Under the spell of Italian TV newsflashes announcing the fall of the latest government, the word coalition has earned a bad reputation across the Sicilian channel.
Yet in the whole of the European Union, only five countries have governments composed of a single party: namely Malta, UK, Greece, Portugal and Spain. And only four of these have governments with an absolute majority in parliament, because in Spain the Socialists rely on the support of Catalan nationalists and Communists – even countries governed by one party have a multitude of parties.
And even the most bipartisan European democracy, the United Kingdom, has a parliament which includes 62 Liberal Democrats, six Scottish Nationalists, three Welsh Nationalists, five Irish Republicans, nine Irish Unionists and left-winger George Galloway representing the anti-war party Respect.
Malta, however, remains the solitary EU country with just two parties represented in parliament.
It’s definitely not a question of size. Luxembourg, which is a bit larger than Malta, has five parties represented in its parliament and is run by a coalition of Socialists and Conservatives.
And neither is it a question of climate or temperament. Mediterranean Cyprus is run by a three-party left-wing coalition. And nor is the world coalition synonymous with political instability: in Germany coalition government is the norm, and this does not preclude the formation of stable governments.
At the federal level, German governments are formed with at least one of the smaller parties. The traditional kingmakers of German politics were the Liberals – a centrist party promoting a free market agenda. In 1969, the social democrat SPD won a majority by forming a social-liberal coalition with the Liberals and led the federal government under German chancellor Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt from 1969 until 1982.
Between 1982 and 1998 the Liberals served as the junior partner in the government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl of the CDU. The role of the Liberals was displaced by the Greens, an ecological party with roots in the pacifist, feminist and left wing movements of the 1970s. From 1998 to 2005, Gerhad Schröder’s SPD shared power with the German Green Party.
The system reached a critical point in the 2005 election when the newly formed Left Party took enough seats to deny a majority to any of the two rival coalitions. After the inconclusive result, the SPD and the CDU/CSU agreed to form a grand coalition with CDU leader Angela Merkel as chancellor and with an equal number of Cabinet seats for each party.
Ireland is another stable democracy and economic powerhouse which is currently run by a coalition between Greens, progressive democrats and the conservative Fianna Fail.
In some European countries it’s the electoral system encourages political parties to declare a coalition before going to the polls. In France coalition partners gang up together to help each other out in the second round of both presidential and parliamentary elections.
Even Romani Prodi’s own government was itself the result of an electoral system which encouraged the formations of very wide coalitions on both sides.
Most coalitions in Europe are declared after elections. Parties on the same side of the electoral spectrum are generally expected to join together. Far-right parties tend to be excluded from these arrangements.
Sweden, whose government is formed by four centre-right parties has one of the most stable governments in Europe.
Even Europe’s own parliament lacks a majority party and the European People’s Party and the Party of European Socialists have to rely on the votes of liberals, greens or leftists to pass through legislation.
Malta is definitely the exception to the rule when it comes to coalition building. But the only ones who can change this state of affairs are the voters themselves, who for the past 42 years have voted for just two parties.

Coalitions in Malta
By introducing a proportional electoral system in which electors could offer their preferences to candidates of different parties, the British colonial authorities sought to foster small parties as an antidote to a strong, united nationalist movement.
Ironically in the post-war scenario, this electoral system defied the designs of its proponents and served to foster a two-party system.
Yet before the great war, coalitions were the order of the day with the “small” Labour Party holding the proverbial key to government, first by prodding a clerical government and then by teaming up with Gerald Strickland’s Constitutionals.
Malta’s first and last pre-declared coalition agreement dates back to 1926 when the Labour Party signed a compact with Gerald Strickland’s Constitutional Party. In 1927 the two parties signed an agreement through which they called on their respective supporters first to vote for the candidates of their party and then to continue voting for the candidates of the allied party.
The two parties were united by a more secular outlook than their conservative rivals and a vision of modernisation within the British empire. Upon winning the election the two parties formed a coalition.
The only other episode of coalition making took place between 1950 and 1955 after the Mintoff-Boffa split resulted in two rival Labour parties.
Boffa’s moderate and pro-British Malta Workers Party formed two coalitions with the Nationalist Party in 1951 and 1953. But in so doing it lost ground to Mintoff’s militant Labour Party, disappearing completely from the political scene by the 1955 election.
Third parties only returned to the scene in the 1962 when Mabel Strickland’s Progressive Constitutional Party, Toni Pellegrini’s Christian Workers Party and Herbert Ganado’s Democratic Nationalist Party gained representation in parliament.
Yet despite their ephemeral success the Nationalists were still able to gain an absolute majority in parliament after one of Ganado’s deputies defected to them, thus depriving third parties of the key to power.
Ever since 1962 third parties failed to get any representatives in parliament. The Constitutional Party failed miserably in its last attempt gaining a sheer 1% of the vote – a result which was only surpassed by AD in 1992 when the nascent Green Party gained 1.7%, its best ever result in a general election.
Yet the supremacy of two-party rule did not prevent one single MP, Duminku Mintoff from bringing down his own party’s government in 1998.
In 2003, Alternattiva Demokratika took part in talks with the Nationalist Party in a bid to create a pro-EU membership alliance. But the talks went nowhere with the PN insisting on AD not contesting the election in return for the presidency of the House of Parliament after the election.
AD refused the offer and went on to contest the election appealing for the number 2 vote not to endanger EU membership. But the party’s generosity was not reciprocated by the PN. The strategy was foiled by former Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami who dedicated a substantial part of his last mass meeting to rubbish the Greens and exhorting PN voters not to vote their second preferences to AD.
Yet the party was rewarded in the European Parliament elections of 2004 when it gained an incredible 23,000 votes, although still missing the target of electing Arnold Cassola to the European Parliament. Four years on AD, is offering its support for a coalition with either party. But first it has to gain representation in an election where the two big parties still call the shots.