With the UK’s general election less than two months away, it’s looking pretty likely that the winning party won’t get an overall majority, which will result in a “hung parliament”. Now the conventional wisdom on hung parliaments is that they lead to either a weak minority government or a weak coalition majority, which is bad for the country and leads to very scary things.
But putting aside the argument that Thatcher’s and Blair’s huge majorities haven’t exactly been a massive boon to the country, how do other nations with “weak” government fare? The following are the some of the countries that are above the UK in terms of GDP per capita, alongside the type of government they currently have:
- Denmark - Three party coalition
- Sweden - Four party coalition
- Norway – Three party coalition
- Canada- Minority government
- Austria – Two party coalition
- Ireland – Two party coalition
- Switzerland- Four party coalition
- Netherlands – Three party coalition
- Belgium- Billion party coalition
Now, there are some problems with my use of “GDP per capita” as a measurement of how well a country’s government is doing. But it does show that a hung parliament is not an inherently disastrous thing for a country. And the fact is that you can take almost any general measure of a country’s success – income equality, living standards, happiness levels, life expectancy – and almost all of the above countries would still give the UK a good thrashing.
But the conventional wisdom is that a hung parliament is a BAD thing, so, you know, whatever.
