[EM] Possibly more stable consensus government

[Raph Frank]

On Tue, Dec 4, 2012 at 10:21 AM, Juho Laatu <juho4880 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> In Finland the political system has resembled this approach in the recent years although there are no specific supermajority requirements to form or to break governmnets. Having such rules could strengthen similar behaviour even more. Looking at the rules from a Finnish perspective, the supermajority rule to replace the current government could be too strong since it could make the "maybe too stable" system even more stable.

Fundamentally, consensus by rules is different than consensus voluntarily.

In the case you have, the lager parties benefit from having the
smaller parties involved, but it isn't mandatory.  Making the smaller
parties required would boost their negotiating power.

This may lead to fragmentation of the larger parties.

> Maybe in some other countries, but in Finland the party discipline or "governmnet discipline" tends to be quite strong.

I think the parliamentary system, where being a minister requires
loyalty to the party, discipline is easier.

If you changed it so that members of the legislature couldn't be
appointed to cabinet (or better couldn't stand for election to the
legislature for the next election), then discipline would probably
fall.