In bicameral legislatures, the term relates to the situation in the chamber whose confidence is considered most crucial to the continuance in office of the government (generally, the lower house).
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.
(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.)
This was the situation in Canada in the 2004,[3] 2006, 2008, 2019, and 2021 federal elections, with no party obtaining a majority due in part to the dominance of the Bloc Québécois in the province of Quebec.
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.
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.
It must be said that strong tensions between the two camps, particularly over the Flemishisation of the Ghent University and the management of external affairs, had led to the fall of the homogeneous Catholic government.
The latter was finally nipped in the bud by Parliament since the latter decided not to grant its confidence because the proposed Catholic coalition did not respect "Flemish national law", that it "was not qualified to resolve the difficulties of the parliamentary situation" and that it did not make it possible to fight the bourgeoisie".
Socialists and Catholics clashed during the election campaign over the royal question of the return of King Leopold III to Belgium, which made the political climate particularly tense.
In the parliamentary gallery, the then Prime Minister, Paul-Henri Spaak, declared: "if you think you can quickly give the country a government other than the one before you, stronger, based on a stable majority, do not hesitate, overthrow us.
Both the socialists and the liberals have the impression that they are playing a fool's game where the lowest bidder will have the chance to claim a few positions in a government that will carry out the entire Christian program.
[14] The socialists, who had campaigned strongly on the left, decided in the Namur Congress to withdraw from the negotiations and denounced the formation of a "coalition of the rights".
[16] As with day-to-day business, the minority government provides a flexible institutional response in times of crisis that allows the state to continue to function and to be able to carry out its essential tasks.
Despite the country's electoral system of proportional representation, which almost always results in the winning party coming nowhere near a majority, single-party minority governments are still a regular occurrence in Danish politics.
More often small far-left or far-right parties provide confidence support of centre-left or centre-right coalition governments led by Social Democrats or Venstre.
For many years, Danish politics has been divided into "Red" and "Blue" blocs, whose parliamentarians are typically expected to support Social Democratic and Venstre cabinets, respectively.
In both instances, minority governments were formed following the elections, with no formal coalition or confidence-and-supply agreement being put in place to guarantee stability.
In the Federal Republic (since 1949), the constructive vote of no confidence theoretically grants minority governments a high degree of longevity, but they are rare in practice.
If no agreement can be reached to nominate an individual to lead a government, the outgoing Taoiseach (continuing to act in a caretaker capacity) can seek dissolution of the Dáil and call a new general election.
Although very rare, minority governments can be formed during the formation period of a Dutch cabinet, if an election result makes a majority coalition impossible.
In the beginning of 2019, the Christian Democratic party KrF joined Erna Solberg's cabinet, that had been ruling with a minority since 2013, to form a majority.
[31] Norway has had multiple minority governments throughout history, including cabinets led by John Lyng, Kjell Magne Bondevik, and Jens Stoltenberg.
That situation lasted until the prime minister called another election in October that year, following which the Labour Government obtained a small majority of three.
However Brown waived his right, acknowledging that because the Conservative Party had won the largest number of seats in the House of Commons, it should have the first opportunity to form a government.
Further discussions then led to the establishment of a formal coalition between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, which enabled the formation of a majority government, because it was thought that would ensure more stability.
In the 2017 General Election, the Conservatives won the most seats and votes but lost their majority in the House of Commons, which instead weakened their hand in the Brexit negotiations.
On 10 June, the Prime Minister's Office announced a deal with the Democratic Unionist Party which would see the DUP support the Conservative government on a confidence and supply arrangement.
The suspension of the whip of 21 Conservative MPs on 24 July 2019 resulted in the government being 43 seats short of a working[clarification needed] majority.
Johnson gained the Conservatives' biggest majority since Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister in 1987 after the 2019 United Kingdom general election, ending this run of minority governments.
On 25 April 2024, First Minister Humza Yousaf suspended the power sharing agreement with the Scottish Greens resulting in an SNP minority government.