Captives No Longer, but Servants Still? Contract Parliamentarism and the New Minority Governance in Sweden and New Zealand

Abstract

Recent years have seen the institutionalization of minority governance in Sweden and New Zealand. Large, historic social democratic labour parties enjoy comparative security of tenure thanks to smaller, newer parties with whom they have signed long-term, detailed support agreements covering both policy and process. This trend toward ‘contract parliamentarism’ owes much to party-system dynamics, but also to the accretion of experience, to cultural norms and to institutional constraints – all of which, along with electoral contingency, explain why the trend has gone slightly further in one polity than in the other. While the trend seems to favour the left in general, its implications for the support or ‘servant’ parties, and – more normatively – for democracy itself, may be less favourable.

A Bark But No Bite: Inequality and the 2014 New Zealand General Election

“…Although the Green Party supported Labour-led governments on confidence and supply in 1999 and 2002, they agreed only to abstain between 2005 and 2008, and there has been ongoing tension over a range of policy issues of significance to Green voters and party members. Of these, the most problematic has been the question of genetic modification of animals and plants, particularly for human consumption (Bale and Bergman 2006;Ford 2015). Differences between Labour and the Greens put the parties at odds in 2002, and while the Greens did support the Labour-led government formed that year, it almost certainly destroyed the best opportunity hitherto for the Green Party to have been fully included in a New Zealand government.…”

The impact of Populist Radical Right Parties on socio-economic policies

“…In contrast, informal coalition partners are not represented in the executive but lend support to the coalition in the legislative arena in various forms, ranging from support for single but crucial legislative packages (e.g. adoption of the yearly budget) to systematic legislative support via sanctioned coalition agreements (see Bale and Bergman, 2006). With regard to our cases, all informal PRRP governments took the form of minority governments in which the legislative support of PRRPs was crucial for the governments' ability to pass legislation.…”

Overcoming the fear of commitment: Pre-electoral coalitions in Norway and Sweden

“…So from 1998, the Social Democrats turned away from the Centre and governed with the formal support of the Left Party and the Greens. The 'contract' between the three parties, which fell short of an executive coalition, was renewed after the 2002 election (Bale and Bergman, 2006). The combination of sharp electoral decline, the looming 4 per cent threshold and the Social Democrats' leftward turn, which marginalized the Centre in parliament, surely amounted to a significant shock for the party.…”