With the Liberal Democrat surge showing the deficiencies of Britain's electoral system, our Charlemagne columnist warns that government by coalition has its own pitfalls

IN BRITAIN, surging support for the country's third party, the Liberal Democrats, has come as a shock after decades of dominance by Labour and the Tories. Elsewhere in Europe, the popularity of the Lib Dem leader, Nick Clegg, has inspired a different reaction: is Britain about to become a more normal country, and shed its aversion to compromise and coalitions?

Writing in El País, a former Spanish diplomat once posted to London observed the fuss being caused in Britain by the prospect of a hung parliament (or, as the Lib Dems prefer to say, a “balanced parliament”), and gently noted: “In no continental European country would the question have the slightest importance.”

A correspondent for Europe1, a French television station, said of the Lib Dem surge: “Great Britain, the home of two party politics par excellence, can't make head nor tail of it” before sadly reporting a BBC analysis that even with a third of the vote each, Labour could win some 276 seats, the Conservatives 226 seats and the Lib Dems just 119.

In the Netherlands, where a coalition government has just fallen in a row over Dutch troops in Afghanistan, triggering early elections (but not riots in the streets), an editorial in NRC Handelsblad called for a change in the “first past the post rules” used in British general elections, saying:

“In London, compromises are seen as a first step towards political instability. But this simple fear of novelty could quickly be overcome. Most countries on the European continent have a far more representative electoral system than the UK does. Since the British devolution of government powers, Scotland has adopted a system that gives political minorities a fighting chance. This proves it can be done.”

For the past five years, your correspondent has been based in Brussels. The city is home to a lot of coalitions. All levels of Belgian federal and regional government involve an array of parties. Then there is the European Parliament, a strange legislature that has no majority or opposition, and often seems like a never-ending session of multi-party horse-trading. Thus Brussels is a hard place to defend the British fondness for majority governments, and its winner takes all electoral system. And yet, for all that Britain's electoral system looks like an outlier of dubious fairness, living in Brussels teaches another lesson. In its practical day to day consequences, coalition rule stifle democracy, too.

a government that included every party would enjoy the support of 100% of voters, and be perfectly democratic

A while ago, your correspondent debated Louis Michel, then Belgium's EU commissioner and a long-time party baron of the Francophone liberal party, Mouvement Réformateur. In Britain, rumbled M Michel, the Liberal Democrats can win a quarter of the popular vote and be totally excluded from power. How is that democratic? In Belgium, he went on, the current five party coalition enjoys the cumulative support of two thirds of the electorate: now that is democracy.

Is it really? Take Mr Michel's argument to its logical extreme and a Belgian government that included every parliamentary party would enjoy the support of 100% of voters, and be perfectly democratic.

The practical problem with coalition politics is all too visible after Belgian elections. Parties can be rewarded and punished by voters, as their share of the vote rises and falls. Such changes can evict a prime minister, who by Belgian convention must come from the party with the most votes. But there the power of voters largely ends. Once an election is over, a process of coalition formation starts that can take many months, and which is entirely opaque. At the most recent national elections, the French and Dutch speaking socialist parties were clear losers, as was the Flemish liberal party. Two of the three parties ended up with ministers back in the new government.

At the 2009 European Parliament elections, the largest left-wing block, the Party of European Socialists, was thumped, shedding 31 seats. A short while later, the socialists held private talks with the centre-right block that had beaten them and stitched up a deal to share out the European Union's top jobs between them: thus the European Commission presidency went to a conservative man from a small southern country José Manuel Barroso, and the new post of foreign policy chief went to a centre-left woman from a big northern country, Britain's Catherine Ashton.

In both Belgian and EU politics, the stitch-ups are endless, with one constant: party leaders use the system to control rank and file parliamentarians and increase their power (not for nothing has a Belgian senator described the system as a “Party-ocracy”). Belgian political coverage is only sparingly about policy differences. Day after day the press traces the squabbles and feuds of factional leaders, and speculates about whether this or that coalition or pact is about to fall apart.

In the European Parliament, voters cannot choose between fish or fowl: every course is soup

In the European Parliament, the big trans-national blocks function as cartels, with little heed to ideological coherence. Perhaps a European voter may have strong views on globalisation, for instance. Alas, thanks to those baggy power cartels, and the endless deals they strike with each other, it is hard to cast a ballot that will have the slightest effect on the parliament's actions.

Take the largest centre right group, the European People's Party. Is it for or against free enterprise? Well, it depends. It includes some free-marketeering parties, like Sweden's ruling Moderates. But it also contains parties from France, Greece or eastern Europe which are rather corporatist in outlook, and frankly warier of free enterprise than some members of Europe's main centre-left block, such as the British Labour Party or the Swedish Social Democrats. Real power rests in the hands of key members of specialist committees and party bosses, who strike complex voting deals with each other. Voter preferences could not matter less. In the European Parliament, voters cannot choose between fish or fowl: every course is soup.

Coalition government does not mean a country is badly run as a matter of course. Belgian deal-making sometimes produces compromises that are genuinely centrist. The federal government spent months wrangling about unlawful immigrants living in the country, including failed asylum seekers. Ministers agreed a modest amnesty for those with longstanding ties to Belgium who had made credible attempts to become legal: that reasonably humane policy probably reflected the centre of political gravity, though it would have been hard for some ruling parties to put it in their manifestoes before the election.

But such successes can still feel like a victory for a technocratic rule by an elite, over the conscious shaping of policies by voters. British majority rule may look like an elected dictatorship to outsiders, but it does have the virtue of transparency and accountability. At best, you can argue (in the words of one senior figure) that all British parties are coalitions in their own right, with a wide span of views from left to right within the Conservatives, Labour and the Lib Dems. That allows voters to choose the “coalition” that best suits their views, and to know what policies they are likely to get.

If that seems a bit of a stretch, try this: at least bad ideas can be tested to destruction in the British system. In Belgium or the European Parliament, fewer voters feel left out, but few politicians are accountable directly for very much at all. Small wonder, perhaps, that turnout in Euro-elections has fallen with each poll since direct elections began.

Voting in Belgium is compulsory, which is one reason why citizens bother to vote. The other is to defend the electoral quota assigned to their tribal faction in society. (As well as the usual right, left and centre divides, all parties are split into separate French and Dutch speaking entities). With so many interests to please (Belgium is a fractious place), it is no accident that, in per capita terms, Belgium's public sector employs more adults than any other in the developed world. In a country run by coalitions, all must have prizes.

The SNP manifesto amounted to a demand for money

It is true that coalitions can protect minority interests. But they can also give minorities disproportionate clout. It is common in Europe to find small parties that exist largely to demand money, public services and rights for specific groups: Swedish-speakers in Finland, Hungarian-speakers in Slovakia, ethnic Turks in Bulgaria and so on. As such parties are ideologically flexible and reliably elect a phalanx of deputies to each parliament, they are the ideal ally for bigger parties trying to build majority coalitions. In the most benign cases, such parties are almost always in power, even when their ministers are not terribly good.

At worse, especially in the ex-communist block, such ethnic special-interest parties can be notoriously corrupt, demanding posts like the ministry of public works and using them to distribute contracts and public money.

Right on cue, the Scottish National Party issued its manifesto for the British general elections on April 20th, setting out its hopes for a hung parliament on May 6th (though the SNP likes to talk about a “balanced parliament”). The manifesto amounted to a demand for money, in exchange for SNP support of a future coalition government. Let England talk about budget cuts to tackle the deficit, the manifesto promised in effect: vote SNP, and Scotland will be spared austerity.

In theory, Europe's coalitions sound more legitimate. Up close, they do not always look very good for democracy. Call it a European paradox. If Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems do not fizzle out before the general elections on May 6th, it may become a British paradox too.