ABSTRACT
The 2009 general election in India revealed that, contrary to conventional wisdom, a governing coalition can complete a full term of office and be re-elected. This landmark development, after almost 20 years of coalition governments, suggests that India’s transition to an era of minority governing coalitions has reached a degree of systemic stability. The concept of systemic stability under conditions of coalition governance in democratic parliamentary systems has an extensive pedigree in political science. For instance, William Riker’s seminal work (Riker 1962) on the theory of coalitions has generated a rich tradition of analysis into the dynamics behind cabinet formation and government durability that has subsequently been extended by others (see Taylor and Herman 1971; Dodd 1974; Brass 1977; Mitra 1980; Lijphart 1984). Game-theoretic and institutionalist approaches to the subject of systemic stability also share a common perspective that the size and the policy distance between coalition actors have specific expected outcomes in terms of cabinet size and government durability. Moreover, analytical perspectives that focus on ideology (Strom 1985, 1988) predict that ideological cohesiveness and the potential conflict levels among coalition partners can affect the expected duration of a coalition government.
