When there are multiple stakeholders of power, conversation and consensus become the natural ingredients of governance. Analyze with respect to coalition politics.

When power has many stakeholders, no single actor can impose an outcome, so bargaining becomes the mode of governing rather than an interruption to it. India's coalition era from 1989 supplies the evidence.

How conversation was institutionalised.

• The Common Minimum Programme — the United Front's in 1996, the NDA's National Agenda for Governance in 1998, and the UPA's CMP in 2004 — converted ideological distance into a negotiated written contract.
• Coordination machinery — the UF Steering Committee and the UPA-Left Coordination Committee gave allies a standing forum outside the Cabinet.
• Federalisation. Regional parties entering national office made state interests a permanent presence in Union decisions, which is why the coalition decades also saw the Inter-State Council activated and Article 356 used far more sparingly after S. R. Bommai (1994).
• Policy moderation. Allies acted as a brake on the ideological programmes of the largest party, and the government of the day had to explain itself continuously rather than only at elections.

The limits. Consensus can become paralysis, as with the Left's withdrawal over the nuclear deal in 2008; small parties can extract disproportionate rents; accountability blurs when everyone shares office and no one owns the outcome. The 91st Amendment (2003) tightened anti-defection partly in response to this instability.

The deeper point survives the criticisms: coalitions made Indian democracy more consultative and more federal, and single-party majorities since 2014 have reduced that consultation rather than abolished the need for it.