OK, Alex, no-one called your bluff. But what if they had?

'YOU can," Abraham Lincoln is reputed to have said, "fool all the people some of the time", and our ingenious First Minister seems to have managed to do just that, with his threat to resign and force an election if his government's Budget was not approved by the Parliament.

This was a bluff, since he had already done a deal with the Conservatives, the Greens and the parliament's only independent, and so knew very well that the Budget would be approved. However, the mere threat of an election seems to have been enough to deprive Labour and the Liberal Democrats of such wits as they have. Consequently, they didn't even vote against the Budget, preferring to abstain.

I say Mr Salmond was bluffing because, by my reading of the Scotland Act, he doesn't actually have the power to force a dissolution and a new election. It might admittedly come to that if he did resign, but it's by no means certain it would. Instead, the Presiding Officer would be entitled to refuse to sanction an election until he had seen whether anyone else could form an administration capable of commanding a majority in the Parliament – even if that majority proved to be precarious and temporary. Only if this proved impossible would an election be necessary.

They do things differently in Westminster, of course. It's now extremely unlikely that any incumbent prime minister's request for a dissolution and general election would be refused by Her Majesty – though, theoretically, she retains the constitutional right to do so and to see if someone else is able to form a government.

But this is because, with the first-past-the-post system of election, the prime minister of the day nearly always has an overall majority, so it is in the highest degree unlikely that any other party leader would be in a position to command the support of the House of Commons.

There have been only two occasions since the Second World War when a parliament was dissolved within two years of an election: 1951 and October 1974. Both cases were exceptional. In 1951, the Attlee government's majority was wafer-thin and ministers were exhausted; it therefore seemed proper to go to the country. In 1974, Harold Wilson had no majority, but, given the failure of Ted Heath to persuade the Liberals to support him after the February election that year, there was no alternative government possible.

The set-up at Holyrood is different. The electoral system devised for the Scottish Parliament was intended to make single-party majority rule unlikely, if not impossible. So, for eight years we had a Labour/Liberal Democrat coalition, and now we have a SNP minority government. We are in a sort of halfway house, between the first-past-the-post system, which makes a single-party majority probable, and a full proportional- representation system, which makes that all but impossible.

In states where full PR is the rule, it is at least as common for governments to change between elections, during the life of the parliament, as it is for them to change as a result of an election. To some extent, this is also the case where a hybrid system of election operates. In Germany, for instance, the composition of the government has more often than not depended on whether the Free Democrats chose to align themselves with the Christian Democrats or with the Social Democrats, neither of which parties has usually enjoyed an overall majority. So, single-party government is not, or is rarely, on the cards.

Here, we have been experimenting with a minority government. The SNP holds just over one-third of the seats in the Parliament and therefore has to seek support for any measures it wishes to put through the house. If, however, it can't secure such support, there are other combinations which are, at least in theory, possible.

The Presiding Officer could explore such possibilities as a resumption of the Labour/Lib Dem alliance, or – more improbable as it may seem – a coalition of the three unionist parties. That Grand Coalition would have a comfortable majority. The prospect of the Conservatives participating in such a coalition – or, indeed, of their participation being acceptable to Labour – may seem remote. But it's not impossible.

Of course, any alternative administration would face huge difficulties, as things now are, despite Wendy Alexander having been cleared by the Electoral Commission yesterday.

The weak position of Ms Alexander is no doubt why Labour's opposition to the Budget crumbled in the face of the First Minister's bluff. Labour is certainly in no position to fight an immediate election; perhaps in no position to take office again. But an administration could be formed.

But it's not going to happen because nobody called Mr Salmond's bluff and he is, therefore, safe for the time being. Nevertheless, it's not a card he can safely play again. If – when? – the polls turn against the SNP, he may find himself voted out of office – and then what? Nobody can tell, but one thing is sure. Multi-party politics mean that there are more scenarios than we are accustomed to at Westminster, where single-party government has normally been the rule.