> So if after an election there are two different coalitions who both claim to be the best chance at a stable government, who makes the choice to go with one of them, or to call fresh elections?

In a parliamentary system, the legislative body selects a head of government using a negative process, i.e. they choose the first best alternative that won't lose a vote of no confidence. You don't need 51% approval from parliament, you need to not get 51% disproval.

And depending on country, there are rules for in which order the various players are asked and how much time is allowed to pass for horse-trading and coalition-making, but generally the order is that you first ask the incumbent if they want to continue governing, and thereafter each party leader in order of size in parliament if they have an alternative that they think can pass a vote.

Also, in countries where coalitions are the norm, the various parties have aligned into blocks during the election campaign so that you can be reasonably certain that a vote for party A implicitly is a vote for their block.

> So if after an election there are two different coalitions who both claim to be the best chance at a stable government, who makes the choice to go with one of them, or to call fresh elections?

We, here in the rest of the world, use a magic number to determine that. 51% (or 50% + 1).

Sure, that works fine when one party has 50%. But what happens when no-one does?

That was the case in the UK from 2010-2015. It's called a minority government.

Various factions horse trade until some coalition of parties has a majority, and then they rule as coalition. Members of both the Conservatives and Liberal-Democrats had cabinet seats.

The main downside to this sort of process is that sometimes negotiations take a long time. Belgium spent nearly two years bickering over forming their coalition in 2010.

> Sure, that works fine when one party has 50%. But what happens when no-one does?

Form a coalition that does or have new elections. You can even set a timeline after an election for a coalition to be in place or new elections are mandated by law.

That comment was literally about coalitions ...

Belgium does a great job of proving that that doesn't quite always work.

Belgium was the country that recovered fastest from the 2008 financial crash...

Yet we still pay a "crisisbijdrage" :P It's an additional tax on top of regular corporation tax.

EDIT: which seems to have been introduced in 1993 and never removed :-/

There are a ton of counterexamples and things in real life are measured by ratios of good to bad, not by proving that one case is false, like in math.

It's a great example of why cancel culture shouldn't be used to run a country.

> 51% (or 50% + 1).

Usually “smallest integer greater than 50%”, of which the other two are imperfect approximations.

> So if after an election there are two different coalitions who both claim to be the best chance at a stable government, who makes the choice to go with one of them, or to call fresh elections?

Why do you need to have someone make a choice? Have a set timeline for one of the other to secure the support of a Parliamentary majority or new elections are called by operation of law.