More about coalition governments
I had a letter published in the National Post yesterday. It was in response to an editorial by some guy named Chris Selley who was bemoaning the fact that Canadians, unlike Britons, don’t consider multi-party coalitions a legitimate form of parliamentary government. This, he believes, represents a disturbing dearth of knowledge about our parliamentary traditions, which are of course imported from England. There is evidently some talk in Britain over the possibility of a coalition government in that country’s near future, and Selley contrasts the muted commentary of the British press over the matter with the supposedly hysterical and ignorant banter of the Canadians following Stephane Dion’s failed attempt to impose a Liberal-NDP coalition government in the winter of ‘08.
As one of those who hysterically denounced Dion’s coalition plan at the time — I even likened it to a coup, an analogy Selley mocks — I had to author a response. So I wrote:
Chris Selley makes a valid point when he notes the vastly different ways that coalition governments are perceived in the United Kingdom and Canada. In the former, they are a routine expectation, while here they are perceived as “tantamount to coups d’etat.” The problem, however, is Mr. Selley’s conclusion that this reality reflects the comparative immaturity of Canada’s political culture.
Canada has obviously inherited a number of constitutional traditions from Britain but we’ve also had at least two centuries to establish our own. The modern Canadian style of government reflects decades of gradual evolution as a North American democracy; an evolution that has not occurred in perfect tandem with the U.K.’s unique European experiences.
It’s said that both Britain and Canada have a “Westminster” style parliament, but so do dozens of other nations, from New Zealand to India to Papua New Guinea, and no one expects us to be taking any lessons on governance from them. The Canadian style of government should reflect the interests and expectations of the people of Canada. If coalition governments are not a common occurrence in Canada, then coalition governments are not part of our tradition. It’s as simple as that.
A just government gains legitimacy through a social contract with its people. We obey the government because we understand how its executives are chosen, and we understand, as voters, our own role and power to influence that process. In a country like Canada, that has a fairly unclear written constitution, much of our social contract with the government is based on an understanding of precedent and tradition. Dion’s plan to get the governor general to fire the prime minister and install a three-party coalition in his place — weeks after the last election had concluded and Harper had formally begun his second term — was a dramatically unprecedented gesture in Canadian history, and would, had it succeeded, overthrown decades of democratic precedent and struck a serious blow against the democratic legitimacy of our entire political regime.
Dion’s argument at the time, and Selley’s argument in his editorial, amounts to basically “Canadian precedent be damned! International precedence counts too!” But of course that’s an enormous can of worms. Even if we just entertain the idea of “Commonwealth precedent” things quickly go nuts. The Governor General of Grenada once consented to a military coup in that country. So I guess that’s a Commonwealth convention we are supposed to seriously entertain for Canada, too. Getting the rest of the world involved in determining our style of government is a messy business that offers very few clear answers. At best, it simply puts some phony gloss of legitimacy on ideas that would otherwise have no domestic credibility.
In response to my letter, another Post reader got something published today:
A letter writer notes that coalition governments “are not part of our tradition.” Strange, the present federal government is a coalition of Alliance/ Reformers and Progressive Conservatives.
He’s being glib, but his comments inadvertently prove my point. The North American political tradition favors a strong two-party system. During the decade-or-so period when Canada had two nominally conservative parties, there was enormous, constant pressure for them to merge with each other, in order to form a stronger, united right-wing party. And they eventually did, and so we are back to the old Conservative vs. Liberal dynamic of yore. Many other countries would have never considered a merger of this sort, because small, limited-appeal parties are a very entrenched and accepted element of their political culture. If Canada was a European country we would probably be ruled by a PC-Reform-Social Credit-God-knows-what-else coalition right now. But we’re not, we’re ruled by a single political party, because that’s the sort of government we expected our system to produce.
