According to coalition theoretician W H Riker, information uncertainty is the general cause of defection among the coalition partners. If information is imperfect, the coalitional behaviour of the parties is not known until the very last minute
KATHMANDU, MARCH 6
The number of parties in a coalition in Nepal is following an ever increasing trajectory and assuming the form of a multi-headed hydra.
The first ever coalition government in Nepal led by Sher Bahadur Deuba in 1992, a bonhomie of the Nepali Congress(NC) and Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP), was simply a two-party affair. This phenomenon continued in the following coalitions till 2017. The succeeding RPP-UML coalition led by Lokendra Bahadur Chand was a binary affair and so was the one led by Surya Bahadur Thapa made up of the NC and RPP. The incoming coalitions, such as those led by Madhav Nepal, Jhala Nath Khanal, Sushil Koirala, Prachanda, Sher Bahadur Deuba and K P Oli were also bilateral undertakings.
It, however, assumed a pentagonal form with the participation of the NC, MC, Unified Socialist (US), Janata Samajbadi Party (JSP) and Rastriya Jana Morcha (RJM) and led by Sher Bahadur Deuba in 2017. It further developed into a heptagonal outfit in the leadership of the Maoist Centre (MC) with the support of the Unified Marxist-Leninist (UML) in 2023. This coalition was very short-lived and did not even last the honeymoon period. As if this was not enough, now we have an octagonal coalition formed of eight different parties.
The coalitions are basically of two types. These are the minimal winning and the oversized coalition. Minimal winning coalitions are those which are assimilated in such a way that they have the required minimal majority in the parliament to be able to form a government. Having the participation of more parties is a waste because the perks of the office have to be distributed in the case of many parties joining a coalition.
Oversized coalitions are formed in special circumstances. If the country faces aggression from outside, then there is a need of all the parties to be together. This leads to oversized coalitions. But this is not the case generally and certainly now in Nepal. Still why did the seven-party coalition that collapsed recently go for it? One may have to take resort to such an affair because of the fear that the government of a minimal winning coalition may fall on the defection of one of the coalition partners. This is the reason why a coalition is composed of many parties, also known as an oversized coalition.
The newly born coalition, however, is not an oversized coalition despite the presence of eight parties. The reality is that some of the parties hold very few seats in the Parliament. For example, the RJM, Janamat Party (JMP) and Nagarik Unmukti Party (NJMP) have 1, 6 and 3 seats, respectively. The eight-party coalition has thus a total of 157 seats consisting of 89 seats of the NC, 32 of the MC, 12 of the JSP, 10 of the US, 6 of the JMP, 4 of the LSP, 3 of the NUP and 1 of the RJM when the majority required is 138.
The preceding seven-party alliance, however, was a slightly oversized coalition as it had 165 seats in the Parliament consisting of 78 seats of the UML, 32 of the MC, 20 of the Rastriya Swatantra Party, 14 of the RPP, 12 of the JSP, 6 of the JMP and 3 of the NJMP. Despite this, both these coalition types are highly vulnerable in view of the fact that the withdrawal of a few coalition partners may lead to the collapse of the government. The seven-party coalition broke after its disagreement with the MC seemingly about the candidacy of the presidency and after the withdrawal of the MC and others.
How to lessen the vulnerability that arises from the flight of the coalition partner is really a problem for the coalition. First, the five-party coalition ceased to function after the defection of the MC to the UML camp. The seven-party coalition suffered a similar fate after the MC again made a political volte face after migration to NC territory.
According to coalition theoretician W H Riker, information uncertainty is the general cause of defection among the coalition partners. If information is imperfect, the coalitional behaviour of the parties is not known until the very last minute. In other words, if information is imperfect, parties may defect from the coalition. This, however, does not appear to be true in the incredible double swing of the MC.
The MC chose to say good bye to the NC-led five-party coalition because it did not fulfil its aim of receiving the prime ministerial post. It mended its fence with the UML despite being at dagger drawn against each other for a long time after its aim materialised. But later, the MC found the newly-established brotherhood unpleasant when K P Oli started acting as the de facto Prime Minister.
Prachanda became like an encaged tiger to such an extent that in one of the meetings of the seven-party coalition, Oli occupied the seat of Prime Minister Dahal without any qualm. Dahal had to occupy an ordinary seat like the other member leaders of the coalition.
Further, Oli made the situation worse after he justified his unconstitutional act of dissolving the Parliament on two occasions in the House when it was decided to keep mum on such sensitive issues. This contributed to the drifting of the MC from the seven-party coalition. Dahal secured the support of the NC making him the most popular prime minister in history, exercising 99 per cent of the support of the parliamentarians. He announced his sweet home coming by again jumping back into the NC fold.
It can thus be seen that the coalition, despite having the participation of multiple parties, is not necessarily an oversized one. It may be on the contrary a minimal winning one. Moreover, the defection that could be seen in the last two political leaps of the MC was not because of information uncertainty as is theoretically believed. Instead it was because of the over-ambition of MC leader Prachanda to be the Prime Minister coupled by the domination of K P Oli.
A version of this article appears in the print on March 7, 2023, of The Himalayan Times.
