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Minority government
A minority government, minority cabinet, minority administration, or a minority parliament is a government and cabinet formed in a parliamentary system when a political party or coalition of parties does not have a majority of overall seats in the legislature. It is sworn into office, with or without the formal support of other parties, enabling a government to be formed. Under such a government, legislation can only be passed with the support or consent of enough other members of the legislature to provide a majority, encouraging multi-partisanship. In bicameral legislatures, the term relates to the situation in the chamber whose confidence is considered most crucial to the continuance in office of the government (generally, the lower house).
A minority government tends to be less stable than a majority government because, if they can unite, opposing parliamentary members have sufficient numbers to vote against legislation, or even bring down the government with a vote of no confidence. If, however, a minority government can negotiate a confidence and supply agreement with parties sufficient to maintain a majority, it can be as stable as a majority government.
To deal with situations in parliamentary systems where no clear majority to form a government exists, two or more parties may establish a formal coalition government, commanding a clear majority of the parliamentary members. A party might also enter into less formal alliances or agreements with other parties or individual members to allow the minority government to stay in office.
A common situation is a governance with "jumping majorities", where the cabinet stays as long as it can negotiate support from a majority in the parliament, even though that majority may be differently formed from issue to issue or bill to bill. On occasion, the legislature may permit a minority cabinet to continue in office despite having been defeated on a given vote, and a minority government might even bring on a confidence vote and threaten to resign should the legislature vote against it.
An alternative arrangement is a looser alliance of parties, exemplified by Sweden. There the long-governing Social Democrats have ruled with more or less formal support from other parties – in the mid-20th century from Agrarians, after 1968 from Communists, and more recently from Greens and ex-Communists – and have thus been able to retain executive power and (in practice) legislative initiative. This is also common in Canada, where nine elections from 1921 to 2005 effectively produced minority federal governments. The parties can rarely cooperate enough to establish a formal coalition but operate under a loose agreement instead.
Occasionally, a confidence and supply agreement may be formed. This is a more formal pact that still falls short of creating a coalition government. In the Canadian province of Ontario, the Liberal Party formed a minority government from 1985 to 1987 on the basis of a formal accord with the New Democratic Party (NDP): the NDP agreed to support the Liberals for two years on all confidence motions and budgetary legislation, in exchange for the passage of certain legislative measures proposed by the NDP. This was not a formal coalition, because the NDP remained an opposition party and was not given seats in the cabinet. In this case, the Liberals did not even have a plurality of seats: the Progressive Conservatives were the largest single party with 52 seats, whereas the Liberals had 48 and the NDP had 25.
New Zealand's 48th Parliament operated with both a coalition and a looser agreement: the government was a coalition between the Labour Party and the Progressives, while United Future and New Zealand First had an agreement to support the government on confidence matters, while the Green Party was able to negotiate a cooperation agreement.
In most Westminster system nations, each constituency elects one member of parliament by simple plurality voting. This system heavily biases the vote towards increasing the number of seats of the top two parties and reducing the seats of smaller parties, a principle known in political science as Duverger's law, and thus minority governments are relatively uncommon. Advocates of this system see this as one of its advantages. A party with less than 40% of the popular vote can often win an outright majority of the seats. (For instance, in the 2005 UK General Election, the governing Labour party won by a majority of 66 seats in the House of Commons with only 35.2% of the popular vote.) If support for some parties is regionally concentrated, however, then Duverger's law applies separately to each region, and so no party can be sufficiently dominant in each region to receive a majority of the seats. This was the situation in Canada in the 2004, 2006, 2008, 2019, and 2021 federal elections, with no party obtaining a majority due in part to the dominance of the Bloc Québécois in the province of Quebec.
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Minority government
A minority government, minority cabinet, minority administration, or a minority parliament is a government and cabinet formed in a parliamentary system when a political party or coalition of parties does not have a majority of overall seats in the legislature. It is sworn into office, with or without the formal support of other parties, enabling a government to be formed. Under such a government, legislation can only be passed with the support or consent of enough other members of the legislature to provide a majority, encouraging multi-partisanship. In bicameral legislatures, the term relates to the situation in the chamber whose confidence is considered most crucial to the continuance in office of the government (generally, the lower house).
A minority government tends to be less stable than a majority government because, if they can unite, opposing parliamentary members have sufficient numbers to vote against legislation, or even bring down the government with a vote of no confidence. If, however, a minority government can negotiate a confidence and supply agreement with parties sufficient to maintain a majority, it can be as stable as a majority government.
To deal with situations in parliamentary systems where no clear majority to form a government exists, two or more parties may establish a formal coalition government, commanding a clear majority of the parliamentary members. A party might also enter into less formal alliances or agreements with other parties or individual members to allow the minority government to stay in office.
A common situation is a governance with "jumping majorities", where the cabinet stays as long as it can negotiate support from a majority in the parliament, even though that majority may be differently formed from issue to issue or bill to bill. On occasion, the legislature may permit a minority cabinet to continue in office despite having been defeated on a given vote, and a minority government might even bring on a confidence vote and threaten to resign should the legislature vote against it.
An alternative arrangement is a looser alliance of parties, exemplified by Sweden. There the long-governing Social Democrats have ruled with more or less formal support from other parties – in the mid-20th century from Agrarians, after 1968 from Communists, and more recently from Greens and ex-Communists – and have thus been able to retain executive power and (in practice) legislative initiative. This is also common in Canada, where nine elections from 1921 to 2005 effectively produced minority federal governments. The parties can rarely cooperate enough to establish a formal coalition but operate under a loose agreement instead.
Occasionally, a confidence and supply agreement may be formed. This is a more formal pact that still falls short of creating a coalition government. In the Canadian province of Ontario, the Liberal Party formed a minority government from 1985 to 1987 on the basis of a formal accord with the New Democratic Party (NDP): the NDP agreed to support the Liberals for two years on all confidence motions and budgetary legislation, in exchange for the passage of certain legislative measures proposed by the NDP. This was not a formal coalition, because the NDP remained an opposition party and was not given seats in the cabinet. In this case, the Liberals did not even have a plurality of seats: the Progressive Conservatives were the largest single party with 52 seats, whereas the Liberals had 48 and the NDP had 25.
New Zealand's 48th Parliament operated with both a coalition and a looser agreement: the government was a coalition between the Labour Party and the Progressives, while United Future and New Zealand First had an agreement to support the government on confidence matters, while the Green Party was able to negotiate a cooperation agreement.
In most Westminster system nations, each constituency elects one member of parliament by simple plurality voting. This system heavily biases the vote towards increasing the number of seats of the top two parties and reducing the seats of smaller parties, a principle known in political science as Duverger's law, and thus minority governments are relatively uncommon. Advocates of this system see this as one of its advantages. A party with less than 40% of the popular vote can often win an outright majority of the seats. (For instance, in the 2005 UK General Election, the governing Labour party won by a majority of 66 seats in the House of Commons with only 35.2% of the popular vote.) If support for some parties is regionally concentrated, however, then Duverger's law applies separately to each region, and so no party can be sufficiently dominant in each region to receive a majority of the seats. This was the situation in Canada in the 2004, 2006, 2008, 2019, and 2021 federal elections, with no party obtaining a majority due in part to the dominance of the Bloc Québécois in the province of Quebec.