CPO-2002 Lecture 52: Lecture 52
Document Summary
A minority government is one in which the governmental parties do not together command a majority of legislative seats. Minority governments may be single-party minority governments or minority coalition governments. A minority government can exist only as long as the opposition chooses not to bring it down. Every time we see a minority government, there must be an implicit majority in the legislature that supports it. In some countries, we know who makes up this implicit majority because they publicly state that they will sustain the government against votes to overthrow it but do not want to be in the cabinet. For example, after dutch elections in 2010 the freedom party (far-right party) publicly supported the coalition between vvd and cda. I(cid:374) other cou(cid:374)tries, the gover(cid:374)(cid:373)e(cid:374)t does (cid:374)ot rely o(cid:374) specific (cid:862)support(cid:863) parties. I(cid:374)stead, it builds legislative majorities on an ad hoc basis. Many people used to see minority governments as undemocratic and as an anomaly.
