Political Stability and the Indian Experience: From Coalition Turbulence to Durable Government
Political stability is one of those qualities that is often taken for granted until it disappears. Citizens may disagree intensely about what a government should do, but there is an important difference between disagreement over policy and uncertainty over whether a government will still exist next month. A functioning democracy requires political competition, but it also requires governments that can survive long enough to translate electoral mandates into policy.
India’s political history offers a particularly interesting case. For much of the first three decades after independence, the country enjoyed extraordinary political continuity under Congress dominance. Then came episodes of instability—most dramatically in 1977–80, 1989–91 and 1996–99. Yet these periods were temporary. India eventually developed several different models of stable government: the minority government of P. V. Narasimha Rao, the coalition government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the coalition-led governments of Manmohan Singh and, later, the majority governments of Narendra Modi.
This history also provides an interesting comparison with countries such as Italy, France and Britain. It demonstrates that the stability of a parliamentary democracy depends not simply on whether it is parliamentary or presidential, but on the structure of its political parties, electoral incentives and coalition-management mechanisms.
The illusion that parliamentary government must be unstable
There is a common assumption that presidential systems are inherently more stable than parliamentary ones. There is some truth behind it.
In a presidential system, the executive normally has a fixed constitutional tenure. A president does not ordinarily lose office simply because Parliament or Congress becomes dissatisfied with the government. The United States is the clearest example.
A parliamentary prime minister, by contrast, depends upon maintaining legislative confidence. If governing-party legislators defect, coalition partners withdraw support or an internal leadership rebellion succeeds, a prime minister can fall without the country necessarily holding a general election.
But this does not mean that parliamentary systems are inherently unstable.
Britain has traditionally been a remarkably stable parliamentary democracy. Governments led by Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and others demonstrated that a parliamentary prime minister can exercise authority for many years. The UK has certainly experienced periods of rapid leadership change, but much of that instability has occurred within parties rather than through the collapse of parliamentary government itself. The British parliamentary experience therefore shows that strong parties can produce considerable executive continuity. (House of Commons Library)
India eventually developed a similar capacity.
India’s first era of stability: the Congress system
For the first three decades after independence, Indian politics was dominated by Congress.
Jawaharlal Nehru governed from 1947 until his death in 1964. Lal Bahadur Shastri followed him briefly, and Indira Gandhi subsequently became prime minister. Elections occurred regularly, governments changed through constitutional procedures and the parliamentary system remained firmly established.
This was not simply the result of constitutional design. It was largely a consequence of the Congress party’s extraordinary breadth.
Congress was effectively a political umbrella containing different ideological tendencies, regional interests, social groups and factions. Many political disagreements that might otherwise have produced separate parties were accommodated inside Congress itself.
Consequently, India had a parliamentary system without the extreme fragmentation that would later characterize coalition politics.
The first major rupture came with the 1977 election.
1977: when the dominant party finally lost
The Emergency transformed Indian politics. When elections were held in 1977, Congress suffered a historic defeat and the Janata Party came to power.
Morarji Desai became India’s first non-Congress prime minister.
The election demonstrated the strength of Indian democracy: voters could remove the most powerful political party in the country through a peaceful election.
But the new government also demonstrated the difficulty of constructing an alternative political system.
Janata was an alliance of political forces united primarily by opposition to Indira Gandhi. Once they were in government, ideological differences, personal rivalries and competing ambitions became increasingly difficult to manage.
Desai eventually resigned in 1979. Charan Singh became prime minister but could not establish a durable parliamentary majority.
The government collapsed and Indira Gandhi returned to power in 1980.
The lesson was important: winning against a dominant party and governing successfully are two very different things.
1989–1991: the beginning of fragmented national politics
A much more consequential period of instability arrived at the end of the 1980s.
Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress had won an enormous majority in 1984, but by 1989 the political landscape had changed dramatically. Congress lost its majority and V. P. Singh became prime minister at the head of a National Front government.
The government depended on support from parties outside the coalition. This created an inherently fragile parliamentary arrangement.
V. P. Singh’s government fell in 1990. Chandra Shekhar then formed a government with outside Congress support, but that arrangement also collapsed within months.
India went back to the electorate in 1991.
Yet the next government would demonstrate that minority status did not automatically mean instability.
Narasimha Rao: the overlooked achievement
P. V. Narasimha Rao’s five-year tenure is one of the most important examples of political stability in India’s history precisely because his government did not begin with a straightforward majority.
Rao became prime minister in 1991 and managed to keep his government in office for the entire parliamentary term.
That alone was politically impressive. But Rao was doing much more than simply surviving.
His government presided over the economic reforms of 1991, fundamentally changing India’s economic trajectory. The government therefore provides an important counterargument to the idea that parliamentary stability requires a massive electoral majority.
A politically skilled prime minister can sometimes create stability through parliamentary management, negotiation and coalition-building.
Rao’s government is consequently an important part of the story of India’s political maturation.
1996–1999: India’s most turbulent parliamentary period
If one period best illustrates the dangers of political fragmentation, it is 1996–99.
The 1996 election produced a fractured Parliament. Atal Bihari Vajpayee became prime minister but his government lasted only thirteen days.
A United Front government subsequently came to power under H. D. Deve Gowda, supported by Congress from outside.
Congress later withdrew its support.
I. K. Gujral became prime minister, but his government also depended on external support and eventually collapsed.
The 1998 election brought Vajpayee back. His coalition government lasted longer, but it too fell in 1999 after losing parliamentary support.
India had therefore experienced several prime ministers within a remarkably short period.
But this instability had a paradoxical consequence: political parties learned how to build coalitions.
Vajpayee and the institutionalization of coalition government
The 1999 election marked a decisive turning point.
Vajpayee returned as prime minister leading the National Democratic Alliance and this time completed a full five-year term.
This was enormously important.
India had discovered that coalition government did not necessarily mean governmental paralysis.
The NDA contained numerous regional parties with different interests. Yet a common programme, coalition coordination and political negotiation allowed the government to survive.
The significance of Vajpayee’s government therefore goes beyond its policies. It demonstrated that coalition politics could itself become a stable governing model.
That was a major institutional achievement.
Manmohan Singh and ten years of continuity
The next stage was even more remarkable.
Manmohan Singh became prime minister in 2004 at the head of the United Progressive Alliance. The government depended on coalition partners and parliamentary support.
Yet it completed its full term.
The UPA then won again in 2009.
Singh consequently led governments for ten consecutive years.
This period demolished another assumption: that a government composed of several parties must necessarily be unstable.
Coalition governments can be durable if the principal parties have enough incentive to remain together and if the prime minister can manage competing interests.
India’s experience therefore gradually moved from coalition instability to coalition institutionalization.
Modi and the return of majority government
The 2014 election produced another transformation.
Narendra Modi’s BJP won an outright parliamentary majority, something the party had not achieved on its own before at the national level.
The BJP repeated that achievement in 2019.
The result was a return to a model resembling the earlier Congress era: a strong national party with sufficient parliamentary strength to govern without depending on coalition partners for survival.
The 2024 election altered the arithmetic. The BJP lost its standalone majority, but the NDA retained a parliamentary majority and Modi returned for a third consecutive term. (AP News)
This is another indication of how India’s political system has evolved. It can now operate under several different configurations without necessarily descending into the instability witnessed during 1996–99.
Italy: the opposite extreme
Italy provides perhaps the most striking comparison.
The Italian Republic has experienced extraordinary governmental turnover since 1946. Reuters reported in August 2026 that Italy had gone through 68 governments and 31 prime ministers, with the average government lasting roughly 14 months. At the same time, this headline instability sometimes masks a degree of continuity because the same political forces can remain influential even when governments change. (Reuters)
This is why Giorgia Meloni’s current tenure is such a remarkable political event.
Her government, which took office in October 2022, is about to surpass Silvio Berlusconi’s previous record for the longest uninterrupted post-war Italian government. (Reuters)
Four years in office might seem completely ordinary in India or Britain.
In Italy, it is extraordinary.
The contrast illustrates the importance of political structure. Italy’s parliamentary system has historically produced fragmented coalitions and frequent government changes, whereas India’s political system eventually developed larger national parties and more durable coalition arrangements.
France offers another model
France provides a different solution to the problem.
The Fifth Republic created a powerful presidency alongside a parliamentary government. The French president has a substantial independent democratic mandate, while the prime minister remains responsible to Parliament.
This can provide greater executive continuity than a conventional parliamentary system, although it does not eliminate political conflict.
France can also experience “cohabitation”, when the president and parliamentary majority come from opposing political camps.
The current French situation demonstrates that even a strong presidential institution cannot eliminate political instability. France has faced significant parliamentary difficulties over budgets and governing majorities in recent years. (Reuters)
In other words, institutional design can reduce some forms of instability but cannot eliminate political fragmentation.
Britain demonstrates the importance of party discipline
Britain provides perhaps the most interesting comparison with India.
It has a parliamentary system but historically strong political parties. Governments normally survive because the governing party possesses enough seats and party discipline is relatively strong.
The British system has nevertheless experienced periods of rapid prime-ministerial turnover. The Conservative Party’s sequence from David Cameron to Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak demonstrated that parliamentary stability and prime-ministerial stability are not exactly the same thing.
A government can survive while the leader changes.
Indeed, the UK has had numerous prime ministers since 1945, and the House of Commons Library records 19 prime ministers since the end of the Second World War. (House of Commons Library)
This distinction is important.
Political stability does not necessarily mean keeping the same individual in office. It means maintaining continuity in the governing system and the ability of the executive to function effectively.
Why political stability matters
This brings us to the most important question: why does political stability matter at all?
It matters because government decisions often require years to produce results.
A government cannot build a railway network, reform education, transform the tax system, restructure defence procurement or establish an industrial policy in a few months.
Large infrastructure projects require long planning horizons. Economic reforms require businesses to believe that policies will not suddenly be reversed. Foreign policy requires other countries to believe that commitments made today will still be honoured tomorrow.
Political instability creates uncertainty.
Businesses become reluctant to make long-term investments when they do not know which government or coalition will be in power next year. Bureaucracies become cautious. Ministers concentrate on political survival rather than structural reform. Coalition partners bargain for short-term benefits. Governments may postpone difficult decisions because they fear losing parliamentary support.
This does not mean that stable governments are automatically good governments.
A stable government can make terrible decisions.
Indeed, democratic instability can sometimes be healthy if it prevents an incompetent government from remaining in power indefinitely.
The ideal is therefore not stability at any cost.
It is stable democratic government with genuine electoral accountability.
There is an enormous difference between a government being stable because citizens repeatedly elect it and a government being stable because opposition is suppressed.
The former is democratic stability.
The latter is authoritarian permanence.
Stability also improves long-term national strategy
For a country such as India, stability has an additional significance.
India is attempting to transform itself economically, technologically and geopolitically over several decades. Infrastructure, manufacturing, defence modernization, energy transition, digitalization and human-capital development cannot sensibly be treated as five-year projects.
They require continuity across governments.
A government that knows it can potentially govern for a full parliamentary term can make difficult decisions whose benefits may emerge only years later.
This is one reason the Vajpayee–Manmohan–Modi sequence is so significant.
Different governments pursued different political philosophies, but all three periods provided substantial continuity of national government.
The political contest continued.
The governments changed.
But the state itself remained institutionally predictable.
India’s real achievement
India’s political history should therefore not be described simply as a story of instability followed by stability.
It is more accurately a story of political experimentation and institutional learning.
The country experienced:
Congress dominance → Janata instability → fragmented coalition politics → minority-government stability under Rao → coalition consolidation under Vajpayee → coalition continuity under Manmohan Singh → majority-party dominance under Modi → coalition government again after 2024.
Each phase taught Indian political actors something.
The Janata experience demonstrated the difficulty of holding together a coalition based primarily on opposition to another party.
The Rao government demonstrated that a minority government could survive.
The Vajpayee era demonstrated that a large coalition could complete a full term.
The Manmohan Singh years demonstrated that coalition government could survive for a decade.
The Modi years demonstrated the durability of a strong national party organization.
This is why India’s parliamentary democracy should not be judged merely by the existence of occasional unstable governments.
The more important question is whether the system can recover from instability and eventually produce durable, legitimate governments.
India has repeatedly demonstrated that ability.
The broader lesson
The comparison with Italy, France and Britain leads to a larger conclusion.
There is no perfect constitutional formula for political stability.
Presidential systems can produce fixed executive tenure but also legislative deadlock.
Parliamentary systems can produce rapid government changes but can also produce extremely stable governments when political parties are strong.
Semi-presidential systems can provide a powerful executive but can still experience parliamentary fragmentation.
Ultimately, institutions matter, but political parties matter almost as much.
India’s journey from the turbulence of 1977–80 and 1989–99 to the long governing periods of Rao, Vajpayee, Manmohan Singh and Modi illustrates this perfectly.
Political stability is not the absence of political disagreement.
It is the ability of a democratic system to contain disagreement without making the state itself unpredictable.
That may be the most important achievement of India’s political evolution. The country has not eliminated political competition, coalition bargaining or electoral uncertainty. Instead, it has gradually developed a system in which governments can change without the entire machinery of the state becoming unstable.
And that is ultimately what successful democracy requires: not permanent governments, but permanent institutions; not the absence of political conflict, but the ability to manage it; and not stability without accountability, but stability produced by democratic legitimacy.
You May Also Like :
Comments are closed.