No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Institutional Veto Players and Cabinet Formation: The Veto Control Hypothesis Reconsidered
Abstract and Figures
Are potential cabinets more likely to form when they control institutional veto players such as symmetric second chambers or minority vetoes? Existing evidence for a causal effect of veto control has been weak. The article presents evidence for this effect on the basis of conditional and mixed logit analyses of government formations in 21 parliamentary and semi-presidential democracies between 1955 and 2012. It also shows that the size of the effect varies systematically across political-institutional contexts. The estimated causal effect was greater in countries that eventually abolished the relevant veto institutions. We suggest that the incidence of constitutional reform is a proxy for context-specific factors that increased the incentives for veto control and simultaneously provided a stimulus for the weakening of institutional veto power.
Content may be subject to copyright.
... However, since a minority veto biases the political process, it was abolished as soon as the political right felt as constrained by it as the left. I discuss this abolishment further in Chapter 7 (see also Eppner and Ganghof 2017). ...
... Due to constitutional reforms during the period under consideration, the second chambers of Victoria and Western Australia enter our analysis as three and two observations, respectively. We also include Finland, which used a unicameral veto of a one-third minority as an alternative to bicameralism until 1987 (Eppner and Ganghof 2017). Including this veto is preferable to excluding Finland or treating it as a case without any institutional veto point (Volden and Carrubba 2004). ...
... The literature on parliamentary government highlights the design of noconfidence, investiture, and dissolution procedures (e.g. Bergman 1993;Cheibub et al. 2021;Goplerud and Schleiter 2016;Sieberer 2015) but has tended to neglect these procedures in theorizing the effects of second chambers on cabinet formation (but see Diermeier et al. 2007;Eppner and Ganghof 2017). Restrictiveness I captures them. ...
This chapter discusses the conditions under which semi-parliamentary government can be stable. It responds to two conjectures about “strong” bicameralism: that constitutional designers who prefer strong second chambers have to be willing to accept (a) either a presidential system of government; or (b) oversized and ideologically heterogeneous cabinets. Both conjectures are largely unfounded because they neglect that second chambers can be designed to be powerful in the legislative process, but permissive with respect to cabinet formation. The chapter measures second chambers’ “restrictiveness” with respect to cabinet formation as a neglected dimension of bicameral designs and uses the resulting indices to explain comparative patterns of cabinet formation and constitutional reform. A conditional logit analyses of cabinet formation in 28 democratic systems in the period 1975–2018 shows that governments’ potential control of a second-chamber majority only affects cabinet formation when the chamber in question is restrictive. A comparative analysis of patterns of constitutional reform and stability in twelve bicameral systems suggests that reducing the restrictiveness of a second chamber—rather than its democratic legitimacy or legislative veto power—can be sufficient to stabilize a “strong” second chamber.
... However, since a minority veto biases the political process, it was abolished as soon as the political right felt as constrained by it as the left. I discuss this abolishment further in Chapter 7 (see also Eppner and Ganghof 2017). ...
... Due to constitutional reforms during the period under consideration, the second chambers of Victoria and Western Australia enter our analysis as three and two observations, respectively. We also include Finland, which used a unicameral veto of a one-third minority as an alternative to bicameralism until 1987 (Eppner and Ganghof 2017). Including this veto is preferable to excluding Finland or treating it as a case without any institutional veto point (Volden and Carrubba 2004). ...
... The literature on parliamentary government highlights the design of noconfidence, investiture, and dissolution procedures (e.g. Bergman 1993;Cheibub et al. 2021;Goplerud and Schleiter 2016;Sieberer 2015) but has tended to neglect these procedures in theorizing the effects of second chambers on cabinet formation (but see Diermeier et al. 2007;Eppner and Ganghof 2017). Restrictiveness I captures them. ...
In a democracy, a constitutional separation of powers between the executive and the assembly may be desirable, but the constitutional concentration of executive power in a single human being is not. The book defends this thesis and explores ‘semi-parliamentary government’ as an alternative to presidential government. Semi-parliamentarism avoids power concentration in one person by shifting the separation of powers into the democratic assembly. The executive becomes fused with only one part of the assembly, even though the other part has at least equal democratic legitimacy and robust veto power on ordinary legislation. The book identifies the Australian Commonwealth and Japan, as well as the Australian states of New South Wales, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, and Western Australia, as semi-parliamentary systems. Using data from 23 countries and 6 Australian states, it maps how parliamentary and semi-parliamentary systems balance competing visions of democracy; it analyzes patterns of electoral and party systems, cabinet formation, legislative coalition-building, and constitutional reforms; it systematically compares the semi-parliamentary and presidential separation of powers; and it develops new and innovative semi-parliamentary designs, some of which do not require two separate chambers.
... However, since a minority veto biases the political process, it was abolished as soon as the political right felt as constrained by it as the left. I discuss this abolishment further in Chapter 7 (see also Eppner and Ganghof 2017). ...
... Due to constitutional reforms during the period under consideration, the second chambers of Victoria and Western Australia enter our analysis as three and two observations, respectively. We also include Finland, which used a unicameral veto of a one-third minority as an alternative to bicameralism until 1987 (Eppner and Ganghof 2017). Including this veto is preferable to excluding Finland or treating it as a case without any institutional veto point (Volden and Carrubba 2004). ...
... The literature on parliamentary government highlights the design of noconfidence, investiture, and dissolution procedures (e.g. Bergman 1993;Cheibub et al. 2021;Goplerud and Schleiter 2016;Sieberer 2015) but has tended to neglect these procedures in theorizing the effects of second chambers on cabinet formation (but see Diermeier et al. 2007;Eppner and Ganghof 2017). Restrictiveness I captures them. ...
... However, since a minority veto biases the political process, it was abolished as soon as the political right felt as constrained by it as the left. I discuss this abolishment further in Chapter 7 (see also Eppner and Ganghof 2017). ...
... Due to constitutional reforms during the period under consideration, the second chambers of Victoria and Western Australia enter our analysis as three and two observations, respectively. We also include Finland, which used a unicameral veto of a one-third minority as an alternative to bicameralism until 1987 (Eppner and Ganghof 2017). Including this veto is preferable to excluding Finland or treating it as a case without any institutional veto point (Volden and Carrubba 2004). ...
... The literature on parliamentary government highlights the design of noconfidence, investiture, and dissolution procedures (e.g. Bergman 1993;Cheibub et al. 2021;Goplerud and Schleiter 2016;Sieberer 2015) but has tended to neglect these procedures in theorizing the effects of second chambers on cabinet formation (but see Diermeier et al. 2007;Eppner and Ganghof 2017). Restrictiveness I captures them. ...
This chapter explains the normative approach of the book and clarifies the distinction between instrumentalist and proceduralist evaluations of political institutions. It defends a minimalist form of proceduralism, which highlights the comparative evaluation of institutional schemes, as well as potential conflicts between horizontal and vertical equality. Based on these conceptual clarifications, the chapter rejects the idea that presidentialism is inherently more democratic in virtue of the direct election of the chief executive. It also rejects the notion that pure parliamentarism is inherently more egalitarian than semi-parliamentarism in virtue of giving all assembly members equal formal power over the cabinet.
... However, since a minority veto biases the political process, it was abolished as soon as the political right felt as constrained by it as the left. I discuss this abolishment further in Chapter 7 (see also Eppner and Ganghof 2017). ...
... Due to constitutional reforms during the period under consideration, the second chambers of Victoria and Western Australia enter our analysis as three and two observations, respectively. We also include Finland, which used a unicameral veto of a one-third minority as an alternative to bicameralism until 1987 (Eppner and Ganghof 2017). Including this veto is preferable to excluding Finland or treating it as a case without any institutional veto point (Volden and Carrubba 2004). ...
... The literature on parliamentary government highlights the design of noconfidence, investiture, and dissolution procedures (e.g. Bergman 1993;Cheibub et al. 2021;Goplerud and Schleiter 2016;Sieberer 2015) but has tended to neglect these procedures in theorizing the effects of second chambers on cabinet formation (but see Diermeier et al. 2007;Eppner and Ganghof 2017). Restrictiveness I captures them. ...
The chapter defends the need for the concept of semi-parliamentary government, provides operational and ideal-typical definitions, compares empirical cases and explains how this constitutional structure can balance visions of democratic majority formation. While the book focuses on the visions associated with different electoral systems, semi-parliamentary government can also balance competing visions of majority formation at more fundamental levels: partisan and individual visions, electoral and sortitionist visions, democratic and epistocratic visions. Finally, the chapter shows that semi-parliamentarism does not require full-fledged bicameralism.
... However, since a minority veto biases the political process, it was abolished as soon as the political right felt as constrained by it as the left. I discuss this abolishment further in Chapter 7 (see also Eppner and Ganghof 2017). ...
... Due to constitutional reforms during the period under consideration, the second chambers of Victoria and Western Australia enter our analysis as three and two observations, respectively. We also include Finland, which used a unicameral veto of a one-third minority as an alternative to bicameralism until 1987 (Eppner and Ganghof 2017). Including this veto is preferable to excluding Finland or treating it as a case without any institutional veto point (Volden and Carrubba 2004). ...
... The literature on parliamentary government highlights the design of noconfidence, investiture, and dissolution procedures (e.g. Bergman 1993;Cheibub et al. 2021;Goplerud and Schleiter 2016;Sieberer 2015) but has tended to neglect these procedures in theorizing the effects of second chambers on cabinet formation (but see Diermeier et al. 2007;Eppner and Ganghof 2017). Restrictiveness I captures them. ...
... However, since a minority veto biases the political process, it was abolished as soon as the political right felt as constrained by it as the left. I discuss this abolishment further in Chapter 7 (see also Eppner and Ganghof 2017). ...
... Due to constitutional reforms during the period under consideration, the second chambers of Victoria and Western Australia enter our analysis as three and two observations, respectively. We also include Finland, which used a unicameral veto of a one-third minority as an alternative to bicameralism until 1987 (Eppner and Ganghof 2017). Including this veto is preferable to excluding Finland or treating it as a case without any institutional veto point (Volden and Carrubba 2004). ...
... The literature on parliamentary government highlights the design of noconfidence, investiture, and dissolution procedures (e.g. Bergman 1993;Cheibub et al. 2021;Goplerud and Schleiter 2016;Sieberer 2015) but has tended to neglect these procedures in theorizing the effects of second chambers on cabinet formation (but see Diermeier et al. 2007;Eppner and Ganghof 2017). Restrictiveness I captures them. ...
This book argues that, in a democracy, a constitutional separation of powers between the executive and the assembly may be a good thing, but the constitutional concentration of executive power in a single human being—what I call executive personalism—is not.
This thesis may seem plausible, perhaps too plausible to be interesting. Yet, almost the entire democratic world is dominated by only three types of constitutions, all of which fail to disentangle the separation of powers from executive personalism: “Parliamentary” constitutions reject both, their “presidential” and “semi-presidential” counterparts embrace both. And even though these three types of constitutions are fairly old—the youngest was invented in 1919—there has been surprisingly little academic thinking about strategies to decouple the separation of powers from executive personalism. I argue that this decoupling is desirable and explore one widely neglected strategy, which I call, for want of a better term, semi-parliamentary government.
... It thus lacks the power and legitimacy to change the overall character of democracy, even when its electoral system differs substantially from that of the lower house. On the other hand, if a directly elected upper house can also dismiss the cabinet in a no-confidence vote, it is likely to become too powerful (see Eppner and Ganghof 2017). If the composition between the two chambersthe two principals of the cabinetdiffers substantially, parliamentarism and bicameralism get into conflict, so that the institutional configuration is unlikely to be stable in the long-run. ...
... = single-party with majority in lower house only .66 = multi-party with majority in all directly elected houses .50 = multi-party with majority in lower house only Döring and Manow (2016) for lower houses, Eppner and Ganghof (2017) for upper houses. Own data collection for Australian substates. ...
... Benoit/Laver (2006) and own data collection for the Australian substates (Ganghof, Pörschke and Eppner 2016) Flexibility Duration-weighted average of cabinet types, based on the following ranking: 0 = majority cabinet .5 = formal minority cabinet 1 = substantial minority cabinet Values reflect the house with greater overall flexibility in the period under consideration. Strøm (1990) and Döring and Manow (2016) for lower houses, Eppner and Ganghof (2017) for upper houses, own data collection based on case-specific sources. ...
The article analyses the type of bicameralism we find in Australia as a distinct executive-legislative system – a hybrid between parliamentary and presidential government – which we call ‘semi-parliamentary government’. We argue that this hybrid presents an important and underappreciated alternative to pure parliamentary government as well as presidential forms of the power-separation, and that it can achieve a certain balance between competing models or visions of democracy. We specify theoretically how the semi-parliamentary separation of powers contributes to the balancing of democratic visions and propose a conceptual framework for comparing democratic visions. We use this framework to locate the Australian Commonwealth, all Australian states and 22 advanced democratic nation-states on a two-dimensional empirical map of democratic patterns for the period from 1995 to 2015.
... It thus lacks the power and legitimacy to change the overall character of democracy, even when its electoral system differs substantially from that of the lower house. On the other hand, if a directly elected upper house can also dismiss the cabinet in a no-confidence vote, it is likely to become too powerful (see Eppner and Ganghof 2017). If the composition between the two chambersthe two principals of the cabinetdiffers substantially, parliamentarism and bicameralism get into conflict, so that the institutional configuration is unlikely to be stable in the long-run. ...
... = single-party with majority in lower house only .66 = multi-party with majority in all directly elected houses .50 = multi-party with majority in lower house only Döring and Manow (2016) for lower houses, Eppner and Ganghof (2017) for upper houses. Own data collection for Australian substates. ...
... Benoit/Laver (2006) and own data collection for the Australian substates (Ganghof, Pörschke and Eppner 2016) Flexibility Duration-weighted average of cabinet types, based on the following ranking: 0 = majority cabinet .5 = formal minority cabinet 1 = substantial minority cabinet Values reflect the house with greater overall flexibility in the period under consideration. Strøm (1990) and Döring and Manow (2016) for lower houses, Eppner and Ganghof (2017) for upper houses, own data collection based on case-specific sources. ...
... = single-party with majority in lower house only .66 = multi-party with majority in all directly elected houses .50 = multi-party with majority in lower house only .33 = single-party minority 0 = multi-party minority Döring and Manow (2016) for lower houses, Eppner and Ganghof (2017) for upper houses. Own data collection for New South Wales. ...
... Dimensionality Effective number of dimensions (END), based on the results of principal component analyses that use items of Benoit and Laver's (2006) Duration-weighted average of cabinet types, based on the following ranking: 0 = majority cabinet .5 = formal minority cabinet 1 = substantial minority cabinet Values reflect the house with greater overall flexibility in the period under consideration. Döring and Manow (2016) for lower houses, Eppner and Ganghof (2017) for upper houses, own data collection based on case-specific sources. ...
Semi-parliamentary government is a distinct executive-legislative system, which mirrors semi-presidentialism. It exists when the legislature is divided into two equally legitimate parts, only one of which can dismiss the prime minister in a no-confidence vote. This system has distinct advantages over pure parliamentary and presidential systems: It establishes a branch-based separation of powers and can balance the “majoritarian” and “proportional” visions of democracy without concentrating executive power in a single individual. The article analyzes bicameral versions of semi-parliamentary government in Australia and Japan and compares empirical patterns of democracy in the Australian Commonwealth as well as New South Wales to 20 advanced parliamentary and semi-presidential systems. It discusses new semi-parliamentary designs, some of which do not require formal bicameralism, and pays special attention to semi-parliamentary options for democratizing the European Union.
... More recently, most studies include both office-and policy-seeking propositions in their models of coalition formation (Druckman et al., 2005;Eppner e Ganghof, 2017;Freudenreich, 2016;Giannetti e Pinto, 2018). The background is that potential cabinets marked by high ideological division are far less likely to form the actual government than cabinets ideologically homogeneous. ...
This dissertation assesses which conditions enable the transition of pre-electoral coalitions into coalition governments in Latin American presidential regimes through a multimethod research design. Even though most literature praises the fact that pre-electoral coalitions exert a non-negligible impact on government formation in presidentialism, I present a nuance to this relationship by arguing that pre-electoral coalitions are not automatically transformed into coalition cabinets in presidentialism. This is so because of the nature of presidential institutions, which grants presidents the opportunity to revise the pre-electoral agreement once they hold office at the same time that diminishes the extent to which pre-electoral coalition members can punish them. Against this backdrop, the first empirical paper puts forward and tests the claim that pre-electoral pacts should be more binding to the extent that legislative polarisation is more pervasive in the party system. The reason is that an increased ideological dividedness at the party system level reduces presidents’ margins to build coalition cabinets not based on the pre-electoral pact, as complexity bargaining hampers the presidential ability to assemble parties with conflicting policy preferences in the same cabinet. In addition, based on a configurational rationale, the second empirical paper investigates what makes pre-electoral coalitions serve as the foundations of post-electoral coalition cabinets, given that pre-electoral commitments can be enlarged, maintained or shrunk until the government’s inauguration day. The results highlight the importance of five conditions, albeit with more prominence for the pre-electoral coalition majority status, the low polarisation between pre-electoral coalition members and the high legislative polarisation. Taken together, the findings of this dissertation enlarge our knowledge of the relationship between pre-electoral coalitions and government formation in presidentialism by showing its entanglement with legislative polarisation.
... The systematic analysis of veto players in the two countries helps identify key positions that programmatic groups need to cover-or will aim to cover-to ensure minimal resistance to the implementation of their policy program. This mechanism is similar to that proposed by the veto control hypothesis in analyses of cabinet formation (Eppner & Ganghof, 2017). Thus, the PAF actually draws on and incorporates institutional factors that help or hinder the formation and success of "new alliances" (Hacker, 2004, p. 718). ...
A comparison of French and German health policy between 1990 and 2020 reveals the institutions under which programmatic action occurs. Expert interviews allow for an in-depth analysis of which institutions and processes are necessary for programmatic action to take place. In presenting the results of these expert interviews, this chapter shows how different systems of elite recruitment and policy advice are relevant to programmatic action by at the same time stressing that decentralized and corporatist structures are less directly related to programmatic action.
... The systematic analysis of veto players in the two countries helps identify key positions that programmatic groups need to cover-or will aim to cover-to ensure minimal resistance to the implementation of their policy program. This mechanism is similar to that proposed by the veto control hypothesis in analyses of cabinet formation (Eppner & Ganghof, 2017). Thus, the PAF actually draws on and incorporates institutional factors that help or hinder the formation and success of "new alliances" (Hacker, 2004, p. 718). ...
The Programmatic Action Framework (PAF) is a theoretical lens on policy processes developed at the intersection of policy process research, public administration, elite sociology, and social psychology. This chapter is particularly devoted to outlining the foundations of the PAF and putting them in context with other existing theories of the policy process. There are two main bases of PAF assumptions: Firstly, the role of bureaucracy in areas close to the state in formulating policy and the related desire for increased authority gained through advancement in individual careers. Secondly, social psychological perspectives on social identities of groups formed on the basis of shared characteristics are adopted by the PAF to outline the role of shared biographies and resulting policy programs, which are identity-forming, in policy processes and policy change. The particular focus of this study is on the institutional conditions under which such actors form programmatic groups and use their policy programs to shape the policy process over time.
... The systematic analysis of veto players in the two countries helps identify key positions that programmatic groups need to cover-or will aim to cover-to ensure minimal resistance to the implementation of their policy program. This mechanism is similar to that proposed by the veto control hypothesis in analyses of cabinet formation (Eppner & Ganghof, 2017). Thus, the PAF actually draws on and incorporates institutional factors that help or hinder the formation and success of "new alliances" (Hacker, 2004, p. 718). ...
In order to shed light on this missing link between programmatic action and political institutions, this chapter reviews how institutions are currently discussed in policy process research in order to derive hypotheses that may explain under which institutional conditions programmatic action should or should not take place. The goal of this overview of the state of the art is twofold. On the one hand, it serves to assess the contribution of the PAF to existing theories of the policy process and the understanding of institutions in it. In doing so, it becomes clear why a new theoretical lens is needed and where and why the PAF is able to fill gaps left by others. On the other hand, the established approaches to explaining policy change and stability with respect to policy processes contain assumptions and hypotheses about the role of institutions that can be integrated into the PAF and help sharpen the analytical power of a look at the institutional conditions for programmatic action. They do this by formulating mechanisms between theoretical concepts that can also be adapted, or at least assumed to be relevant, to the formation of programmatic groups and the success of the group and its program. At the very least, they lay the groundwork for the question that asks about the influence of institutional settings familiar in comparative politics on policy change.
... The systematic analysis of veto players in the two countries helps identify key positions that programmatic groups need to cover-or will aim to cover-to ensure minimal resistance to the implementation of their policy program. This mechanism is similar to that proposed by the veto control hypothesis in analyses of cabinet formation (Eppner & Ganghof, 2017). Thus, the PAF actually draws on and incorporates institutional factors that help or hinder the formation and success of "new alliances" (Hacker, 2004, p. 718). ...
Which institutions are necessary for programmatic action to take place? This chapter summarizes the “institutions of programmatic action”, which are the institutionalization of bureaucratic recruitment systems and scientific impulses through policy advice, and argues that the political institutions of federalism and corporatism are not directly related to the occurrence of programmatic action. At the same time, institutional changes may present both a challenge and an opportunity for programmatic groups.
... The systematic analysis of veto players in the two countries helps identify key positions that programmatic groups need to cover-or will aim to cover-to ensure minimal resistance to the implementation of their policy program. This mechanism is similar to that proposed by the veto control hypothesis in analyses of cabinet formation (Eppner & Ganghof, 2017). Thus, the PAF actually draws on and incorporates institutional factors that help or hinder the formation and success of "new alliances" (Hacker, 2004, p. 718). ...
Taking a look at the history of health policy in Germany from 1990 to 2020, this chapter outlines the existence of programmatic action and identifies the programmatic actors relevant to the changes in health policy. The empirical study is based on a discourse network analysis, an in-depth analysis of the biographical trajectories of individuals, as well as a systematic connection of the programmatic content to the individual programmatic actors. Thereby, this chapter provides an explanation for 20 years of health policy developments in Germany. However, it also notes that programmatic action in German health policy has ended in the 2010s, and it provides explanations for why this is the case.
... The systematic analysis of veto players in the two countries helps identify key positions that programmatic groups need to cover-or will aim to cover-to ensure minimal resistance to the implementation of their policy program. This mechanism is similar to that proposed by the veto control hypothesis in analyses of cabinet formation (Eppner & Ganghof, 2017). Thus, the PAF actually draws on and incorporates institutional factors that help or hinder the formation and success of "new alliances" (Hacker, 2004, p. 718). ...
The political systems of France and Germany and their respective organization of health care present important preconditions for the potential formation and success of programmatic groups and for the success of policy programs. This chapter reviews the health policy institutions in France and Germany in order to identify the positions in which programmatic actors can be found, which positions help them to implement their policy program, and which positions should be occupied for programmatic actors to achieve their goal of increased authority.
... The systematic analysis of veto players in the two countries helps identify key positions that programmatic groups need to cover-or will aim to cover-to ensure minimal resistance to the implementation of their policy program. This mechanism is similar to that proposed by the veto control hypothesis in analyses of cabinet formation (Eppner & Ganghof, 2017). Thus, the PAF actually draws on and incorporates institutional factors that help or hinder the formation and success of "new alliances" (Hacker, 2004, p. 718). ...
... The systematic analysis of veto players in the two countries helps identify key positions that programmatic groups need to cover-or will aim to cover-to ensure minimal resistance to the implementation of their policy program. This mechanism is similar to that proposed by the veto control hypothesis in analyses of cabinet formation (Eppner & Ganghof, 2017). Thus, the PAF actually draws on and incorporates institutional factors that help or hinder the formation and success of "new alliances" (Hacker, 2004, p. 718). ...
Taking a look at the history of health policy in France from 1990 to 2020, this chapter outlines the existence of programmatic action and identifies the programmatic actors relevant to the changes in health policy. The empirical study is based on a discourse network analysis, an in-depth analysis of the biographical trajectories of individuals, as well as a systematic connection of the programmatic content to the individual programmatic actors. Thereby, this chapter provides an explanation for 30 years of health policy developments in France.
... In particular, Lijphart (1984Lijphart ( , 1987Lijphart ( , 1999 conjectured that cabinet builders tend to form oversized coalitions in order to control strong second chambers (see also Sjölin, 1993). More recently, it has been found that those government coalitions holding a majority of seats in each chamber are more likely to form (Druckman et al., 2005;Eppner and Ganghof, 2017) and have a substantially longer life (Druckman and Thies, 2002) in comparison to those that do not control the upper chamber. As previously noted, however, this literature has primarily focused on the institutional prerogatives of the two chambersthat is, on the degree of symmetry in the powers of the two houses. ...
The effects of bicameral legislatures on government formation have attracted scholarly attention since Lijphart’s (1984) seminal contribution. Previous research found support for the ‘veto control hypothesis,’ showing that bicameralism affects coalition governments’ composition and duration. However, the effects of bicameralism on the duration of the bargaining process over government formation have yet to be explored. Our work contributes to this area of research by focusing on the impact of bicameralism on bargaining delays. We show that the duration of the bargaining process over government formation decreases at increasing levels of partisan incongruence of the two chambers, especially in those legislative assemblies in which the upper chamber plays a relevant role in the policy-making process. Such empirical evidence is in contrast with the conventional expectation according to which bicameralism should delay the government formation process, as it introduces an additional element of complexity in the bargaining environment. We test our hypothesis by using a novel data set about the partisan composition ofupper and lower chambers in 12 Western and Eastern European democracies over the postwar period.
Keywords:
... In kompensatorischen Wahlsystemen entspricht sie dann der Größe des kompensatorischen Wahlkreises, wenn dessen Größe 1/(2 * M + 1) überschreitet (mit M = Größe der nicht-kompensatorischen Wahlkreise, siehe auch Best und Zhirnov 2015). Etwaige legislative Hürden werden nach Taagepera und Shugarts Formel in die entsprechende Wahlkreisgröße überführt, also: M = (50/T), wobei M die Wahlkreisgröße und T die Legislative Hürde in Prozent darstellt (Taagepera und Shugart 1989 Datenquellen: Strøm (1990) sowie Döring und Manow (2016) für Unterhäuser, Eppner und Ganghof (2017) für Oberhäuser; ergänzt durch eigene Datensammlung. ...
Zusammenfassung
Die Fragmentierung europäischer Parteiensysteme und damit verbundene Schwierigkeiten bei der Koalitionsbildung haben zu einer Neuauflage altbekannter Debatten über unterschiedliche Wahlsysteme geführt. Einige Autoren sehen dabei bestimmte Wahlsysteme als optimalen Kompromiss zwischen den Prinzipien der Mehrheits- und der Verhältniswahl an. Wir argumentieren, dass diese Optimalitätsargumente eine konzeptionelle Schlagseite zugunsten „majoritärer“ Demokratiekonzeptionen haben. Eine anspruchsvolle „proportionale“ Demokratiekonzeption umfasst die Ziele mechanischer Proportionalität, multidimensionaler Repräsentation und wechselnder Gesetzgebungsmehrheiten. Diese Ziele lassen sich allerdings im parlamentarischen Regierungssystem nicht mit den Zielen der Mehrheitswahl vereinbaren. Der Grund ist, dass die relevanten Hürden des Wahlsystems gleichzeitig für die parlamentarische Repräsentation und die Teilnahme am Misstrauensvotum gelten. Erstere ist entscheidend für die proportionale, letztere für die majoritäre Konzeption der Demokratie. Sind wir bereit diese beiden Hürden zu entkoppeln – und somit das Regierungssystem zu verändern – ergibt sich eine Vielfalt neuer Reformoptionen. Wir illustrieren diese Punkte mit Daten für 29 demokratische Systeme im Zeitraum von 1995 bis 2015.
... Druckman et al. 2005;Eppner & Ganghof 2017). Governing coalitions in control of institutional veto players like the Senate are more likely to form, as well as to endure. ...
In 2017, the Australian Greens celebrated its 25th anniversary as a national political organisation. Nine Greens senators and a single Greens member of the House of Representatives now sit within the federal parliament. But what impact does the party have on Australian politics? This thesis investigates the impact of the Greens in Australian politics by assessing the party’s influence over the party system. The dominant perspective in the literature characterises the Australian party system as a relatively stable two- or two-and-a-half-party system. As such, either the common characterisations of the party system are inaccurate, or the Greens possess little capacity to shape the competitive environment in which they operate. Employing novel techniques and approaches rarely used in Australian political science, this thesis investigates party competition, ideological polarisation, electoral volatility, government formation, voting behaviour, and the contest for legislative outcomes. The evidence reveals general change in what is a multidimensional Australian party system. Two-partism is giving way to a contingent multipartism; while the contest for government remains marked by two-partism, multiparty dynamics are consolidating in the electoral arena and the Senate. In this process of change, however, the Greens are a party of meaningful but nonetheless minimal impact, more constrained and shaped by their competitive environment than they are capable of bringing about its transformation. This thesis therefore furthers our understanding of the Australian party system, party competition, minor parties and, especially, the role and development of the Australian Greens.
... Existing studies test predictions of the theory on policy change, predominantly relying on macroeconomic outcome data, such as budget allocations, budget deficits, inflation rates, spending and taxation (for an overview, see Hallerberg 2011). Among many other applications of veto player theory, scholars study the effect of veto players on cabinet stability and duration (Saalfeld 2011), cabinet formation (Tsebelis & Ha 2014;Eppner & Ganghof 2017), discretion of central banks (Bernhard 1998;Keefer & Stasavage 2003), economic growth (MacIntyre 2001), referendums (Hug & Tsebelis 2002), voter turnout (Carlin & Love 2013), bureaucratic corruption (Bagashka 2014), as well as human rights (Lupu 2015). ...
Veto player theory generates predictions about governments’ capacity for policy change. Due to the difficulty of identifying significant laws needed to change the policy status quo, evidence about governments’ ability to change policy has been mostly provided for a limited number of reforms and single-country studies. To evaluate the predictive power of veto player theory for policy making across time, policy areas and countries, a dataset was gathered that incorporates about 5,600 important government reform measures in the areas of social, labour, economic and taxation policy undertaken in 13 Western European countries from the mid-1980s until the mid-2000s. Veto player theory is applied in a combined model with other central theoretical expectations on policy change derived from political economy (crisis-driven policy change) and partisan theory (ideology-driven policy change). Robust support is found that governments introduce more reform measures when economic conditions are poor and when the government is positioned further away from the policy status quo. No empirical support is found for predictions of veto player theory in its pure form, where no differentiation between government types is made. However, the findings provide support for the veto player theory in the special case of minimal winning cabinets, where the support of all government parties is sufficient (in contrast to minority cabinets) and necessary (in contrast to oversized cabinets) for policy change. In particular, it is found that in minimal winning cabinets the ideological distance between the extreme government parties significantly decreases the government's ability to introduce reforms. These findings improve our understanding of reform making in parliamentary democracies and highlight important issues and open questions for future applications and tests of the veto player theory.
Resumo O bicameralismo pressupõe dois locus de atuação no Poder Legislativo: uma câmara baixa e uma câmara alta. No entanto, a câmara alta é frequentemente negligenciada literatura. A revisão sistemática da literatura demonstra que nos poucos estudos existentes há apenas menção à atuação reativa da câmara alta ou ao perfil de seus membros, esquecendo-se que senadores também são propositores de leis. Com base nisso, este artigo procura responder se deputados propõem e apro-vam, proporcionalmente, um número maior de leis ordinárias do que senadores. A análise da produção e aprovação legis-lativa da Câmara dos Deputados e do Senado Federal entre 1991 e 2018 demonstra o inverso: os senadores apresentaram e aprovaram, proporcionalmente, um número maior de projetos de leis em relação aos deputados, o que indica a inade-quação de se considerar o Senado como uma simples "casa revisora". Dessa forma, a contribuição deste trabalho consiste em (re)colocar o Senado Federal no centro das atenções do estudo das relações entre Executivo e Legislativo no Brasil.
Palavras-chave: : Bicameralismo, Senado Federal, Produção Legislativa.
The article is devoted to analyzing the nature and attributes of party government and party governance in European representative democracies, in particular at the background of the relationship between the state, parties and civil society. As a result, attributes have been identified that indicate the expediency of forming party governments for representative democracies, but also some defective manifestations of party government and alternatives to party government have been outlined. On this basis, it is stated that party governments are the “standard” of representative democracies among European countries, although they are or may be characterized by both immanent and congenital defects and distortions associated with the phenomenon of party patronage, the difference between political and bureaucratic components of governance, “decline” or “crisis” of the concept and phenomena of party in Europe, etc. In other words, it is specified that visually, constructively and by the nature of parliamentary support, party governments have been and remain predominant ones in European representative democracies, but they have more and more obvious alternatives, including in the format of non-party and semi-party governments.
Resumo Os estudos sobre a repartição das pastas ministeriais no contexto do presidencialismo de coalizão têm crescido enormemente nos últimos vinte anos. No entanto, um elemento comum à quase totalidade desses estudos é a realização do cálculo da proporcionalidade entre cadeiras e ministérios somente em função da câmara baixa. Embora isso possa fazer sentido para países unicamerais, essa premissa não tem fundamentação teórica para os bicamerais. Assim, o principal objetivo desta pesquisa é inserir as câmaras altas na discussão sobre como são construídos os gabinetes presidenciais. Com base em 91 gabinetes de cinco países sul-americanos nos últimos 30 anos, os principais achados deste trabalho apontam para o fato que os presidentes também se importam com o equilíbrio induzido pelas câmaras altas. Mais ainda, mostramos que a força do Legislativo e a hierarquização do Executivo referente à própria construção do gabinete também influenciam a proporcionalidade dos gabinetes presidenciais.
Welche Kommunikationsstrategien benutzen Koalitionsparteien während ihrer Zeit im Amt? Koalitionsparteien stehen vor einem Dilemma, dass sie zwar nach aussen Einheit demonstrieren sollen, sich aber gleichzeitig von ihren Partnern differenzieren müssen. Ich argumentiere, dass politische Kommunikation eine wichtige Rolle dabei spielt, wie Parteien versuchen, ihr individuelles Profil zu erhalten. Dazu habe ich drei Hauptstrategien definiert, die Parteien benutzen können. Basierend auf einem Datensatz von über 35'000 deutschen und niederländischen Pressemitteilungen von Koalitionsparteien analysiere ich, was Parteien in ihrer Strategiewahl beeinflusst. Meine Resultate zeigen, dass Personalisierung, definiert als ein verstärkter Fokus auf Individuen, davon beeinflusst wird, wie stark sich Koalitionsparteien ideologisch unterscheiden. Ich benutze einen supervised classification algorithm, um die deutschen Pressemitteilungen in verschiedene thematische Kategorien zu klassifizieren. Ich nutze diese Klassifizierung um zu analysieren, ob Parteien während dem Wahlkampf einen besonderen Fokus auf die Themen legen, die ihnen wichtig sind. Dies ist nicht der Fall, und meine Analysen zeigen, dass Parteien kurz vor einer Wahl sogar einen geringeren Schwerpunkt auf diese Themen legen, ungeachtet ideologischer Differenzen zwischen ihnen und ihren Koalitionspartnern. Schließlich analysiere ich die Präsenz von negativem Campaigning in deutschen Pressemitteilungen und in einer Auswahl von Episoden einer politischen Talkshow. Im Falle der Pressemitteilungen stelle ich fest, dass die Parteien mit zunehmender Wahrscheinlichkeit "feindlich gesinnte" Politiker erwähnen, je näher die Wahl rückt, und dass diese Erwähnungen mit einem generell negativerem sentiment der betreffenden Pressemitteilungen korrelieren.
Research on government formation in parliamentary democracies has presented contradicting evidence on the role of political veto institutions and parliamentary polarization on the formation of cabinet types. Institutional rules may either provide significant leeway for political parties or seriously constrain them when forming sustainable coalitions. In contrast to previous studies we argue that the effect of political institutions is conditional on the degree of polarization in parliament. We test our hypotheses using original data on 842 cabinet formations in 33 advanced democracies between 1945–2018. In line with previous research, we find that the institutional rules have a pronounced effect on the type of cabinet formed, but that institutional rules moderate the effect of party system polarization. Thus, our findings provide important new insights on cabinet formation which are particularly relevant for today's increasingly polarized parliaments. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved
Die Fragmentierung europäischer Parteiensysteme und damit verbundene Schwierigkeiten bei der Koalitionsbildung haben zu einer Neuauflage altbekannter Debatten über unterschiedliche Wahlsysteme geführt. Einige Autoren sehen dabei bestimmte Wahlsysteme als optimalen Kompromiss zwischen den Prinzipien der Mehrheits- und der Verhältniswahl an. Wir argumentieren, dass diese Optimalitätsargumente eine konzeptionelle Schlagseite zugunsten „majoritärer“ Demokratiekonzeptionen haben. Eine anspruchsvolle „proportionale“ Demokratiekonzeptionumfasst die Ziele mechanischer Proportionalität, multidimensionaler Repräsentation und wechselnderGesetzgebungsmehrheiten. Diese Ziele lassen sich allerdings im parlamentarischen Regierungssystem nicht mit den Zielen der Mehrheitswahl vereinbaren. Der Grund ist, dass die relevanten Hürden des Wahlsystems gleichzeitig für die parlamentarische Repräsentation und die Teilnahme am Misstrauensvotum gelten. Erstere ist entscheidend für die proportionale, letztere für die majoritäre Konzeption der Demokratie. Sind wir bereit diese beiden Hürden zu entkoppeln – und somit das Regierungssystem zu verändern – ergibt sich eine Vielfalt neuer Reformoptionen. Wir illustrieren diese Punkte mit Daten für 29 demokratischeSysteme im Zeitraum von 1995 bis 2015. (In Kürze erscheinend in der Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft)
In parliamentary systems, political parties must often bargain with each other in order to form a government. Do parliamentary rules regulating government formation impact the type of government that is formed? Existing scholarship suggests that the need for an investiture vote—a requirement that a new government must face a parliamentary vote at some point during its formation—reduces the likelihood of a minority government. This article suggests that while real-world investiture rules can vary across several dimensions, only the investiture decision rule—which specifies the size of the majority required for a decision to be made—impacts the propensity for parties to form minority governments. Using new data on investiture rules for 26 European countries since 1946 or the first year of democracy, we find that parliamentary democracies that have an investiture requirement are not less likely to experience minority governments than those where governments come to power without an investiture vote. However, when an absolute majority is required for a government to succeed at the investiture stage, minority governments are considerably less likely to form; absolute majority investiture rules reduce the frequency of minority governments.
Was Sie in diesem Springer "essential" finden können:
* eine Unterscheidung dreier grundlegender Typen von Forschungsdesigns in der Politikwissenschaft
* die Illustration der drei Typen anhand 14 qualitativer und quantitativer politikwissenschaftlicher Beispielstudien
* die Hervorhebung der Rolle von (formalen) Modellen für die politikwissenschaftliche Theoriebildung
* eine Diskussion der Bedeutung von politikwissenschaftlichen Theorien und ihrem Verhältnis zueinander für die Wahl eines angemessenen Forschungsdesigns
* Empfehlungen für die Kombination der drei grundlegenden Forschungsdesigns
* https://www.springer.com/de/book/9783658242596
Das Kabinett Merkel III (2013–2017) war als Große Koalition durch ein hohes zwischenparteiliches Konfliktpotential und starken parteiinternen Legitimationsbedarf gekennzeichnet. Dies ist zum einen auf die sachpolitischen Gegensätze der drei Koalitionsparteien, zum anderen auf deren rivalisierenden Führungsanspruch zurückzuführen. Zusätzlich wurde das Konfliktmanagement durch den dramatischen Anstieg der Zahl Geflüchteter ab September 2015 vor besondere Herausforderungen gestellt. Auf der Grundlage eines Delegationsmodells und einer theoretischen Unterscheidung formaler und informeller Institutionen des Konfliktmanagements lässt sich zeigen, dass der bisher längste Koalitionsvertrag in der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik in zwischenparteilich weniger kontroversen Politikbereichen umfangreicher war als in anderen. Im Einklang mit Befunden der vergleichenden Forschung scheint die Implementation des Koalitionsvertrags in kontroverseren Bereichen an die zuständigen Ressortminister oder (in besonders umstrittenen oder sensiblen Bereichen) relativ kleine Steuerungsgremien der Partei- und gegebenenfalls Fraktionsvorsitzenden delegiert worden zu sein. Formale Institutionen waren im Konfliktmanagement wichtiger als in der Literatur oft anerkannt wird: So wurde die wechselseitige Information und Abstimmung durch die Allokation sachpolitisch „benachbarter“ Ressorts an unterschiedliche Koalitionspartner begünstigt. In einigen Fällen nutzten die Regierungsfraktionen das formale Kontrollinstrumentarium des Gesetzgebungsprozesses im Bundestag zur Kontrolle der legislativen Aktivitäten des jeweiligen Koalitionspartners. Im Verlauf der „Flüchtlingskrise“ vermieden die Fraktionsführungen zwar bei Abstimmungen größere Abweichungen innerhalb der Fraktionen, doch die öffentliche Austragung interner Gegensätze zwischen CDU und CSU war nicht mehr einzudämmen. Im Management derart schwerer Konflikte spielten erneut informelle Abstimmungen im kleinsten Kreise eine besondere Bedeutung.
The article responds to four commentaries on the concept of semi-parliamentary government and its application to Australian bicameralism. It highlights four main points: (1) Our preferred typology is not more ‘normative’ than existing approaches, but applies the criterion of ‘direct election’ equally to executive and legislature; (2) While the evolution of semi-parliamentary government had contingent elements, it plausibly also reflects the ‘equilibrium’ nature of certain institutional configurations; (3) The idea that a pure parliamentary system with pure proportional representation has absolute normative priority over ‘instrumentalist’ concerns about cabinet stability, identifiability and responsibility is questionable; and (4) The reforms we discuss may be unlikely to occur in Australia, but deserve consideration by scholars and institutional reformers in other democratic systems.
Arend Lijphart uses an average of five standardized variables – the executive-parties dimension (EPD) – to describe patterns of democracy and explain differences in democracies' performance. The article suggests ways to improve the descriptive part of the project. It argues that the EPD maps different approaches to achieving accountability and representation, rather than differences in consensus. This re-conceptualization leads to more coherent and valid measurement. It is also argued that more systematic adjustments are needed for differences in constitutional structures (presidentialism and bicameralism). The article presents data on a revised EPD and its components for 36 democracies in the period from 1981 to 2010. As to the explanatory part of the project, we contend that the EPD often hinders adequate causal analysis rather than facilitating it. We show this by re-analyzing democracies' performance with respect to turnout and capital punishment.
The paper explores the conditions under which institutional veto players can be influential in parliamentary and semi-presidential systems without being subject to significant reform pressures themselves. We argue that institutions with equal formal veto power differ systematically in their " restrictiveness " , i.e., in the extent to which they constrain the processes of legislation and cabinet formation. Based on a sample of 21 advanced democracies between 1955 and 2015, we argue that a newly created index of the restrictiveness can help us to explain patterns of cabinet formation as well as constitutional reform. Based on conditional logit analyses, we show that potential coalitions that control restrictive veto institutions are more likely to form, everything else being equal, whereas the same is not true for permissive veto institutions. We also show that restrictive veto institutions are more likely to be weakened or abolished, if their restrictiveness is not neutralized through consistently high levels of compositional congruence.
In parliamentary systems, parties compete for votes and offices in the electoral arena, but in many, systems they also cooperate in the legislative arena. This article examines the question of how the government status of parties affects their legislative behaviour. We develop a simple spatial model that includes parties' positional goals (vote, office, etc.) to formalize the notion of accommodating legislative behaviour. The model implies that government parties are most accommodating while opposition parties are least accommodating. The hypothesis is evaluated by comparing two pairs of similar political systems: Danish and Finnish coalition governments, as well as German and Australian bicameralism. The case studies support the main hypothesis that government status systematically affects parties' level of accommodation. We discuss the implications for two seminal approaches in comparative institutional analysis advanced by Lijphart (1999b) and Tsebelis (2002).
Do upper houses matter for cabinet formation? If so, does it make a difference how powerful they are? The most sophisticated study to give clear answers to these questions is still Druckman, Martin and Thies (2005). It argues that upper houses influence cabinet formation, regardless of their formal powers. We dispute these answers theoretically and empirically. Since adjusting cabinet formation to second chamber composition is not necessary but can be costly, we should expect that if upper houses matter at all, their formal powers should matter too. Replication shows that the empirical results are driven exclusively by two countries with weak upper houses, one of which (Ireland) is miscoded. If this case is recoded there is no statistically or substantially significant effect of upper houses, regardless of their power. We conclude that the two questions cannot yet be answered. More research based on broader samples is needed.
This article reports on the 2010 Chapel Hill expert surveys (CHES) and introduces the CHES trend file, which contains measures of national party positioning on European integration, ideology and several European Union (EU) and non-EU policies for 1999−2010. We examine the reliability of expert judgments and cross-validate the 2010 CHES data with data from the Comparative Manifesto Project and the 2009 European Elections Studies survey, and explore basic trends on party positioning since 1999. The dataset is available at the CHES website.
The article analyses a certain type of bicameralism not merely as a form of legislative organisation, but as a form of government - as a hybrid between parliamentarism and presidentialism. A new typology of pure and hybrid forms of government is proposed, which classifies bicameralism in Australia and Japan as chamber-independent government. This type is systematically compared with other forms of government, including hybrids like semi-presidentialism, elected prime-ministerial government in Israel (from 1996 to 2002) and assembly-independent government in Switzerland. The article highlights how chamber-independent government has the potential to combine different visions of democracy without leading to presidentialisation of political parties. © 2012 The Author [2012]. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Hansard Society; all rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected]
/* */
This article contributes to the comparative study of democratic inclusiveness by reinterpreting some of Arend Lijphart's Patterns of Democracy. Three main arguments are advanced. First, Lijphart's claim that executive inclusiveness follows rather directly from a high effective number of parties is based on incoherent and invalid measurement. Second, executive inclusiveness is best explained in terms of the interaction of a high effective number of parties and strong legislative veto points. This implies that executive inclusiveness cannot be a definitional component of either of Lijphart's two dimensions of democracy. The interaction effect also supports the assumption that inclusive coalitions are costly to build and maintain. Third, parties have incentives to economize on the costs of inclusiveness by avoiding strong legislative veto points. I argue that these incentives are greater in parliamentary than in presidential systems and show that Lijphart's data reveal this difference. Hence the parliamentarism-presidentialism contrast plays a greater and somewhat different role for democratic types than Lijphart acknowledges; and his favourite version of consensus democracy, characterized by a parliamentary system and a high degree of executive inclusiveness, is unlikely to be a behavioural-institutional equilibrium.
A new and wide-ranging empirical overview of party policy in 47 modern democracies, including all of the new democracies of Eastern Europe. It updates and radically extends Policy and Party Competition (1992), which established itself as a key mainstream data source for all political scientists exploring the policy positions of political parties. This essential text is divided into three clear parts: Part I introduces the study, themes and methodology Part II deals in depth with the wide range of issues involved in estimating and analyzing the policy positions of key political actors. Part III is the key data section that identifies key policy dimensions across the 47 countries, detailing their party positions and median legislators, and is complemented by graphical representations of each party system. This book is an invaluable reference for all political scientists, particularly those interested in party policy and comparative politics.
Current research on coalition formation is plagued by two serious problems. First, we cannot predict more than about one-third of the Western European governments, and, second, we do not have a good understanding of the causal mechanisms that explain the effects found in large-n coalition studies. This article illustrates that by combining statistical and case study analyses we can solve these problems. Since statistical analyses are well equipped for measuring and isolating effects, we argue that a coalition study should start with such an analysis. Predictions made in this analysis are then used to select cases. In order to study the mechanisms underlying effects found in large-n coalition studies, we argue for selecting cases that are predicted, and then applying the method of process verification. In order to find new explanatory variables, we argue for selecting cases that are deviant, and then applying the method of process induction. Substantive results of our analysis for coalition theory point to the importance of party strategies based on parties' past experiences, which aim at curtailing present and future costs of competing and governing with other parties.
This contribution to the study of democratic inclusiveness advances three main claims, based on Lijphart’s original data. First, his measurement of executive inclusiveness is incoherent and invalid. Secondly, executive inclusiveness is best explained by the interaction of many parties and strong legislative veto points. This implies that executive inclusiveness should not be contained in either of Lijphart’s two dimensions of democracy. Thirdly, parties have incentives to economize on the costs of inclusive coalitions by avoiding strong legislative veto points, and these incentives are greater in parliamentary than in presidential systems. Hence, Lijphart’s favourite version of consensus democracy – characterized by a parliamentary system and a high degree of executive inclusiveness – is unlikely to be a behavioural-institutional equilibrium.
Are government coalitions less frequent under presidentialism than under parliamentarism? Do legislative deadlocks occur when presidents do not form majoritarian governments? Are presidential democracies more brittle when they are ruled by minorities? We answer these questions observing almost all democracies that existed between 1946 and 1999. It turns out that government coalitions occur in more than one half of the situations in which the president's party does not have a majority, that minority governments are not less successful legislatively than majority coalitions in both systems, and that the coalition status of the government has no impact on the survival of democracy in either system. Hence, whatever is wrong with presidentialism, is not due to the difficulty of forming coalitions.
Recent discussions of Swedish political change have focused on the decline of Social Democratic ‘hegemony’ and on the end of the ‘Swedish model’. In contrast to preference– or interest–driven explanations for these developments, this paper investigates the impact of constitutional changes made in 1969 in Sweden, which included the elimination of the Upper House or First Chamber of the Swedish parliament and the introduction of a more directly proportional electoral system. Using a simulation model, the actual electoral results from 1969 through 1994 were plugged into the formulas set forth by the old constitutional rules, in order to generate the number of parliamentary seats each party would have received under the old system. This simulation shows that the Social Democratic Party would have received a significantly larger share of parliamentary seats under the old constitutional rules than under the current constitution. Thus one can conclude that the new constitution decreased Social Democratic power in Sweden.
This article presents, discusses and tests the hypothesis that it is the number of parties what can explain the choice of electoral systems, rather than the other way round. Already existing political parties tend to choose electoral systems that, rather than generate new party systems by themselves, will crystallize, consolidate or reinforce previously existing party configurations. A general model de velops the argument and presents the concept of 'behavioral-institutional equilibrium' to account for the relation between electoral systems and party systems. The most comprehensive dataset and test of these notions to date, encompassing 219 elections in 87 countries since the 19th century, are presented. The analysis gives strong support to the hypotheses that political party configurations dominated by a few parties tend to establish majority rule electoral systems, while multiparty systems already existed before the introduction of proportional representation. It also offers the new theoretical proposition that strategic party choice of electoral systems leads to a general trend toward proportional representation over time.
Coalition Governments in Western Europe is the most comprehensive empirical analysis to date of coalition politics. Based on a large cross-national data collection, covering the entire post-war period from 1945 to 1999, it is the first systematic study of the institutions of governance and conflict resolution in coalition governments. The book is also an unparalleled source of information on cabinet formation, membership, termination, and electoral performance of coalition parties. The volume also analyses the institutional frameworks in which coalition politics takes place in the individual countries and discusses which constraints for government formation, coalition governance, and coalition termination result from them. The information has been collected in standardized form by first rate country experts, and is presented in the form of standard tables.
Ausgangspunkt des Beitrages ist die Frage, wie sich das Verhältnis von Bund und Ländern im Bereich der Gesetzgebung während der zweiten Regierung Merkel entwickelt hat. Das Kapitel zeigt, dass sowohl auf der Ebene des Bundes wie auch auf der der Länder durch die Föderalismusreform tatsächlich Handlungsfähigkeit gewonnen wurde. Dabei hat der Bund mehr als die Länder von der Neuordnung der Gesetzgebungskompetenzen profitiert, war doch die Quote zustimmungsbedürftiger Gesetze sowohl insgesamt als auch unter den Schlüsselentscheidungen deutlich niedriger als in vorangegangenen Legislaturperioden. Dass diese gewachsene Handlungsfähigkeit des Bundes nicht in vollem Umfang ausgeschöpft wurde, liegt an weiteren, nicht in der Politikverflechtung begründeten Handlungsbeschränkungen sowie Selbstbeschränkungen der Entscheidungsträger. Auf Landesebene hat sich der Gestaltungsspielraum ebenfalls erhöht – jedoch nur in begrenztem Umfang. In vielerlei Hinsicht existieren Restriktionen, von Vorgaben des Bundesverfassungsgerichts über EU-Recht bis hin zu überlappenden Bundeskompetenzen, die den Gestaltungsspielraum der Länder einengen. Außerdem besteht in manchen Bereichen die inhaltliche Verflechtung fort. Schließlich wird der vorhandene Gestaltungsspielraum von den Ländern häufig nicht für eigenständige Gesetzgebung genutzt, sondern lediglich die vorherige Bund-Länder-Verflechtung durch freiwillige Selbstkoordination ersetzt.
Recent research on parliamentary government demonstrates that institutions critically affect government formation and survival. Yet, surprisingly, virtually no work has explored the impact of bicameralism on coalitional politics, despite a burgeoning interest in the study of bicameral legislatures. Cabinet survival almost never depends on formal upper-chamber approval, but bicameralism does fundamentally shape policy outcomes. Therefore, coalition builders in bicameral systems might seek to obtain concurrent majorities in both chambers, to ensure that government policies pass into law. And governments with upper-chamber majority support should survive longer than those without, Examining data from 202 governments in ten countries, we find little evidence of bicameral effects on government formation, but strong support for the duration hypothesis-governments with upper-chamber majorities last substantially longer than those without. These results hold even in the face of variation in the constitutional powers and ideological compositions of upper chambers. Work on parliamentary government can no longer ignore the larger institutional context of bicameralism.
The higher legislative success of parliamentary governments relative to presidential governments has been used to argue that
legislative success is driven by parliamentary governments' superior agenda power or their control of legislative majorities.
We show that this approach is at odds with some of the empirical regularities across and within political systems. We then
propose a legislative bargaining model to elucidate this puzzle. In the model, the policies of a confidence-dependent parliamentary
government enjoy more predictable support from governing coalition members because their short-term policy goals are less
important than the government's survival. Coalition support is stronger when the government has more agenda power and is weaker
with a larger ruling coalition. We explore the empirical implications of these findings and their consequences for the comparative
study of legislative institutions.
Research on government formation in parliamentary democracies is replete with theoretical arguments about why some coalitions form while others do not. Unfortunately, this theoretical richness has not led to the development of an empirical tradition that allows scholars to evaluate the relative importance of competing theories. We resolve this problem by applying an empirical framework that is appropriate for modeling coalition choice to evaluate several leading explanations of government formation. Our approach allows us to make conclusions about the relative importance of traditional variables relating to size and ideology and to assess the impact of recent new-institutionalist theories on our ability to explain and predict government formation.
In this paper we present a structural approach to the study of government formation in multi-party parliamentary democracies. The approach is based on the estimation of a stochastic bargaining model which we use to investigate the effects of specific institutional features of parliamentary democracy on the formation and stability of coalition governments. We then apply our methodology to estimate the effects of governmental bicameralism. Our main findings are that eliminating bicameralism does not affect government durability, but does have a significant effect on the composition of governments leading to smaller coalitions. These results are due to an equilibrium replacement effect: removing bicameralism affects the relative durability of coalitions of different sizes which in turn induces changes in the coalitions that are chosen in equilibrium.
Theories of coalition politics in parliamentary democracies have suggested that government formation and survival are jointly
determined outcomes. An important empirical implication of these theories is that the sample of observed governments analyzed in studies of government survival may be nonrandomly selected from the population of potential governments. This can lead to serious inferential problems. Unfortunately, current empirical models of government survival
are unable to account for the possible biases arising from nonrandom selection. In this study, we use a copula-based framework
to assess, and correct for, the dependence between the processes of government formation and survival. Our results suggest
that existing studies of government survival, by ignoring the selection problem, overstate the substantive importance of several
covariates commonly included in empirical models.
In a recent article in the Journal of Politics, Golder, Golder, and Siegel argue that models of government formation should be rebuilt "from the ground up." They propose to do so with a "zero-intelligence" model of government formation, which they claim makes no theoretical assumptions beyond the requirement that a potential government, to be chosen, must be preferred by all its members and a legislative majority to the incumbent administration. They also claim that, empirically, their model does significantly better than existing models in predicting formation outcomes. We disagree with both claims. Theoretically, their model is unrestrictive in terms of its institutional assumptions, but it imposes a highly implausible behavioral assumption that drives the key results. Empirically, their assessment of the performance of the zero intelligence model turns on a misunderstanding of the relevant data for testing coalition theories. We demonstrate that the predictions of the zero-intelligence model are no more accurate than random guesses, in stark contrast to the predictions of well-established approaches in traditional coalition research. We conclude that scholars would be ill advised to dismiss traditional approaches in favor of the approach advanced by Golder, Golder, and Siegel.
Political scientists have long classified systems of government as parliamentary or presidential, two-party or multiparty, and so on. But such distinctions often fail to provide useful insights. For example, how are we to compare the United States, a presidential bicameral regime with two weak parties, to Denmark, a parliamentary unicameral regime with many strong parties? Veto Players advances an important, new understanding of how governments are structured. The real distinctions between political systems, contends George Tsebelis, are to be found in the extent to which they afford political actors veto power over policy choices. Drawing richly on game theory, he develops a scheme by which governments can thus be classified. He shows why an increase in the number of "veto players," or an increase in their ideological distance from each other, increases policy stability, impeding significant departures from the status quo. Policy stability affects a series of other key characteristics of polities, argues the author. For example, it leads to high judicial and bureaucratic independence, as well as high government instability (in parliamentary systems). The propositions derived from the theoretical framework Tsebelis develops in the first part of the book are tested in the second part with various data sets from advanced industrialized countries, as well as analysis of legislation in the European Union. Representing the first consistent and consequential theory of comparative politics, Veto Players will be welcomed by students and scholars as a defining text of the discipline.
In recent years, a consensus has developed that the conditional logit (CL) model is the most appropriate strategy for modeling
government choice. In this paper, we reconsider this approach and make three methodological contributions. First, we employ
a mixed logit with random coefficients that allows us to take account of unobserved heterogeneity in the government formation
process and relax the independence of irrelevant alternatives (IIA) assumption. Second, we demonstrate that the procedure
used in the literature to test the IIA assumption is biased against finding IIA violations. An improved testing procedure
reveals clear evidence of IIA violations, indicating that the CL model is inappropriate. Third, we move beyond simply presenting
the sign and significance of model coefficients, suggesting various strategies for interpreting the substantive influence
of variables in models of government choice.
We examine the extent to which governments consider the role of bicameral conflict resolution procedures in legislative agenda-setting. We argue that governments may use these institutions to promote policy change in the event of bicameral conflict, especially when facing uncertainty over bicameral policy preferences. We test our arguments using comprehensive original data on forty years of German legislation and find that bicameral conflict resolution committees play a more sophisticated role in governmental policy making than previously suspected.
Studies on coalition formation assume that political parties have two major goals: they aim to maximise office and policy payoffs. This paper shows that decision-making in the government formation game is also determined by the voters’ coalition preferences. Since the coalition formation process is not a one-shot game, parties have to take the coalition preferences of the electorate into account when they evaluate the utility of potential coalitions. If parties fail to comply with the coalition preferences of voters, they are likely to be penalised in future elections. The argument is tested by an analysis of government formation in the 16 German states between 1990 and 2009. The results support the argument: the formation of coalitions – at least in the German states – is not only determined by office- and policy-seeking behaviour of political parties, but also by the preferences of voters regarding their preferred outcome of the coalition game.
The mixed logit model is considered to be the most promising state of the art discrete choice model currently available. Increasingly researchers and practitioners are estimating mixed logit models of various degrees of sophistication with mixtures of revealed preference and stated choice data. It is timely to review progress in model estimation since the learning curve is steep and the unwary are likely to fall into a chasm if not careful. These chasms are very deep indeed given the complexity of the mixed logit model. Although the theory is relatively clear, estimation and data issues are far from clear. Indeed there is a great deal of potential mis-inference consequent on trying to extract increased behavioural realism from data that are often not able to comply with the demands of mixed logit models. Possibly for the first time we now have an estimation method that requires extremely high quality data if the analyst wishes to take advantage of the extended behavioural capabilities of such models. This paper focuses on the new opportunities offered by mixed logit models and some issues to be aware of to avoid misuse of such advanced discrete choice methods by the practitioner.
I present a formal model of the confidence vote procedure, an institutional arrangement that permits a prime minister to attach the fate of a particular policy to a vote on government survival. The analysis indicates that confidence vote procedures make it possible for prime ministers to exercise significant control over the nature of policy outcomes, even when these procedures are not actually invoked. Neither cabinet ministers, through their authority over specific portfolios, nor members of parliament, through the use of no-confidence motions, can counteract the prime minister's policy control on the floor of parliament. The analysis also illuminates the circumstances under which prime ministers should invoke confidence vote procedures, focusing attention on the position-taking incentives of the parties that support the government, rather than on the level of policy conflict between the government and parliament.
In this updated and expanded edition of his classic text, Arend Lijphart offers a broader and deeper analysis of worldwide democratic institutions than ever before. Examining thirty-six democracies during the period from 1945 to 2010, Lijphart arrives at important-and unexpected-conclusions about what type of democracy works best. Praise for the previous edition: "Magnificent.... The best-researched book on democracy in the world today."-Malcolm Mackerras, American Review of Politics "I can't think of another scholar as well qualified as Lijphart to write a book of this kind. He has an amazing grasp of the relevant literature, and he's compiled an unmatched collection of data."-Robert A. Dahl, Yale University "This sound comparative research ... will continue to be a standard in graduate and undergraduate courses in comparative politics."-Choice.
In this updated and expanded edition of his classic text, Arend Lijphart offers a broader and deeper analysis of worldwide democratic institutions than ever before. Examining thirty-six democracies during the period from 1945 to 2010, Lijphart arrives at important-and unexpected-conclusions about what type of democracy works best. Praise for the previous edition: "Magnificent...The best-researched book on democracy in the world today."-Malcolm Mackerras, American Review of Politics "I can't think of another scholar as well qualified as Lijphart to write a book of this kind. He has an amazing grasp of the relevant literature, and he's compiled an unmatched collection of data."-Robert A. Dahl, Yale University "This sound comparative research ...will continue to be a standard in graduate and undergraduate courses in comparative politics."-Choice
We examine how a foresighted legislative chamber will design its institutions in response to ex ante incentives for universalism and ex post incentives for minimum winning coalitions and what coalitions will form as a result. To do so, we develop a model of vote trading with an endogenous voting rule and coalition formation process. We find that in equilibrium, legislative chambers will almost never choose institutions that guarantee either simple majorities or universalistic outcomes. Rather, coalition sizes from minimal winning to universalistic will be possible under certain conditions given the choice of voting rule. Further, these coalitions will be "minimal necessary," just large enough to sustain cooperation.
The terms `left' and `right' are widely used to organize party competition and to shape connections between citizens and political parties. Recent and dramatic changes in the world, however, raise important questions about the meaning and importance of left-right ideology. Most notably, the collapse of communism has led to the development of a host of new democracies. And in advanced industrial societies, conflict has emerged over issues like the environment and immigration. This paper draws on a survey of political experts in 42 societies to address three questions raised by these changes. First, is the language of left and right still widely used, even in recently democratized countries? Second, do there exist secondary dimensions of political conflict that are orthogonal to the left-right dimension? Third, and most importantly, what substantive issues define the meaning of left-right ideology? In addition to addressing these questions, we present data on the left-right locations of political parties in each of the 42 countries.
Coalition theory typically treats political parties involved in government formation in parliamentary democracies as if they were unconstrained players in an institution-free world. Yet actual coalition options are often severely constrained by institutional arrangements and prior commitments. We develop a systematic account of different constraints on government formation and examine their frequency across 10 parliamentary democracies. Hypothetical and empirical examples demonstrate how a small number of constraints can dramatically reduce the range of coalition options and redistribute bargaining power among political parties. More adequate coalition theories need to recognize the effects of such constraints and to build on the theoretical lessons of the neoinstitutionalist approach to legislative behavior.
Previous research on coalition politics has found an “incumbency advantage” in government formation, but it has provided no clear explanation as to why this advantage exists. We classify existing theories as either preference-based or institutions-based explanations for why incumbent coalitions might be likely to form again, and we integrate these explanations into a coherent theoretical argument. We also claim that it is possible, to some extent, to distinguish these explanations empirically by taking into account the “historical context” of coalition bargaining. Using a comprehensive new data set on coalition bargaining in Europe, we show that coalitions, in general, are more likely to form if the parties comprising them have worked together in the recent past, and that incumbent coalitions are more likely to re-form if partners have not experienced a severe public conflict while in office together or suffered a recent setback at the polls. The incumbency advantage disappears completely if partners have become mired in conflict or have lost legislative seats (even after accounting for the impact of seat share on coalition size). Moreover, in certain circumstances, institutional rules that grant incumbents an advantage in coalition bargaining greatly enhance their ability to remain in office.
This research note focuses on the importance of rules for coalition formation in parliamentary democracies. Traditionally, coalition theorists have assumed that only majority coalitions can be winning. The more recent literature has shown that coalitions can be winning even if they do not control more than half of all legislators. However, the literature has continued to overlook the fact that there exist two different types of government formation rules. In this note, the two types—positive and negative rules—are presented and it is shown that minority governments are more frequent in the countries with negative rules.
The literature on cabinet formation in parliamentary democracies is replete with theoretical explanations of why some cabinets form and others do not. This theoretical richness, however, has not led to the development of a healthy empirical literature designed to choose between competing theories. In this paper, we try to rectify this problem by developing an empirical model that can adequately capture the kind of choice situation that is inherent in cabinet selection and then using it to evaluate the leading theories of cabinet formation that have been advanced in the literature. For example, this analysis allows us to make conclusions about the relative importance in cabinet formation of traditional variables like size and ideology, as well as to evaluate the impact that recent new-institutionalist theories (such as Laver and Shepsle 1996) have on our ability to predict and explain cabinet formation over and above the more traditional explanations.
Recent research on parliamentary government demonstrates that institutions play a critical role in determining which governments form and how long governments endure. For example, investiture requirements, the head of state's powers, and legislative decision rules all affect cabinet formation. Surprisingly, virtually no work has explored the impact of bicameralism on coalitional politics, despite a burgeoning interest in the study of bicameral legislatures. This may be the case because the cabinet's survival almost never depends on formal upper chamber approval. However, Hammond and Miller (1987), Tsebelis and Money (1997), Heller (1997, 2001), and others have demonstrated that bicameralism fundamentally shapes policy outcomes. One implication of this finding is that coalition builders in bicameral systems will be induced to obtain concurrent majorities in both chambers, to ensure that government policies pass into law. Another is that governments with upper chamber majority support should survive longer than those without, other things equal. In this paper, we examine data from 202 governments in ten European countries. We find little evidence of bicameral effects on government formation, but strong support for the duration hypothesis - governments with upper chamber majorities last substantially longer than those without. Further, we show that this result holds even in the face of variation in the constitutional powers, and ideological and partisan compositions of upper chambers. The implication is that work on parliamentary government can no longer ignore the larger institutional context of bicameralism.
Coalition formation is a pervasive aspect of social life. This paper presents a theory of coalition formation with a statement of conditions and assumptions. While applicable to groups of varying sizes, it is shown to be consistent with Caplow's theory of coalitions in the triad. It successfully handles the experimental results of Vinacke and Arkoff. Finally, the applicability of various work in n-person game theory is discussed with the conclusion that, in its present state, it fails to provide a basis for a descriptive theory of coalitions.
In most parliamentary democracies, governments must maintain the confidence of a single legislative chamber only. But in bicameral parliaments, upper chambers can affect the fortunes of government policy proposals. Recent work shows that parliamentary governments that lack control over the upper house also tend to collapse sooner than those with upper-house majorities. In this article, we show that coalition builders anticipate the importance of upper-chamber status (majority or minority) in making their formation decisions. After controlling for a host of “usual suspect” variables concerning the institutional, ideological, and partisan context of coalition building, and examining 15,590 potential governments in 129 bargaining situations, we found that potential coalitions that control upper-house majorities are significantly more likely to form than are those with upper-house minorities. Our findings are important for students of bicameralism, government formation, institutions, and, perhaps most significantly, for those who study policymaking in parliamentary democracies.
In parliamentary democracies, participating in government provides access to office perks and policy influence. Because of this, as Riker (1962) demonstrated, there is a powerful logic behind the formation of minimum winning coalitions. Thus, an important question is why we regularly observe oversized coalitions. While several theories of coalition formation have been proposed, few have been tested in competition with one another. This article offers a simultaneous test of five main theories of coalition formation using data from 24 countries over the period from 1955 to 1998. The weight of the evidence suggests that oversized governments form when maintaining coalition bargains is harder (Carrubba and Volden 2000). Also, there is mixed support for oversized governments forming when the largest party is smaller and more extreme (Crombez 1996), but not when the status quo policy is more extreme (Baron and Diermeier 2001) and not to secure upper-house majorities (Lijphart 1984; Sjölin 1993). Finally, while we descriptively observe oversized connected coalitions (Axelrod 1970), the logic behind their formation appears to differ from what Axelrod proposes.