Who governs in power sharing?

Mar 21, 2010 Letters

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Dear Editor,
In my last letter (14-03-10), I attempted to show some weaknesses of power sharing and posited the view that sometimes we falsely believe that power sharing is a panacea for society’s ills.
Power sharing advocates demonstrate conceptual favoritism in their application of ‘power’; let me explain. Barnett and Duvall (2005) in their work ‘Power in International Politics’ argued that conceptual favouritism persists in the application of one type of power where a person has the capacity to control another person; this is the traditional Weberian view of power that gave us the zero sum power game, meaning that when one person wins, the other loses.
And there is this view that power sharing embraces only this form of power, that is, compulsory power: the direct control a person, using largely material resources, could have over the life of another person. Nonetheless, there are other forms of power that power sharing needs to consider.
There is institutional power where people in organisations have indirect control over the lives of others who are far removed from these organisations; where these organisational people control others through rules, procedures, responsibilities, norms, etc.; and these are constraints that may act to limit people’s behaviour.
There is structural power which shapes people’s capacities and interests; where structural power creates a pecking order – dominant/subordinate; where the position that a person occupies in society shapes his/her life; consider master-slave relationship in this context.
Finally, there is productive power that uses discourse to create meanings and categories, to label ‘other’ people, that is, people with limited or no power; these meanings and categories, like ‘rogue’ and ‘stable’ states, ‘axis of evil’, ‘third world’, ‘western nations’, etc., reinforce the dominance of the power group.
In discussions of power sharing, we need to provide a full accounting of power where we consider these various forms of power and their relations with each other. Incorporating a full accounting of power will expose the vulnerability of power sharing in governance.
In this missive, I want to focus on coalition, a form of power sharing. In a parliamentary or presidential system, if no party receives a majority of the votes or seats, then some of the parties will form a coalition to control parliament.
This coalition parliament also will produce a coalition cabinet. There could be agreement that the coalition will always vote on the cabinet-proposed legislation. But Shively (1997) believed that this situation can work only if the coalition agrees generally on many issues. He argues that if it is a marriage of convenience, the coalition will not last.
Shively pointed out that in a parliamentary system, occasionally, the numerical strength of the parties and their relationships with each other could make it difficult for a coalition to hold together. If this happens, Shively notes that we could see a paralyzing succession of government disintegration, creating unstable governments and a loss of confidence from the masses. Notable examples are: Germany was unstable from 1918 to 1933; France experienced this instability until 1958 when a presidential system emerged; Italy bore the brunt of governmental break-ups since 1945 and had 45 different governments up to 1996. However, Shively explained that the Scandinavian countries, the Low Countries, Germany, among others, experienced stable coalitions.
It may be useful here to explain why some countries are able to have coalitions, and others do not. The answer may lie in what determines the establishment of governing coalitions, and once set up, what keeps the coalition together in government.
According to Altman (2001), notwithstanding the availability of coinciding interests among diversified parties, a coalition may not occur because the electoral system and electoral calendar may induce each party to seek its own maximization of benefits.
Clearly, then, approaching elections will adversely impact the maintenance of coalitions. Coalitions generally become a reality immediately after elections. Altman showed that the more diversified and broader the ideology of the various parties, the lesser the probability for the formation of coalitions.
In effect, the more polarized a party system is, the less the likelihood that a coalition will emerge.
Guyana has multiple parties with diversified ideologies which would not induce the formation of effective coalitions.
And coalitions would expose their vulnerability should they engage the multiple forms of power; as these various types of power force the question, who governs in power sharing?
Prem Misir

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