A beast with several backs

New Zealand
Oct 20th 2005
From The Economist print edition

Helen Clark's creative government-making

IS IT possible for a party to join a government and stay in the opposition at the same time? Helen Clark, who was sworn in for a third three-year term as New Zealand's prime minister on October 19th, obviously thinks so. Her minority coalition, of Labour and the one-man Progressive Party, commands only 51 votes in the 121-seat parliament. To give herself a working majority, she has entered into peculiar agreements with two smaller parties. Their leaders will be ministers, but not members of the cabinet. In theory, that will give them a stake in the government's survival, while leaving them free to criticise its performance.

Forming a government in New Zealand is no mean feat. The proportional-election system in place since 1996 has never delivered an outright victory to either main party, Labour or National. But smaller parties are often reluctant to join coalitions, for fear of denting their following at the next election. If they meekly toe the government line, voters tend to forget them. But if they kick and scream to get their policies adopted, voters punish them for pushiness.

In the 1990s, New Zealand First, one of the two parties not quite in the new government, joined National in an unhappy coalition. Their constant squabbling made not just for an unstable regime, but also for a poor electoral showing in 1999. So when Miss Clark formed the next government, she agreed a mechanism whereby Labour and its coalition partners could “agree to disagree” on certain issues. Three years later, she went further, settling for a minority government that smaller parties agreed to prop up from the outside on critical votes in exchange for certain policy concessions.

The latest arrangement is yet another variation on the same theme. Winston Peters, the leader of New Zealand First, will be foreign minister—probably the only one ever anywhere from outside cabinet, while Peter Dunne, of the centrist United Future, will be revenue minister. Their parties will have to vote with the government on matters related to their portfolios, and on motions of confidence, but will be free to rubbish it otherwise. Meanwhile, the Green Party has agreed to abstain on confidence votes, in exchange for being put in charge of two cherished schemes.

As muddled as this set-up sounds, it might prove durable, precisely because it assumes there will be disagreements and makes allowance for them. That does not mean that voters will like it.
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