Game Theory Shows One Nation One Election Could Transform India's Political Stability

Every few months across India, the same political drama unfolds. A coalition partner withdraws support, ministers resign, and the government falls. What follows is predictable: frozen policies, stalled investments, and bureaucrats too nervous to sign even routine files. Since 1989, this script has played out 83 times across 277 state and central governments.

The root lies in coalition arithmetic. Of the 161 coalition governments formed since the late 1980s, about 40 percent have collapsed before completing their term, compared with just 15 percent of single-party majorities. Behind each collapse lie months of paralysis, billions in lost productivity, and voters wondering why their leaders spend more time plotting than governing.

What most analysts miss is that Indian governments do not fall randomly; they fall rationally. Conventional explanations such as ego clashes, ideological rifts, and leadership struggles describe only the trigger, not the structure beneath. Hidden in India’s parliamentary design is an incentive that makes toppling governments inherently rewarding.

When a government falls midterm, two outcomes are possible: an alternative government forms within the house, or fresh elections are called. In either case, those who succeed in toppling face no penalty. The new alternative government, of course, has all the bargaining fixed and power shared as required. And even if this power bargaining fails and fresh elections follow, the winner gets a full five-year term.

This all-gain, no-loss game turns politicians into calculating gamblers.

The One Nation, One Election (ONOE) proposal addresses this problem at its root. Its logic is simple: if a government falls midterm, its replacement serves only the remainder of the existing term. No bonus years, no reset button. This single change transforms the arithmetic of instability.

What game theory predicts, and our analysis of three decades of data confirms, is that it could prevent nearly two-thirds of government collapses, not through moral exhortation or constitutional rigidity, but by making stability more rewarding than chaos.

The Story of Indian Government Collapses

The numbers tell a story that every Indian intuitively knows. Since 1989, India has formed 277 governments across states and the Centre. A remarkable 83 of them never made it to the finish line.

Coalition governments bear the brunt of this instability. They collapse at a rate of 40 percent, compared to just 15 percent for single-party majorities. But here is the twist: when governments fall, politicians rarely call fresh elections. Of the 83 collapses, only 17 triggered elections. The other 66 times, politicians simply reshuffled the deck and formed new coalitions within the same assembly.

This pattern reveals something crucial about political psychology. Legislators fear voters more than they fear each other. They know that midterm elections are dangerous and anyone can win or lose. Yet they still try.

They either get the prized power to control the government, or, in the worst case, a new election must be fought but would result in a new full term of five years. Not the worst of outcomes. In fact, a win-win.

Years three and five are the calm periods. In year three, it is too late to claim the government failed early but too early to grab a new mandate. Year five? The election is coming anyway, so why bother with the drama of a collapse?

Year four is a sweet spot. Elections are not too far away, so the electorate would not be strongly averse to new elections if they happen. Enough time has also passed for discontent to build.

The main design change ONOE proposes is the removal of the reset mechanism. If a government falls midterm, any subsequent election or alternative government will serve only the remainder of the original cycle. This keeps the electoral calendar fixed across the country.

Although not conceived specifically as a stability reform, this feature has that effect. It removes the hidden reward for toppling a government. The reform raises the political cost of reckless brinkmanship.

A midterm election under ONOE would shorten the potential tenure of any new administration and expose those who caused it to public anger for wasting resources on an election that changes little. Legislators would need compelling reasons, grounded in national interest, to justify bringing down a government.

Our game theory-based structural hazard model quantifies this transformation. With the no-reset option, government collapses decline from 83 to 24, a reduction of 71 percent. Midterm elections fall by 72 percent, from 17 to 5.

This does not erase government falls and midterm elections completely. Instability does not disappear, but it becomes concentrated in the first year, when fragile coalitions are tested, while the rest of the term remains largely stable.

ONOE replaces an incentive for disruption with one for endurance. Governments will still fall when coalitions collapse beyond repair or when public legitimacy truly erodes, but not as tactical manoeuvres to capture a longer mandate.

By changing the reward structure, the reform encourages coalition management rather than coalition sabotage. The benefit is not administrative tidiness but institutional predictability. Once the time horizon of power becomes fixed, politics itself acquires discipline.

Our game-theoretic model shows this clearly: the probability of a government completing its full term rises from 70 percent to 90 percent. Stability becomes the norm, though not absolute.

Critics fear that ONOE could produce lame-duck governments or trap states with failing administrations. The evidence suggests otherwise. Even under the current system, sixty-six of eighty-three collapses produced alternative governments within the same legislature rather than fresh elections.

ONOE preserves this safety valve. Governments can still be replaced midterm, but such changes will require genuine coalition building instead of electoral opportunism. A party inheriting a truncated term must believe it can govern effectively and, if elections follow, persuade voters that the disruption and cost were justified.

The reform raises the threshold for instability without removing accountability.

The implications of ONOE extend far beyond election scheduling. The reform tackles the structural roots of instability rather than its surface symptoms. By redefining what politicians stand to gain or lose from a collapse, it reshapes rational behaviour in a parliamentary system.

The habitual bargaining, defections, and opportunistic withdrawals that have marked coalition politics lose much of their appeal once time, rather than arithmetic, becomes the binding constraint. Stability begins to emerge as the natural equilibrium of a redesigned system.

ONOE does not eliminate politics; it changes its rhythm. Instead of constant manoeuvring through a government’s term, competition will move to predictable electoral windows. Early instability will still occur as fragile coalitions are tested, but those that survive the first year will likely endure.

Opposition parties, denied the lure of a reset mandate, will refocus on electoral preparation rather than midterm ambush. Governments, knowing that the clock cannot be restarted, will have both the incentive and the obligation to govern with consistency rather than in bursts of survival.

Over time, India’s political culture could shift from perpetual campaigning to steady, five-year governance. ONOE will not end politics; it will make it predictable. And that may be the deepest reform of all.

Note: The article is based on the authors' academic research – Game-Theoretic Modelling of Government Stability: Evidence from India's One Nation, One Election Proposal.