50 TheEconomistAugust 3rd 2019
1A
spectre is haunting the rich world. It
is the spectre of ungovernability. “Un-
governability in Italy is a great risk,”
averred its former prime minister, Matteo
Renzi, in 2017. “It will be impossible to gov-
ern Spain until they face the political pro-
blem in Catalonia,” predicted the spokes-
woman of the Catalan regional govern-
ment in February (just before that govern-
ment was closed down). Emmanuel
Macron, for whom to govern is to reform,
warned that “France is not a reformable
country”, evoking the spirit of General de
Gaulle who once asked how anyone could
govern a nation with 246 kinds of cheese.
When you survey the political land-
scape of rich countries, you see an unusual
amount of chaos and upheaval. Prague has
seen the largest demonstrations since the
overthrow of communism. More than a
quarter of the current parliaments in Eu-
rope were elected in polls that were called
early. In Britain the mother of parliaments
has been at the gin bottle and opinion polls
everywhere show increasing numbers of
people losing patience with democraticniceties and hankering after a strongman.
But experiencing protests or having
weak governments does not make a coun-
try ungovernable. Moreover, as Tolstoy
might have written, each ungovernable
country is ungovernable in its own way.
The problems of Italy, Spain and Britain are
all different. So what, if anything, does un-
governability mean when applied to de-
mocracies? And if it is a problem, is it worse
now than in the recent past?
Ungovernability can be thought of in
four ways. No Western country is ungover-
nable in every one. But there are a few fea-
tures that exist in more than one country
and a few countries that look ungovernable
in more than one sense.
First, some countries cannot form a sta-
ble government either because (in first-
past-the-post systems) the largest party
does not command a majority in parlia-
ment, or because (in countries with co-
alitions) parties cannot organise a stable
alliance on the basis of election results.
Spain has had three elections since the end
of 2015 and may have to call a fourth follow-ing its failure to negotiate a new coalition.
In Britain an election in 2017 stripped the
ruling Conservatives of their majority and
their subsequent period in office has been
tumultuous. In both countries, stable two-
party systems have given way to wobbly
four- or five-party ones. (And both, inci-
dentally, have seen the collapse of large re-
gional governments, in Catalonia and
Northern Ireland.)
In the 28 European Union countries,
eight of the most recent legislative elec-
tions were snap polls, called before the end
of the normal parliamentary term. This is
not a trivial share, though it does not sug-
gest widespread chaos, either.Joining up is hard to do
More common, countries with coalition
governments have suffered unusually pro-
tracted negotiations. Sweden’s lasted four
months ending in January 2019; the coun-
try now has an ineffective minority gov-
ernment. Finland held an election in April
and it took until the end of May to create a
left-right coalition. These cases pale in
comparison with the eight months that it
took to produce a Czech government in
2018, to say nothing of the record 535 days
that Belgium endured without a govern-
ment in 2010-11. After its vote in 2018, Italy
did manage to cobble together a coalition
between populist right and populist left,
though they cannot stand one another.
These countries should probably be called
precarious, rather than ungovernable.Ungovernable democraciesCoalitions of chaos
Western politicians say their countries are ungovernable. What does that mean?International