Fishburn Hedges

28.05.2010

Post May 6th, we’ve seen a fair bit of comment about the time it can take in Europe to negotiate a coalition.  But very little on the key question of what political parties should say about coalitions before elections.  For all the outrage about the coalition, there’s been precious little useful advice on what the LibDems should have said. And just as the LibDems didn’t say anything meaningful about their preference in a hung parliament, neither did the Conservatives, who certainly didn’t manage expectations actively around formal coalition versus minority government.

In Germany, proportional representation means that they haven’t had a single party government since the 1950s.  As a result, they have a very precise phrase for what parties say about coalition preferences – the “Koalitionsaussage”, which means coalition proposition or statement.  It’s what a party says before an election about what it plans to do afterwards.  A Koalitionsaussage can either be absolute (“we will never go into coalition with the Left Party”) or more conditional (“our preferred partner will be the Free Democrats”).

While a hung parliament here was always quite likely, most people, including me, suspected it would mean a minority government and then another election, with only a second hung parliament producing the momentum for a formal coalition.  In fact it all happened much more quickly, and very exciting it is too.  But much greater public consciousness about coalitions will now mean that none of the parties will get away ever again with saying as little about preferred coalitions as they all did this time.
 
While AV isn’t proportional, there’s no doubt it increases the likelihood of hung parliaments, and so the German experience of coalitions and “coalition statements” can teach us some useful lessons.

The smaller parties in Germany are generally under more pressure to tell people what they would do.  But this isn’t always the case, and sometimes the shift from a previous coalition proposition to none is itself of interest.  In 2001 and 2005, the Greens clearly said they wanted a coalition with the Social Democrats, with whom they were in government.  In 2009, to some surprise, they dropped this and went into the election without any formal Koalitionsaussage.  The Greens were signalling that while SPD was still their preference, they were open to three other possible coalitions: the “Traffic Light” (Social Democrats-Greens-Free Democrats, named after the parties’ colours), the “Jamaica” (Christian Democrats-Greens-Free Democrats) and even straight Christian Democrat-Green. 

Timing is also important.  Even though the Free Democrats (Liberals) were without question going to prefer a coalition with the Christian Democrats in 2009, as previously, they resisted going public on this for a long time. They wanted to demonstrate that the Free Democrats were an independent party, not just a small ally of the CDU.  But at the same time they knew that all their voters assumed they would favour a CDU coalition, and would indeed be horrified at the prospect of anything else. Their coalition proposition just before the election, which was a surprise to no one, was really an attempt to get the best of both worlds.

The voters of course follow how the parties are positioning themselves, and if voters think two parties are likely to end up in coalition, you can get flows of support within a “Lager” (camp) as voters make tactical decisions.  Sometimes this was about voters wanting to avoid the Liberals or the Greens running under the 5% hurdle for representation in parliament (so-called “lent votes” from the CDU to the Liberals have been a common feature).  On the other hand, such a clear “Lager” election allows voters specifically motivated by a key issue, such as market economics or the environment, to switch to the Liberals or Greens without affecting the overall support for their preferred coalition “lager”.

Some combinations always remain unspoken.  In particular, the two big parties never go into an election suggesting a ‘grand’ coalition (ie Christian Democrat-Social Democrat), yet grand coalitions have occurred at a federal level (1966-9, 2005-9) and frequently at a state level.  A grand coalition is seen as the last alternative, and the two big parties don’t like campaigning for it publicly, even when they privately think it’s a likely outcome (though in fact it’s often rather more popular with the voters when asked in opinion polls).

Parties that break firm coalition promises can suffer badly, even though there’s a saying that coalition propositions often “don’t last one minute beyond the first exit poll at 6pm”, when German polls close.  In the Hesse regional election in 2008, the Social Democrats said they would not do a deal with the Left Party.  When the results came in, they then did try to form a SPD-Green government with explicit Left Party support.  Four SPD state MPs rebelled against this breach of promise: such a government wasn’t formed and the Social Democrats were then heavily punished in fresh elections.

It’s not only what you as a party say you will do, it also matters what others say about your party’s coalition plans.  The CDU in the 2009 election stressed that even though the Social Democrats had explicitly ruled out a coalition involving the Left Party, they couldn’t be trusted on this, given SPD-Left coalitions at a state level and the Hesse experience.

Another variant is the unrequited bear hug.  In 2009, the only possible combination that could conceivably get the Social Democrats into leading a government, given the polls, was a SPD/Green/Liberal coalition.  The problem in the campaign was that the Liberals had explicitly ruled that out.  But the Social Democrats continued to say, in order to underpin their credibility as a potential government, that the Liberals’ opposition was just a front: ie in practice the Liberals would be open after the election to such a coalition, if this was the only way to a stable government that didn’t involve the Left Party.

Of course in Germany, as elsewhere, the parties are always keen to stress it’s about policy agreement, not personalities or posts.   But the reality is that the media, and the voters, focus on the headlines – who has said they would do a deal with whom.  Experience in Germany, and now here, shows that ultimately if parties want to form a coalition and work together, most policy differences can be managed.

And finally, of course, in Germany parties are in very different coalitions at a state or local level.  The Christian Democrats are in coalition with the Liberals at a federal level, but with the Greens in Hamburg, the Greens and Liberals in Saarland, and the Social Democrats in Mecklenburg-Lower Pomerania.  While state coalitions have often been a harbinger for new federal coalitions (the first Green-SPD state coalition was in 1985, helping pave the way for the federal coalition 13 years later), the national party leaderships have also found it helpful keep their distance, making clear that regional and local coalitions are determined locally.

British political culture is different from Germany’s, but the last three weeks have shown it’s not unchanging.  All the parties – not just the LibDems - will need to start thinking harder about how and when they communicate about possible coalitions before elections. 

Of course, it’s much easier to issue a coalition proposition when the electoral system means you’re fighting for percentages of the vote but not in much more volatile winner-takes-all constituency battles, with all their potential for tactical squeezes.  It’s also easier when your electorate is used to coalitions and to politicians talking about them without being condemned as process geeks.  But it will be fascinating to see how British politics adapts.  Without any or much conscious imitation (for which we’re not exactly known), I suspect our parties will start to adopt some continental practices around communications about coalitions.

Posted by Andrew Marshall