1. They facilitate pork-barrel politics
2. They prevent the necessary but painful policies and structural changes being carried out.
3. They cause economic instability causing uncertainty in the currency and investment markets.
Ieuan Wyn Jones is not an impartial observer:
A HUNG parliament would be the best possible outcome for Wales, Ieuan Wyn Jones claimed last night as he prepared for the party’s annual conference.Wales is not an economic island, separated from the rest of the nation, so there's not much point in making a few extra quid here and there "for Wales" at the expense of the stability of the overall United Kingdom economy.
The Plaid Cymru leader said the party had no intention of joining any coalition if neither the Labour nor Conservatives come out of the election – widely predicted for May 6 – with an overall majority.
But he vowed that in such a situation Plaid MPs would use the extra leverage they would possess to deliver on key party policies.
4 comments:
Not sure whether you mean all hung parliaments or just ones in the UK. Of course hung parliaments are the norm on continental Europe and despite their problems the Germans still have an economy ahead of the UK - and no party has had an overall majority since --- her Hitler gave himself a 100% one.
Whilst hung parliaments helped Hitler rise to power, the (West) Germans tweeked the constitution to prevent the circumstances happening again.
By
a) Putting a minimum % for a party to gain a seat in the Bundestag. I think it is 5%
b) More importantly in my eyes they removed the power to appoint the Chancellor out of the hands of the Presidency. The Chancellor is nominated by the President to the Bundestag and the nomination is then approved/rejected by secret ballot by Bundestag deputies (to prevent any Brown Shirt boys from intimidating them).
c) Allowing a cooling off period between the election and the election of the Chancellor to allow negotiations (unlike the instant change in the UK government (but not the Scottish, Welsh and NI ones which have cooling off periods)
d) Making the removal of a Chancellor for political (in contrast to charges of corruption or medical reasons) reasons during a parliamentary term difficult. The Bundestag can only get rid of the Chancellor if they can elect a new one to replace him/her (this only happened once - when Kohl challenged Schmidt after Schmidt's coalition allies deserted him and said they would back Kohl in a challenge).
The only person who can put a motion of confidence to the Bundestag about the Chancellor is the Chancellor. If the Chancellor loses a back me/sack me vote then the Chancellor must resign but stay in office as caretaker until a new chancellor is elected. If one is not elected then the President must dissolve the Bundestag and hold fresh elections.
The "suicide" vote has been used twice and abused. In both occassions Kohl and later Schroeder put motions of confidence against themselves so that their own side would vote against them. The purpose of this was to force elections earlier than scheduled as the Bundestag cannot normally be dissolved on the whim of the Chancellor.
(Kohl did this not longer after being elected Chancellor - he did this as he felt the people should have a say on the change in management!)
To the best of my knowledge, the DM was one of the strongest currencies in Europe during its existence. It maybe says a lot about the German markets that they do not get worried about such things compared to the screaming school girls of the City?
At this particuliar moment in time I think it would be a disaster economically for the UK. Overall, I'm not sure. Coalition govts on mainland Europe usually contain at least one regional/extremist/downright loony party which does nothing to help overall governance- moving the sphere of argument a little bit wider, you surely wouldn't argue that Israeli democracy is a more stable democracy due to the fact that it is a permament "hung" situation.
Re Germany, yep the Weimar isn't the best advertisement for coalition govts but afaik the coalitions over the last 20/30 years (with the exception of the last one) have been along roughly similar idealogical faultlines?
The Israeli's have a very extreme version - not helped by the fact there is no constituency seats - all Knesset members represent Israel. And an extremely generous PR system.
The Israeli's did try to circumvent the issue of cobbling coalition's together for a while. They tried directly electing the Prime Minister so someone could be said to have a mandate directly from the people to cobble a government together.
Concerning the Germans, there were grand coalitions in the past - particularly in the 1960's. The Free Democrats also tarted themselves between the SPD and the CDU.
At the time of Weimar Britain was not exactly a model of stability either -
1918 - Con-Lib coalition where the Tories had more seats but a Liberal Lloyde-George ended up PM, continuing his job from 1916.
1922- Lloyd-George toppled by the Conservatives and replaced by Bonar-Law and then Baldwin.
1924 - MacDonald forms minority government
1924 - MacDonald forced to go the country again and replaced by Baldwin.
1929 - MacDonald back running a minority government.
1931 - MacDonald cobbles together grand coalition (National Government) and the UK in some or another has a coalition government till 1945, going through MacDonald, Baldwin again, Chamberlin and Churchill.
Your last example surely proves my point, the twenty years following WW1 were hardly the most stable economically or politically for the UK?
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