“In that strange yet common way—I may look at this in more depth anon—the junior partner has seemed to hold the negotiating advantage”
It is this fact that is one of the many reasons I divert from many of my centre-left allies and oppose the awfully anti-democratic electoral system of PR
It is also why I am not at all happy about the likelihood that some combination of the Teal Independents and/or Greens will be propping up a minority Labor (or less likely, Liberals/National Coalition) government, the minority in this arrangement gets to hold veto power over legislation, endlessly demand appealing spending priorities while rejecting the tough calls on spending cuts or tax increases (the Greens answer is always taxes on billionaires, they seem to believe we have about 300,000 of them based on their spending promises so far using them as the revenue to pay for)
I just hope 3 years of this nonsense will enough to remind less engaged voters and the broader centre-left to rediscover the benefits of strong one party government and the electoral system most likely to deliver it
This is not how coalition negotiations work in most muti-party democracies. Yes the smaller party has a strong hand at the beginning if a government can't be formed without them. But they can't expect to impose ALL their policies on the larger party. If they push too hard, the larger party always has the option of walking away. And the smaller party presumably wants to be in government too to implement at least some of their policies, which gives them an incentive to compromise. Once in government, their position is weaker than it looks. They can threaten to bring down the government if they don't get their way but they have to consider whether the public will view this as sufficient grounds for causing an unexpected general election. Smaller parties tend to get a disproportionate share of the blame for a coalition government's failures, perhaps because their supporters have higher expectations. See the cases of the Liberal Democrats in Britain in 2015, Labour and the Greens in Ireland in 2016 and 2024 respectively.
“In that strange yet common way—I may look at this in more depth anon—the junior partner has seemed to hold the negotiating advantage”
It is this fact that is one of the many reasons I divert from many of my centre-left allies and oppose the awfully anti-democratic electoral system of PR
It is also why I am not at all happy about the likelihood that some combination of the Teal Independents and/or Greens will be propping up a minority Labor (or less likely, Liberals/National Coalition) government, the minority in this arrangement gets to hold veto power over legislation, endlessly demand appealing spending priorities while rejecting the tough calls on spending cuts or tax increases (the Greens answer is always taxes on billionaires, they seem to believe we have about 300,000 of them based on their spending promises so far using them as the revenue to pay for)
I just hope 3 years of this nonsense will enough to remind less engaged voters and the broader centre-left to rediscover the benefits of strong one party government and the electoral system most likely to deliver it
This is not how coalition negotiations work in most muti-party democracies. Yes the smaller party has a strong hand at the beginning if a government can't be formed without them. But they can't expect to impose ALL their policies on the larger party. If they push too hard, the larger party always has the option of walking away. And the smaller party presumably wants to be in government too to implement at least some of their policies, which gives them an incentive to compromise. Once in government, their position is weaker than it looks. They can threaten to bring down the government if they don't get their way but they have to consider whether the public will view this as sufficient grounds for causing an unexpected general election. Smaller parties tend to get a disproportionate share of the blame for a coalition government's failures, perhaps because their supporters have higher expectations. See the cases of the Liberal Democrats in Britain in 2015, Labour and the Greens in Ireland in 2016 and 2024 respectively.