I enjoyed this thoughtful column by Andrew Coyne. As usual, he brings a unique perspective to the issues.
It sparked a couple of thoughts about Grand Coalitions.
A grand coalition is when the two largest parties in a legislature join together to produce a majority, rather than one joining up with smaller parties and the other large party forming an alternate government.
In Canada, this would be the Liberals and Conservatives forming a coalition government, with the NDP and Bloc sitting in opposition. In Britain, Labour and the Conservatives forming a government, opposed by the Liberal Democrats.
These types of coalitions are exceedingly rare.
The usually occur only in war time (like the Union government in Canada from 1917 to 1920), depression and then war (like the National Government in Britain during the Great Depression and Second World War), or transformative national formation (the Great Coalition of 1864 to 1867 in the Province of Canada that argued for and birthed Confederation.)
Typically, there is too much bad blood, ideological division and competition between the parties who compete to govern for them to join together.
In addition, it is rare that they need to join together. For instance, right now the Conservatives could govern with the support of any one of the three opposition parties, or even with just nine MPs from any party voting with the government.
But the principle driving factor – according to proponents of game theory and students of politics – the theory of minimal winning coalitions.
Proposed by William H. Riker (not to be confused with William T. Riker of Star Trek fame), the theory states that politicians will want to create the smallest coalition possible, so long as it can win, in order to maximize the distribution of electoral spoils per winner.
So if a Parliament requires 50 per cent +1 of the votes to demonstrate confidence in the government, a Prime Minister will want to build a coalition as close to 50 per cent + 1 without going under as possible. That requires the fewest partners and the least dilution of the spoils of government.
I want to clarify something right away. When I say "spoils of government" people tend to immediately jump to patronage or perquisites or something vaguely corrupt. It can include these things, but much more often means elements of public policy, political power and control.
For instance, a coalition partner might demand changes in climate change policy that would be hugely negative to a part of the potential PM's base coalition. Control of that policy is a “spoil of government” and it would have to be traded away to control other spoils like fiscal policy, appointments and Senate reform.
Paul Martin's leadership campaign is an excellent example of a team that should have heeded Riker's theory.
By working to maximize Martin's share of the vote in the leadership contest at any cost, even after it was obvious that Martin would win, the Martin team expanded their coalition too much. Martin's team delivered 93.8 per cent of the vote to their boss, but the result was dilution of the spoils of government to the point where policy lost coherence, everything was a priority, and political resources were spread too thin. Inevitably, feelings of disappointment and even bitterness infected previously rabid supporters, and the public.
A better strategy would have been to close the door to further supporters after Allan Rock withdrew from the race in 2003, consolidate the Martin wing of the Liberal Party around coherent policy objectives and then use the leadership process as a platform to drive these policies through the party, into the government and then the subsequent election.
Trying to be all things to all people doesn't work in theory or in practice.
