Question

discos
The Era of Coalition polities
The 1990s were years of very significant change in the
post Independence India With the transformation to a
competitive multi-puty system, it became near impossible
for any single party to win a majority of seats and form a
government of its own. Since 1989, all governments that had
formed at the national level have been either coalition or
minority governments. A number of national and regional
parties had come together to form goverments at the centre.
This meant that the political ideologies and programmes of a
number of parties had to be accommodated and a common
agreement had to be arrived at. Thus, no party could pursue its
Fig 18.7. VP Singh
extreme agendas and had to tone down their approaches. While
this enabled the central government to become more sensitive
to multiple viewpoints in politics and policy matters, it also caused considerable
instability. Even small parties tried to gain undue advantage as the withdrawal of
their support could cause the fall of the government. Sometime this also caused
policy paralysis'-as the coalition could not implement any policy which called
for serious change for fear of withdrawal of support by one or the other partners.
While the early coalition governments were
highly instable and did not last their full terms, the
• While some people feel
later coalitions have put in place multiple mechanisms
that coalition politics has
like common minimum programmes and
weakened the government,
coordination committees to bring about greater
others feel that it has
understanding between the partners. Later coalitions prevented one party from
like the BJP led National Democratic Alliance and steamrolling its agenda on
the Congress led United Progressive Alliance have the country. Discuss this
completed their terms. Moreover, the UPA was the
with examples
first coalition to be re-elected

Explain this paragraph

Answer 1

Answer:

Coalitions are the typically formed of two or more parties always consisting of one of the two biggest parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, and one or more smaller parties or independent members of parliament.