Minority government
For minority government as synonym to minority régime, see articles on South Africa and Apartheid.
A minority government, or a minority cabinet, is a cabinet of a parliamentary system which does not represent a majority in the parliament - or in bicameral parliaments, in that chamber whose confidence is considered most crucial.
Coalitions and Alliances
To deal with a situations where no clear majorities appear, parties either form coalition governments, ad-hoc alliances or loose agreements with other parties to stay in office.
In Germany, for instance, coalitions are the norm as it is rare for either the CDU/CSU or SDP to win a majority of their own. Thus coalitions are formed with at least one of the smaller parties. Helmut Kohl's CDU governed for years in coaltion with the FDP, Gerhard Schroeder's SDP today is in a coaltion with the Greens. If a coaltion collapses a confidence vote is held. Only once has the government lost a confidence vote.
A similar situtation exist in Israel with its dozens of parties. The centre-right Likud thus forms coalitions with far right and orthodox groups, while Labour allies itself with more leftist and pacifist parties.
In both countries, grand coalitions of the two large parties also occur, but these are rarer and large parties usually prefer to associate with small ones.
A common situation is governance with "jumping majorities", i.e. that the Cabinet stays as long as it can negotiate support from parliament-majorities which well may be differently formed from issue to issue, from bill to bill.
An alternative arrangement is a looser alliance of parties, exemplified with Sweden. There the long governing Social-Democrats have governed with more or, mostly, 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 practise) legislative initiative. This is also common in Canada where parties can rarely cooperate enough to form a coalition, but will have loose agreements.
Proportional Representation
Minority governments are much more common in most countries using proportional representation systems. In most countries using proportional representation no one party wins a majority of the seats. For instace under Israel's pure PR system between 1949 and 1992 no one party ever controlled a majority of the seats. These countries are thus usually ruled by coalitions of parties, or by alliances. Countries like Sweden, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Israel all have proportional representation and rarely have a single party that controls a majority of the seats in the legislature.
Westminster System
Under the Westminster system's first past the post system minorities are much rarer. This is because the riding system heavily biases the vote towards increasing the number of seats of the top parties and reducing the seats of smaller parties. A party with less than forty percent of the popular vote can often win an outright majority of the seats. Nations like Australia, Canada, and the United Kigdom are thus usually governed by parties that control over half of the seats in their legislature.
In a minority situation the head of the largest party is still asked to form a government. They must then either form a coalition with one or more existing parties, or they must win enough support from the other parties or independents to avoid a no-confidence motion. Because of no-confidence motions minority governments are inherently unstable and frequently fall before their term is expired. The leader of a minority government will also often call an election in hopes of winning a stronger mandate from the electorate. In Canada, for instance, most minority governments last less than two years.
Criticism
Many criticize minority governments arguing they create deadlock within the government and prevent and slow changes. Others, however, view minority governments as beneficial for creating a more diverse government that reflects more than one viewpoint.