EXUBERANCE and ecstasy over coalition building are playing havoc with people’s minds here in Guyana, in light of the recently-installed coalition executives in Great Britain, Trinidad & Tobago, and Suriname (pending), producing a pregnant thinking that a grand coalition is the answer to the PPP/C in the 2011 national election. Could this thinking be a fad and foible? Even so, why should these people not be euphoric? Some of them are now inhabitants of the political wilderness over the last 17 years.

Nonetheless, we can argue until doomsday as to what motivates coalition formation. The fact of the matter is that coalitions are linked to office seeking, the idea of wanting to govern, and this is what it is all about, after we shed the crude rhetoric from the arguments.

For this reason, in the dynamics of a coalition executive deliberating policies, which of these two options would take precedence becomes critical: Sustaining your political power, or compromising on policies, if that is what it would take to maintain the power base. Under these conditions, a struggle for the ‘coalition’ spoils becomes endemic. Nevertheless, the coalition’s decision would largely define its integrity and its motivational driving force.

That’s why Riker (1962) argued that coalition builders’ motivation would be to secure a minimum winning coalition; that is, a coalition with just enough people to win, so that there will be least struggle for the spoils. This approach then makes the reality of a grand coalition utopian. Nonetheless, the question of coalition size remains an important determinant of the ‘appropriate’ coalition.

‘…we can argue until doomsday as to what motivates coalition formation. The fact of the matter is that coalitions are linked to office seeking; the idea of wanting to govern, and this is what it is all about, after we shed the crude rhetoric from the arguments’

The dominant party may be tempted to have a large coalition in cases where there may be difficulty in achieving its policies (Volden and Carrubba, 2000); parties may coalesce because of goodies emanating from their cooperation to make the policies happen. These researchers noted that this kind of coalition is opportunistic, as people come together for particular benefits without any enduring commitment; this was certainly the case of Latin American coalition governments between 1980 and 1990; definitively opportunistic coalitions.

A coalition could also emerge where there is a perception that the largest party is extreme. That is, largely attracting a particular ethnic group, and therefore, it may prefer to do a balancing act with a party or parties that are centrist (Crombez, 1996). A study of 24 parliamentary democracies between 1955 and 1998 found support for Crombez’s position and Volden and Carrubba’s logrolling theory on the size of coalitions.

Even so, the motive for coalition formation is to gain political power. And coalition parties will do whatever it takes to wrestle power from the PPP/C, whether it means devising some consensus policy programme, engaging some Barbadian political consultant, or some sort of polling, etc.

And then there are some hypotheses about the efficacy of coalitions: That coalitions work well where there are likeminded people; that coalitions in parliamentary systems tend to be more solid than those in presidential systems, because legislative indiscipline within a presidential system is less likely to pressure the president or the presidential government.

Furthermore, we used to believe that the proportional representation system more than the first-past-the-post system ensures the efficacy of coalitions; this belief may not be on solid ground today. Great Britain and Trinidad & Tobago use the first-past-the-post system, while Suriname uses the list proportional representation system.

In fact, Guyana as well as other ex-British colonies experienced pre-Independence coalition formation via internal self-government, using the first-past-post-system; where the colonialists controlled internal security and defense and foreign relations, with the other ministerial portfolios going to elected Guyanese leaders. Nonetheless, this was a forced coalition formation whose main criterion was timing, as Guyana, as well as other British colonies, was on the road to achieving full self-government. And indeed, the British colonialists wanted to etch their throughput on what was to come, to make certain that they still call the shots in an Independent Guyana.

Clearly, the power holders’ motivation, in the case of Guyana, the British colonialists’ motivation, determined the size and timing of the coalition formation. For this reason, which parties or persons wield power in the current coalition building efforts would largely determine coalition size and timing of its formation. I know full well that there are some people who would say that no party/person has this kind of power; if that is the case, the coalition building is going nowhere, as this kind of thinking is delusional and not pragmatic.

I recently wrote about the timing of coalition formation, and I thought it may be useful to reintroduce it here. Goodin, Güth, and Sausgruber presented four (4) hypotheses on coalition timing.

These are:
(1)     Parties will tend to form larger-than-necessary coalitions prior to elections than after elections; those risk-averse parties, due to the uncertainty as to the number of votes each partner would have, would show greater proclivity toward forming a coalition prior to election; this was true in Trinidad & Tobago; and, indeed, if the coalition is set up after an election, then the party will choose a coalition partner with the bare minimum of votes to form the government; this was the case in Great Britain.
(2)    Parties will tend to form coalitions where they have a closeness toward particular policies more frequently prior to than after an election; in the aftermath of an election, there will be considerable haggling and trade-offs of policies, etc; whereas, forming a coalition prior to an election facilitates the parties to make connections with each other on binding ‘policies’.
(3)    Notwithstanding that they could win without a coalition, those parties with an interest in coalitions, are more likely to enter into such an arrangement prior to an election; when this happens early, coalition partners comply with some relational contract where they become committed to the cause of government. Nevertheless, the task of setting up coalitions after an election, may involve ‘buying off’ partners whose votes become the real driving force in politics, rather than real policies for the people; opportunistic coalitions.
(4)    Coalition formation prior to an election encourages and nurtures strategic voting; voters’ knowledge of the consequences of their party choices may better equip them to indulge in strategic voting.

It may be useful here to reinforce the view that timing, size, inter alia, influence coalition formation and its sustainability. According to Altman (2001), notwithstanding the availability of coinciding interests among diversified parties, a coalition may not occur because the electoral system and electoral calendar may induce each party to seek its own maximization of benefits; a timing issue. Clearly, then, approaching elections will adversely impact the maintenance of coalitions.
And there are cases where coalitions generally become a reality immediately after elections. Altman showed that the more diversified and broader the ideology of the various parties, the lesser the probability for the formation of coalitions. In effect, the more polarized a party system is, the less the likelihood that a coali
tion will emerge. Guyana has multiple parties with diversified ideologies which may not induce the formation of effective coalitions.

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