A minority government, minority cabinet, minority administration, or a minority parliament is a government and cabinet formed in a parliamentary system when a political party or coalition of parties does not have a majority of overall seats in the legislature. It is sworn into office, with or without the formal support of other parties, enabling a government to be formed. Under such a government, legislation can only be passed with the support or consent of enough other members of the legislature to provide a majority, encouraging multi-partisanship. In bicameral legislatures, the term relates to the situation in the chamber whose confidence by its majority is considered most crucial to the continuance in office of that government (generally, the lower house).
A minority government tends to be less stable than a majority government because, if they can unite, opposing parliamentary members have sufficient numbers to vote against legislation, or even bring down the government with a vote of no confidence. If, however, a minority government can negotiate a confidence and supply agreement with parties sufficient to maintain a majority, it can be as stable as a majority government.
Coalitions and alliances
To deal with situations in parliamentary systems where no clear majority to form a government exists, two or more parties may establish a formal coalition government, commanding a clear majority of the parliamentary members. A party might also enter into less formal alliances or agreements with other parties or individual members to allow the minority government to stay in office.
A common situation is a governance with "jumping majorities", where the cabinet stays as long as it can negotiate support from a majority in the parliament, even though that majority may be differently formed from issue to issue or bill to bill. On occasion, the legislature may permit a minority cabinet to continue in office despite having been defeated on a given vote, and a minority government might even bring on a confidence vote and threaten to resign should the legislature vote against it.
An alternative arrangement is a looser alliance of parties, exemplified by Sweden. There the long-governing Social Democrats have ruled with more or less formal support from other parties – in the mid-20th century from Agrarians, after 1968 from Communists, and more recently from Greens and ex-Communists – and have thus been able to retain executive power and (in practice) legislative initiative. This is also common in Canada, where nine elections from 1921 to 2005 effectively produced minority federal governments. The parties can rarely cooperate enough to establish a formal coalition but operate under a loose agreement instead.
Occasionally, a confidence and supply agreement may be formed. This is a more formal pact that still falls short of creating a coalition government. In the Canadian province of Ontario, the Liberal Party formed a minority government from 1985 to 1987 on the basis of a formal accord with the New Democratic Party (NDP): the NDP agreed to support the Liberals for two years on all confidence motions and budgetary legislation, in exchange for the passage of certain legislative measures proposed by the NDP. This was not a formal coalition, because the NDP remained an opposition party and was not given seats in the cabinet. In this case, the Liberals did not even have a plurality of seats: the Progressive Conservatives were the largest single party with 52 seats, whereas the Liberals had 48 and the NDP had 25.
New Zealand's 48th Parliament operated with both a coalition and a looser agreement: the government was a coalition between the Labour Party and the Progressives, while United Future and New Zealand First had an agreement to support the government on confidence matters, while the Green Party was able to negotiate a cooperation agreement.
Simple plurality system In most Westminster system nations, each constituency elects one member of parliament by simple plurality voting. This system heavily biases the vote towards increasing the number of seats of the top two parties and reducing the seats of smaller parties, a principle known in political science as Duverger's law, and thus minority governments are relatively uncommon. Advocates of this system see this as one of its advantages. A party with less than 40% of the popular vote can often win an outright majority of the seats. (For instance, in the 2005 UK General Election, the governing Labour party won by a majority of 66 seats in the House of Commons with only 35.2% of the popular vote.) If support for some parties is regionally concentrated, however, then Duverger's law applies separately to each region, and so no party can be sufficiently dominant in each region to receive a majority of the seats. This was the situation in Canada in the 2004, 2006, 2008, 2019, 2021, and 2025 federal elections, with no party obtaining a majority due in part to the dominance of the Bloc Québécois in the province of Quebec.
In Westminster systems, in minority situations, the incumbent government usually has the first opportunity to attempt to win the confidence of the House. This is so even if the incumbents have fewer seats – the incumbent prime minister still holds their commission for the duration of the writ period and immediately following an election. If they cannot form a government that commands the confidence of the House then it is expected that they will resign that commission voluntarily – it is not considered acceptable for the Sovereign (or his representative) to revoke said commission unless the prime minister was acting in serious breach of constitutional protocol. Nevertheless, usually, an incumbent government that loses its plurality in the House simply resigns, especially if the main opposition party is only a few seats short of having a majority or if it feels it has no chance of winning the support of enough members of smaller parties to win an initial confidence vote.
Nevertheless, the now-common practice of the party with the most seats forming the government has led to a widespread misconception among voters that a convention exists whereby the party with the most seats always gets to form the government. In fact, the most compelling reason for this practice is that the party with the most seats can survive confidence votes so long as smaller party (or parties) simply abstain from confidence votes, whereas a governing party without a plurality in the House needs at least one other party to vote with it at all times (assuming the largest party will always vote no confidence, but that is almost certain to occur when they are denied the opportunity to govern). This means that in most situations, the party with the most seats has the best chance and the least complicated route to winning a confidence vote, regardless of its place on the political spectrum.
At the Canadian federal level, in the four most recent of the five occasions a governing party lost the plurality without another winning a majority (1957, 1963, 1979, and 2006), the incumbent governments resigned rather than attempt to stay in power.
Whatever party forms the government must either form a coalition with one or more other parties, or they must win support from at least one other party (either a confidence and supply deal or case-by-case agreements on individual confidence questions) if the government is to survive. Because of the ever-present risk of a no-confidence motion, minority governments are frequently short-lived or fall before their term is expired. The leader of a minority government may also call an election in hopes of winning a stronger mandate from the electorate. In Canada, for instance, federal minority governments last an average of 18 months.
Australia The unprecedentedly close 2010 Australian federal election produced a federal minority government in Australia for the first time since 1940. The Labor Party and Coalition both won 72 seats, 4 short of a majority. Labor won the two-party preferred vote by 0.24%. Six crossbenchers, consisting of four independents, one Greens MP, and one WA Nationals MP, held the balance of power. Ultimately, four crossbenchers gave confidence and supply to Labor, allowing them to form an extremely narrow minority government. This government stood until the 2013 election.
After the 2016 federal election, the Coalition formed a majority government of just one seat. They lost their majority after the 2018 leadership spill which deposed Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, as National Party MP Kevin Hogan moved to the crossbench. The government lost another seat after the 2018 Wentworth by-election, which was won by independent Kerryn Phelps. They lost another seat after MP Julia Banks resigned from the Liberal Party, reducing the government to 73 seats. However, they retained confidence from all three MPs, enabling them to remain in government.
Due to the much greater power of the Australian Senate, where no party usually holds a majority, than is typical in Westminster systems, Australian governments must typically negotiate with opposition parties to pass legislation, even when they enjoy sizeable majorities in the lower house. The Australian Senate may in principle withhold supply, bringing down the government; however, doing so would likely produce a constitutional crisis. Nonetheless, the necessity of getting Senate support imposes many of the difficulties of minority government on most Australian governments.
Belgium Belgium is not unfamiliar with minority governments. Moreover, this type of government is not explicitly provided for in the Constitution, even though the Constitution does not prevent its existence. More often than not, minority governments emerge following elections when the government that was in power loses its majority and has to become a caretaker government pending the formation of a new government.
Legal grounds In Belgium, it is the King who appoints the government.Art. 96 of the Constitution However, as Belgium is a democratic state, constitutional custom requires that this appointment must be approved by the Chamber of Representatives, the democratically elected body.J. Velaers, « Honderd jaar vertrouwensstemmingen in de regering (1919–2018): een gewoonte die de crisis over het Marrakesh-pact overleeft », T.B.P., 2020/1, pp. 4–29. This consent is given by a vote of confidence. There is, however, a small constitutional trick, since the majority required to obtain confidence is not calculated on the basis of all the members of parliament, but on the basis of the votes cast. As the specialist on minority governments in Belgium, Lucien Rigaux, points out, this means that the majority is calculated on the basis of the members present and does not require more than 76 votes (the majority of the 150 seats in the Chamber). Moreover, confidence is obtained if there are more votes in favour than against. For example, out of 100 votes cast, a minority government can be invested with 40 affirmative votes, 20 negative votes and 40 abstentions. The abstention of parties that, for various reasons, do not wish to enter the government thus makes it possible to form an emergency government with full powers and democratic legitimacy.
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