Opinion One Nation, One Election: How other democracies have dealt with the issue

The US obviously comes to mind. But it is a presidential form of government with the slate of the president and vice-president elected by the people through an electoral college system. In case the president is unable to complete the four-year term, the vice president takes over. And in case of a vacancy for the VP, the power to nominate a successor rests with the president subject to it being approved by both Houses of Congress. With the president and vice president being elected in their individual capacity, their nominating a successor with congressional approval has a certain legitimacy, obviating the need for early elections.

The UK is a unitary form of government but in the past decades has seen devolved “nations” come up in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. In all these geographies, elections for their respective assemblies are held under their own laws and at different times but basically, while there is a maximum term of five years for the House of Commons and assemblies, it is up to the respective government to call early elections.

In 2011, the UK enacted The Fixed Term Parliaments Act creating fixed five-year terms and severely restricting the calling of early elections. But in its very second cycle, the House of Commons overrode this law and elections were held in 2017. The Fixed Term Parliaments Act was repealed in 2022 and the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022 revived the power of the Prime Minister to request the monarch to dissolve Parliament.

Within the Commonwealth, Australia and Canada are federations and have parliamentary forms of Government. The lower House of the federal parliament in Australia has only a three-year term while most provincial assemblies have four-year terms. Elections are due for the federal parliament in 2025, while New South Wales held its elections in March 2023 and Victoria will hold them in November 2022 and so on.

In 2006, Canada, at both federal and provincial levels, enacted legislation to fix four-year terms for their parliaments with elections to be held on the third Monday in October. However, there being no restriction on the dissolution of legislatures prior to the fixed date, the situation today is that all the provinces have their own calendar, and the federal parliament has its own. Indeed, while federal elections are due in October 2025, British Columbia is to go to the polls in October 2024, Ontario in June 2026 and so on.

Germany is the largest federal country in Europe. To overcome its pre-WW II history of parliamentary instability, its Basic Law does not allow votes of no-confidence without naming a successor and its parliamentary system has evolved into one where coalitions are an accepted feature; all this leads to a certain stability. However, voting for state (Laender) legislatures is as per the laws of the concerned state and they follow their own election cycle. While for the present, federal elections are due in Germany only in 2025, Baden Wuerttemberg will elect its assembly in 2026, Brandenburg in 2024 and so forth.

A key issue that bedevils fixed terms is managing “hung” assemblies. The usual practice is dissolving the House and there being fresh elections. Six months is usually the maximum time allowed to elapse between two sittings of the House – governance without parliamentary approval being considered an anathema to democracy.

Nepal promulgated a new constitution in 2015 and for the first time in its history created provinces and adopted a federal structure with five-year terms for the Federal House of Representatives and Provincial Assemblies. Its Constitution also only allows a positive vote of confidence and includes several clauses suggesting ways to elect a leader of the House and keep the house going for the full term of five years. But it does recognise the inevitability of mid-term elections in case all such efforts fail.

In 2021, the Nepali Supreme Court, on two occasions, annulled the dissolution of the House of Representatives, which was recommended by the Prime Minister following Prime Ministerial privilege traditions of the UK. The Court’s demand for looking at alternatives within the House succeeded the second time around and the then house sat its full five-year term. The constitution, however, does have a proviso for “Federal Rule” in provinces for a maximum of six months in certain circumstances when a provincial assembly is dissolved prematurely.

Another issue that is pointed out vis-à-vis simultaneous elections to the federal and state assemblies is the possibility of one contest influencing the other in the minds of the voters. A research paper by the University of York, easily available on the internet, studied elections in Italy and Spain which also have federal structures. Its conclusions are that such “contamination” (its expression) is increased unless there are strong regional contending parties or that the understanding of the separation between federal and provincial competencies are very well understood by the voters. The Indian case in the first two decades after independence and the two provincial and federal elections in Nepal (2017 and 2022) appear to show such influencing in the poll results.

While the high-level committee on ONOE will draw its conclusions to suit the Indian situation, presumably its deliberations will also be enriched by international practices on federal and state elections in different parts of the world.

The writer is a former diplomat and India’s ambassador to Nepal and the EU