The new BJP-led NDA government of 2024 is the first of its kind for India. It is a surplus majority coalition without a majority party, that is, a coalition with parties that are not necessary for a majority, hence the term “surplus majority”, sometimes called a surplus majority coalition. This is different from a surplus majority coalition with a majority party, like in 2014 and 2019, which is often called an oversized coalition. This is significant since each type of coalition has its own dynamics. I elaborate below.
When no single party gets a parliamentary majority in an election, or loses a majority due to a split, there are two solutions. One is to form a single-party minority government dependent on external support from other parties which may be pre-electoral and/or post-electoral allies. In India’s case, two instances of single-party minority governments were the Chandra Shekhar government (1990-91) and the Congress government of 1991-96. The other solution when no single party has a majority is to form a coalition government of two or more parties. At this point, let me define what the literature means by a coalition government: It counts member parties of the executive coalition — those in the council of ministers — as the coalition, and not the broader legislative coalition of supporting parties, pre- or post-electoral, which stay out of the ministry but offer external support to enable a majority in the legislature even if they were part of a pre-electoral alliance (eg., the TDP stayed out of the BJP-led NDA government of A B Vajpayee, 1999-2004, but offered outside support).
There are four types of coalitions in the international experience. First, the minimal-winning coalition, which India has not had yet — this type of coalition has only the minimum number of parties needed to attain a parliamentary majority, with no redundant surplus parties for a majority, thus making each coalition partner pivotal, since the exit of even one means loss of majority. This is based on the Rikerian assumption of parties being office/power-seeking; a redundant party means sharing power with an unnecessary partner reducing the power shares of existing partners. However, this view tends to ignore policy-seeking motivations; additional partners might enable legislative changes. This could incentivise expanding the coalition, though it would mean sharing power with more partners. India has not had such a coalition government.
Second, there are surplus majority coalitions with no party having a majority. What this means is that while no single party has a majority, the largest party puts together a coalition with a surplus majority. This is usually because of pre-electoral alliances for which there are strong incentives in a first-past-the-post electoral system where vote aggregation through such alliances is helpful in getting the single largest number of votes in constituencies. In a federal system, this incentivises state-level alliance and leads to diverse pre-electoral coalitions on a state-by-state seat-sharing basis, in which the incentive to band together against the largest party leads parties to de-emphasise ideological and policy differences. Examples are the anti-Congress alliances of the 1960s and 1970s, which included parties of the left and right (including at one time an Akali Dal-Jana Sangh-CPI government in Punjab) and the 1989 seat-sharing arrangement in which V P Singh’s Janata Dal was supported by both the BJP and the Left.
Third, there are surplus majority coalitions with a majority party — called oversized coalitions. For example, the BJP-led NDA coalitions in 2014 and 2019 in which the BJP won a majority on its own but kept its pre-electoral coalition partners in the ministry (executive coalition). This type of oversized coalition existed in West Bengal for several terms during the erstwhile Left Front governments when the CPI(M) kept its pre-electoral coalition partners in the ministry even though it had a majority on its own. Oversized coalitions, like surplus majority coalitions reflect the need for pre-electoral alliances as well as the anticipation that such allies will be needed for future elections and hence, need to be accommodated.
Fourth, there are minority coalitions — in which the coalition falls short of a majority and is dependent on outside support from a wider legislative coalition, pre- and/or post-electoral.
The Indian record on types of coalition governments formed is as follows. There have been 12 coalition governments since 1977. Of these, none have been the classic minimal-winning coalitions in which each party is pivotal for a majority. Eight have been minority coalitions in which the executive coalition forming the ministry has needed external support for a majority. These were the Charan Singh government (1979) which included AIADMK, the Janata Dal-led National Front government of V P Singh, the United Front governments of Deve Gowda and I K Gujral, the BJP-led NDA governments of 1998-99 and 1999-2004, the Congress-led UPA governments of 2004-09 and 2009-14. Three have been oversized coalitions with a majority party. These were the Janata Party, 1977-79, technically a single unified party with a majority, with a separate coalition partner in the Akali Dal, and the two BJP-led NDA governments of 2014 and 2019.
There has not been, until 2024, a surplus coalition without a majority party, a configuration that has just happened. While such a coalition is less stable than an oversized coalition, it is more stable than a minimal-winning coalition in which each partner is pivotal or a minority coalition. However, in the Indian case, three minority coalitions — NDA, 1999-2004, UPA I and UPA II — lasted full terms because of at least partial lock-in effects on supporting parties due to state-level alliances and/or due to the main national party being the ideological adversary of the supporting party (eg., the Left while supporting UPA I) or its main state-level adversary (eg., TDP while supporting NDA, 1999-2004).
The power dynamics in a surplus majority coalition favour the dominant party because usually no single partner is pivotal for a majority. In the present case, the largest party has 240 seats, the executive coalition (total of BJP plus nine allies in the ministry) is 287, and with five other NDA partners is 293. Assuming at least partial lock-in effects for the above reasons on the smaller allies and taking 293 as the effective coalition, no ally is pivotal. To deprive the coalition of a majority of 272 it would need the exit of at least two allies, given that the four largest partners have 16, 12, seven and five seats, the rest being twos and ones. This would require considerable coordination in the normal course, including factoring in state-level repercussions, unless some serious crisis arises which precipitates broad disenchantment among the allies. However, the dominant party will also have to tread carefully in such a power configuration so as not to precipitate such disenchantment.
The writer is academic director and chief executive of the University of Pennsylvania Institute for the Advanced Study of India.
