European models of coalition: what lessons can Ireland learn?

With Ireland’s Civil War political model dying and the search on for a successor, our European neighbours offer interesting political alternatives.

Irish talk of grand coalitions has turned gazes to (West) Germany, which had its first taste of such an alliance in 1966. The two recent iterations – Merkel I in 2005 and the current Merkel III administration since 2013 – are very stable unions between the two big parties: Angela Merkel's traditionally centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD).

What both sides said was impossible before September 2005’s election became very possible two months later for three key reasons: both parties had drifted to the political centre; both had coalition experience; and both contained reasonable politicians able to make it work.

Germany’s CDU and SPD were sworn political rivals, at least until two factors kicked in: the CDU’s Fianna Fáil-like power entitlement DNA and the SPD’s Fine Gael-like determination to cling to power.

Merkel credits the stability of her first grand coalition with getting Germany through the financial crisis – perhaps relevant for FF-FG if, as many fear, a big global slowdown looms.

But grand coalitions work best with a clear pecking order – not the case in Ireland, given the tight election result.

"In a grand coalition where cook-and-waiter roles aren't clearly defined, the customers will be waiting a long time in the dining room for the rows in the kitchen to be sorted. And they won't come back," said Dr Gero Neugebauer, political scientist at Berlin's Free University.

Smaller Irish parties calling for a FF-FG grand coalition should be careful: trapped in the shadow of the CDU-SPD colossus, Germany's smaller parties struggle for parliamentary speaking time and media coverage. Finally, Ireland lacks two of Germany's important grand coalition correctives: powerful state governments and Bundestag parliamentary parties.

Negative parliamentarism

Another idea floating around Dublin, the so-called Borgen model, has been a feature of Danish politics for over a century. In Denmark’s crowded political landscape, minority administrations are common and operate on the principle of negative parliamentarism: a government can only fall when there is a majority against it in crucial policy, usually budgets.

The model has worked well, though the current administration takes this Danish model to its extreme. The centre-right Venstre party took office last year with opposition support from the populist Danish People’s Party (DF), which refused to enter power despite having more MPs than Venstre.

This new arrangement has exposed the Danish model’s danger: leaving a government dependent on opposition support. When the DF blames the government for broken promises, the Danish model obliges other opposition parties to point out the DF is trying to have its cake and eat it.

Austrians are old hands at grand coalitions. With a few exceptions, Austria’s centre-left and centre-right have shared power in grand coalition in the post-war decades. Faced with massive challenges such as the migrant crisis, however, the ideological gap between senior Social Democrats (SPÖ) and conservatives (ÖVP) has never seemed more vast.

"They're trying to square the circle but these ideological tensions mean it isn't working," said Prof Dr Anna Kamper, head of the University of Innsbrück's Federalism Research Centre.

A large FF-FG ideological overlap might avoid such tensions, but could fall into another trap. In Austria, the populist, opposition Freedom Party (FPÖ) has overtaken the coalition members to become Austria's largest grouping party, with almost a third of the vote ahead of next year's election; could a FF-FG coalition avoid a similar boost for Sinn Féin?

Magic Swiss formula

Finally,

Switzerland

has interesting lessons. For almost half a century the Swiss “magic formula” saw all major parties share power in a grand coalition cabinet. Swiss politicians and analysts agree their system is often maddening, but creates a stable long-term political buy-in – perhaps attractive to Irish voters who voted for non-FF/FG/

Labour

politics?

"Our system is the product of radical political forces who had the vision of never letting a political elite push through a programme without direct feedback from the population," said Lukas Golder of politics and communications research agency Gfs.Bern. "But I don't know if our politicians today would come up with it."