The Cycle of Coalition Comic!

It’s great to be partnering once again with David Fortunato, Associate Professor at the Global Policy School at UC San Diego. David’s forthcoming book, The Cycle of Coalition focuses on how voters reward elected officials for taking hardline partisan positions on policy, even if those positions cause political gridlock and conflict. A few months back, we worked together to design the official cover (see below). 

Now, we’ve translated his research on conflict and coalition in governing bodies into a full-fledged, striking comic. SPC was excited to take this project on, as it gave us a chance to flex our “narrative” muscles a bit. Together, we created a fictional world that mirrors European parliamentary proceedings, which constitutes the bulk of the comic’s action. 

The comic is based on the real world experience of Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats and David Cameron’s Conservatives navigating the first ever coalition government of the United Kingdom back in 2010. However, instead of rehashing a history lesson in British politics, we created a more loose-fitting parable that warns of the pitfalls of coalition governance. 

Our protagonist, Sophia, leads the minority yellow party within the coalition government and has to learn quickly how to find a balance between governance and honoring her party’s platform. Thomas, the leader of the majority purple party, recognizes his party’s strong position and immediately begins ramming legislation through as quickly as possible. 

At first, Sophia acquiesces, but sees her party’s approval ratings plummet in the polls. Not wanting to cede any more ground, she improvises a counterproposal, which shows the purple party she’s not backing down, even if that means no legislation is passed. 

Of course, in the real world things went a bit differently. Nick Clegg and his Liberal Democrats saw an enormous drop in voter support in the months following the formation of a coalition government. To generalize, this due to the Liberal Democrats compromising on key issues in the hopes of securing a referendum on electoral system reform. The referendum ultimately failed and Clegg was left picking up the pieces of his party. 

Obviously, the story of the United Kingdom’s coalition government could fill (has filled) whole books. The challenge for SPC was how to tell a version of this story in four pages. To do that, we knew that Sophia had to adapt faster than Clegg in order to get the overarching theme of the book across. 

So we introduced another character, Maria, a former prime minister who serves briefly as a kind of mentor for Sophia. In page three of the comic, she advises Sophia on the situation, which allows her to change the narrative, so to speak, of her party’s own political fortunes. 

Given the handful of characters juggled throughout the comic and the story’s overall arc, we knew we needed to establish a general narrator for readers. Enter the media. Throughout the comic, the public is seen following the news broadcasts of the coalition government’s attempts to legislate via television, smartphone and radio. Employing this device also let us condense a lot more action into four short pages, accomplishing much more with the space we had. 

David’s comic also gave us the opportunity to create and emphasize moments of suspense within the story. Naturally, we chose to place one significant moment—when Thomas proposes privatizing healthcare—right at the midway point of the comic. It’s here where Sophia can go the way of Clegg and his Liberal Democrats or chart a new path. 

Readers won’t necessarily need to know the history behind the comic itself to recognize the magnitude of the situation. Anyone at least mildly familiar with modern-day political dynamics would know Sophia and her yellow party stand at a crossroads. SPC knew we needed to get Sophia off the parliament floor and dialoguing with a peer in order to best proceed forward. 

In the end, although Sophia’s proposal might bog down the proceedings, we see that her party’s base appreciates her efforts as they honor and uphold party values first and foremost. In this way, we arrive at the conclusions of David’s book in a neat manner. 

For those interested in global policy and David’s research, Cambridge University Press has officially published his book this past month and it is now available for purchase. The full comic is available in our GALLERY section.