Coalition Government

A government formed by two or more political parties sharing executive power, typically because no single party won enough seats to govern alone. It is the routine, expected outcome under most parliamentary systems that use proportional or mixed electoral rules, since a proportional formula tends to produce a legislature with several viable parties rather than the two dominant ones a plurality system like first past the post tends to produce, an effect Duverger's law formalizes as the connection between electoral system and party system. Coalitions may be formed before an election is called, a pre-electoral pact, or negotiated afterward among the parties whose combined seats reach a majority, and the resulting government is bound by a coalition agreement setting out shared policy commitments and the distribution of ministries. Germany, the Netherlands and most Nordic legislatures have governed through coalition for most of their postwar histories, while Israel has not had a single-party majority government since its founding. A coalition is inherently less stable than single-party rule, it can collapse if a partner withdraws, and its policy has to be negotiated across parties with genuinely different platforms rather than set by one.