaps the best example of a country with an electoral system nearly identical to Great Britain's that's also endured minority spells in government is Canada, which happens to have a hung parliament right now. There's no love lost between the Canadian Tories and the other three opposition parties. But the Conservative leader, Stephen Harper, has proven quite adept at brokering deals and maintaining the status quo.
Which brings us to the main advantage of a hung parliament: It forces parties to compromise. Because you have to sit down and negotiate every single vote, minority governments lend themselves to consultation and consensus-building. And by virtue of this consultation, hung parliaments allow different voices greater access to the political scene. In this way, a hung parliament in the U.K. could arguably lead to a more representative political class, one that took into account the views of the back-benchers in the three main political parties, as well as those of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. And that, in turn, might inspire more confidence in the ruling elite, something that's been sorely lacking after the massive loss of trust engendered by the parliamentary expenses scandal last summer.
In the end, all bets are off as to whether we'll end up with this scenario. But even the discussions provoked by that possibility have been, to my mind, well worth the uncertainty. Now we just have to wait and see how this all plays out.
Hang in there (pun intended).
