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Q: What is a minority government?

A: A minority government is one that emerges from an election with fewer seats in the legislature than the combined total of all other parties.

For a government to work, it needs to be able to pass legislation. A minority government can't survive unless it can secure enough support from opposition parties. Sometimes the minority government will make a deal with an opposition party for temporary support. Sometimes the government will try to operate on a vote-by-vote basis, seeking support of individual members rather than of entire caucuses.

The government's seat numbers are usually reduced by one because the Speaker is usually appointed from the government party. The Speaker does not cast a ballot on legislation unless the house vote is a tie.

• From May 13, 2006: Seats of Power - Interactive view of Nova Scotia's legislative assembly

Some bills (especially budgets and other money bills) are considered non-confidence votes. If the government loses a non-confidence vote, it will fall. It's then up to the lieutenant governor either to ask the leader of the party with the next most seats to try to form a government, or dissolve the house again and clear the way for another election.

The most famous recent minority in Canada is probably the short-lived Conservative federal government of 1979, under Joe Clark. The Tories had come out of the election six seats short of a majority and had captured fewer votes in the general election than the Liberals had. Clark was inexperienced and little-known, a recent compromise winner of the Tory leadership and a man with unconventional political ideas. He announced that he would govern as if he had a majority and he had no intention of kissing up to the Liberals and the NDP.

The Liberals plotted and waited and sure enough in December 1979, the Clark government walked into a trap and got crushed on a budget vote.

• CBC Archives - May 23, 1979: Prime Minister Clark

Early in 1980, Pierre Trudeau was coaxed back from retirement to lead the Liberals to another victory. It would be until 1984 and the arrival of Brian Mulroney before the Conservatives would have another chance at power.

• CBC Archives Feb. 19, 1980: Welcome to the 1980s

Fast-forward 20 years, to Nova Scotia. In 1999, John Hamm was Tory leader with some similarities to Joe Clark. He had been chosen as a compromise candidate for leader and many people expected him to be little more than a caretaker until a new PC leader could emerge from the wings.

Again, it was a budget that decided the fate of the ruling minority. Liberal Premier Russell MacLellan’s budget was a no-go for the NDP, which clearly planned to vote against it. It teetered on the verge of acceptance from the Tories, but everything relied on a decision by Hamm. If he supported the budget and a plan to borrow $600 million for health care, MacLellan would have stayed in office. But Hamm and his advisers decided against that and in a dramatic moment in the legislature, joined the NDP in voting down the budget and the MacLellan government.

• CBC Archives - July 27, 1999: Nova Scotians choose Hamm

That vote propelled the province into the summer election of 1999, won handily by the Conservatives.

In 2003 the tables turned on Hamm. "Nova Scotia politics just got a lot more interesting," a smiling Hamm told supporters at his victory party. But it was a small victory in that his government was two seats short of a majority.

Hamm retired in February 2006 and Rodney MacDonald was elected as party leader — and appointed premier of a government that had survived only through the support of the NDP under Darrell Dexter.

Nova Scotians are becoming used to minority governments. It's often said that because they are less radical and not driven by rigid party agendas, but are by their nature co-operative, minority governments are the best form of government for the citizen.

Therese Arseneau, a former Saint Mary’s University political scientist now living and working in New Zealand, told CBC News just before the last minority government was elected that Kiwi voters also favour coalitions and minorities and changed their electoral system to make them more workable. The thinking there was that the Canadian/British first-past-the-post system does not adequately reflect New Zealand’s changing political, cultural and economic face.

She also said that Nova Scotia’s face is changing, and the NDP’s strength since the late 1990s reflects a political sea change here. Politics here is a three-party puzzle, with voters breaking traditional patterns and forming new alliances.

• From Aug. 3, 2003: Therese Arseneau tells us what a minority government would mean to Nova Scotia.
  (runs 3:26)

Arseneau pointed out that formal coalitions are the norm in many democracies and they might well reflect what is really going on in the political hearts and minds of Nova Scotians today.

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