When Lesotho adopted the Mixed Member Proportional electoral system in the early 2000s, the immediate objective was clear and largely uncontested. The country needed to end the cycle of disputed elections, post-electoral unrest, and winner-takes-all outcomes that had repeatedly pushed politics to the brink. On that narrow test, MMP succeeded. It delivered inclusive parliaments, reduced electoral violence, and restored a basic level of confidence in the ballot.
But two decades on, the more difficult question has emerged. What has MMP done to governance itself?
Since 2012, Lesotho has lived almost continuously under coalition governments. Elections no longer produce decisive winners. Instead, they generate negotiations, alliances, counter-alliances, and fragile majorities stitched together by necessity rather than shared vision. Coalition politics has shifted from being an exception to becoming the permanent condition of governance.
In principle, this should not be alarming. Proportional systems across the world routinely produce coalitions. In stable democracies, coalitions can enhance accountability, force compromise, and prevent the excesses of dominant parties. The problem in Lesotho has not been coalition government as such, but coalition government without coalition culture.
MMP exposed a political environment that was unprepared for proportionality. Parties entered coalition negotiations without coherent programmes, without clear red lines, and often without internal consensus. Agreements were frequently reduced to leadership arrangements and cabinet arithmetic, thin on policy substance and silent on dispute resolution. When tensions inevitably arose, there were few institutional or political mechanisms to manage them.
The result has been a pattern of instability that elections alone have failed to resolve. Votes of no confidence became frequent. Floor-crossing, though regulated differently than under the First Past the Post era, re-emerged in new and creative forms. Executive authority became contested not just in parliament, but through the courts, security institutions, and extra-parliamentary manoeuvring. Government collapse stopped being exceptional and started to feel routine.
It is tempting to blame MMP for this volatility. That temptation should be resisted.
Electoral systems distribute representation. They do not manufacture political maturity. What MMP did was remove the artificial stability that First Past the Post once imposed by excluding large segments of the electorate. Under the old system, dominance masked fragmentation. Under MMP, fragmentation is visible, measurable, and politically consequential.
In that sense, MMP did not create instability. It revealed it.
The deeper causes of coalition failure lie elsewhere. Weak internal party democracy has produced parties that are vehicles for personalities rather than institutions with ideological coherence. Leadership contests often take place in government rather than within party structures. Loyalty is negotiated, not assumed. Access to state resources continues to outweigh long-term policy performance as the central incentive of politics.
Coalitions formed in such an environment are bound to be fragile.
Yet, it would be a mistake to conclude that Lesotho must choose between proportionality and stability. The experience of the past decade suggests a different lesson. Proportional systems demand stronger institutions, clearer rules, and higher political standards than majoritarian ones. They require enforceable coalition agreements, transparent policy frameworks, regulated floor-crossing, and a shared understanding that losing power within a term is not a constitutional crisis.
MMP corrected the arithmetic of representation. It ensured that votes mattered and that opposition voices could no longer be erased by electoral formulas. What it did not do, and could never do on its own, was reform political behaviour.
That task remains unfinished.
If Lesotho’s first democratic struggle was about inclusion, the current one is about governability. The challenge now is not to abandon MMP, but to mature into it. To build parties that can survive without permanent access to power. To normalise compromise without treating it as betrayal. To accept that pluralism is not disorder, but a condition that must be managed.
Coalition instability is not proof that MMP has failed. It is evidence that Lesotho’s democracy is still learning how to live with the consequences of fairness.
