Search

This article examines the July 2023 general elections in Spain and its potential impact on the governance of the country. Contrary to what most pre-election polls predicted, the two main opposition parties (i.e., PP and Vox) did not manage to earn sufficient electoral support and, as a result, a new coalition government of centre-left parties was formed. The outcome of these elections was notably shaped by the high levels of polarization registered in the country in the last years. This report tackles the most important elements of the elections with a historical perspective and an empirical approach, and how the subsequent formation of a new left-wing coalition government at the national level could affect the future electoral prospects of the incumbent parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACTWhile coalition governments have been studied extensively, there remains a lack of understanding of how coalition preferences emerge and what factors are the most influential. Utilising coalition formation theories, this study posits that voters tend to prefer coalitions with a narrower range of ideological differences between 1.) the parties involved and 2.) between the voter and the party perceived to have the greatest ideological distance from the individual. Previous studies have mainly concentrated on a general left-right ideological dimension or specific issue dimensions, despite the fact that some of the countries analysed are characterized by a two-dimensional political space. Using Germany as a case study that exemplifies this inherent two-dimensionality, this analysis adopts a nuanced approach by employing the calculation of Euclidean distance based on socio-economic and socio-cultural measures. This approach aims to explain the formation of coalition preferences leading up to the federal election in 2021. Our results show how strongly the perceived ideological distance of parties contributes to developing preferences for a specific coalition option, even when controlling for party evaluation and socio-demographics. For this reason, they have important implications for the understanding of the emergence of coalition preferences and party competition.

This paper examines the relationship between citizen satisfaction with the functioning of democracy and ideological congruence. We focus on how this relationship may vary by government type, paying attention to the conditioning effects of coalition governments' ideological make-up and individual-level education. Our analyses rely on harmonized survey data covering one million respondents in 28 countries over a 40-year period. We find limited evidence that the relationship between citizen satisfaction and ideological congruence is conditional on national government type. All coalitions are not, however, created equal. Comparing single-party governments to multi-party governments with different ideological compositions, we find striking differences, but only for the higher educated. While the negative relationship between citizen satisfaction and ideological incongruence is similar for lower-educated citizens in single-party and multi-party coalition settings (irrespective of cabinet composition), for the higher educated, the relationship weakens as a function of the ideological diversity of the coalition cabinet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coalition policymaking concerns not only who decides what in which jurisdiction but also when, how speedy and in what rhythm. Due to the limited time budget and shadow of future elections, parties in charge of respective ministerial portfolios have to strategically organize their policy agendas to trade off between policy and electoral incentives in the face of coalition partners who monitor and control ministerial autonomy. However, despite the burgeoning literature on coalition governance, the temporal dimension of ministerial agenda control is less well understood. I advance this research by proposing a model to directly account for the influence of time budgets on timing decisions of ministers in policy initiation. In this model, I distinguish between different timing strategies of policy initiation a ministerial party may possibly adopt and identify in equilibrium a conditional postponing strategy by which ministers facing high scrutiny of coalition partners will postpone bill initiation till the end of the term. The empirical examination lends support to my argument and further demonstrates that the timing strategy of ministers can also be influenced by coalition conflict and policy saliency of bills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prime minister Anwar Ibrahim steered his cobbled-together government through economic and sociocultural challenges in 2023, emerging stable but spooked. State-level elections in August sustained each party's roster of states, but with declining margins for Anwar's coalition. Fiscal pressures--high debt, declining revenues, rising cost of living, and a persistently weak currency--constrained room for maneuver, while state-level and societal cultural contests tested Malaysia's multiracial, multireligious tolerance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While many argue populist radical-right parties to be the largest contemporary threat to democracy, much of the evidence either focuses on the rare case of a populist radical-right prime minister, or conflates right-populist prime ministers with right-populist government participation, with some asserting that it would be difficult for these parties to have any real effect without holding the prime ministership. In this paper I conduct a large-scale analysis of European nations to quantify the effect right-populist junior coalition partners have on liberal democracy. I argue that as junior coalition partners, they will indeed affect democratic quality, albeit in ways that differ from that of a right-populist prime minister. While previous literature has demonstrated that populist radical-right parties bring with them decreases in the level of democratic quality pertaining to institutional constraints on power and mass civil liberties, junior coalition partners are only able to effect the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The similarity of parties' policy preferences has long been considered an important determinant of whether they form a government coalition. That similarity has typically been assessed based on parties' respective locations in a policy space. The degree to which parties care about different issues may, however, also vary. Parties that care about different issues may actually be the most compatible partners, as their tangential preferences would allow them to engage in policy logrolling and enable them to preserve their distinctiveness in the eyes of voters. This analysis tests arguments regarding the role of tangentiality and its interaction with policy proximity on the party composition of governments formed in Western Europe from 1945 to 2019. The findings show that parties that emphasise the same issues are more natural coalition partners provided the ideological differences between the parties are sufficiently similar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Not all governments survive until the next scheduled election. Some are replaced during their term in office by executives with a different party composition and/or portfolio distribution. Others are able to be 'reborn' as the successor government, undergoing only minimal changes. Such variation has to date received scant attention in studies on government durability. By classifying non-electoral replacements according to the degree of ministerial turnover, this article shows that new cabinets are often similar to their predecessors. It hypothesises that the likelihood of this pattern occurring is greater: when members of the current cabinet face bargaining problems in forming a very different cabinet, as in the case of surplus (unnecessary) parties in oversized coalitions; when the policy distance between the parliamentary median party and the current opposition widens; and when the executive's economic performance discourages opposition parties from forming new coalitions with some incumbent parties. The risk of experiencing different types of replacement is estimated using data on Western European cabinets (1946–2021). Consistent with the hypotheses, the results indicate that governments are able to return to power almost untouched after their termination if they are oversized, if the opposition is far from the legislative median voter, and if inflation grows during a government's tenure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the biggest challenges parties in multiparty governments face is making policies together and overcoming the risk of a policy stalemate. Scholars have devoted much attention to the study of how various institutions in cabinet and parliament help coalition parties with conflicting policy preferences to be efficient in the policy-making process. Coalition agreements are one of many instruments coalition partners can use to facilitate policy making. However, many scholars describe such agreements' actual role as cheap talk, due to their legally non-enforceable nature. Do coalition agreements make a difference in the policy-making productivity of multiparty governments? To address this question, this article focuses on governments' policy output and investigates whether coalition agreements increase the policy-making productivity of multiparty cabinets. Its central argument is that written agreements between coalition partners strengthen the capacity of coalition governments to make policy reforms, even when there is a high degree of ideological conflict among partners. To evaluate this argument, the article analyzes data on economic reform measures adopted by national governments in 11 Western European countries over a 40-year period (1978–2017), based on a coding of more than 1000 periodical country reports issued by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The results show that while coalition agreements foster policy productivity in minimal winning cabinets, they play a weaker role in minority and surplus governments. Coalition agreements limit the negative effect of intra-cabinet ideological conflict on reform productivity, suggesting that such contracts help parties overcome the risk of policy stalemate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is theoretically anchored in the office-seeking approach and coalition theory of political science. It is based on the most widespread theories of portfolio distribution in executive and legislative bodies (proportionality, power index, voting weights), and it tests these theories using data related to coalition negotiations in the Czech Republic for the new 2021 government coalition, a case of a surplus majority government. The study investigates the distribution of ministerial positions in the government, the office of President (Speaker) of the Chamber of Deputies, and the chairs of permanent parliamentary committees. The analysis also explores the types of electoral coalitions formed; the SPOLU coalition was a superadditive coalition, while the PirSTAN coalition was only an additive coalition. Grounded in the theory of electoral games, the Shapley-Shubik and Banzhaf power indices and the theory of coalition formation are applied in order to analyse the possible minimal winning coalitions that could be formed following the 2021 elections to the Chamber of Deputies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2012, David Cameron met the Dalai Lama. In retaliation for the meeting, China froze bilateral relations for 18 months. Subsequently, Cameron pledged to have no more meetings with the Dalai Lama and reiterated British recognition of Chinese sovereignty over Tibet. For some, China used economic punishment to extract the UK's concession. For others, China used only diplomatic punishment. This article argues that both sides have underestimated the complexity of the case and need to integrate their insights for a better explanation. While China did not impose or threaten economic sanctions on the UK, its diplomatic sanctions put both political and economic pressure on the UK to concede. This article contributes to the studies of China–UK relations and China's 'economic coercion'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The received wisdom on executive–legislative relations in multiparty presidential systems is that the size of the president's majority in Congress is the key factor explaining governance patterns, particularly the president's legislative success. However, in many cases presidents enjoying a nominal majority have been unable to pass legislation and have faced institutional instability. The article departs from a conventional definition of divided government and focuses on the preference incongruence between the governing coalition and the floor of Congress. It argues that the ideological distance between the floor and the coalition is a key factor explaining the president's cost of governing (which includes factors such as the distribution of cabinet portfolios and budgetary transfers to coalition partners). The article provides an empirical test with data from Brazil that find that the greater the ideological incongruence, the higher the cost of governing for the president. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In coalition governments, parties invest much effort to manage delegation costs to individual ministers. In this article, we examine an intra-executive mechanism for managing delegation costs: Assigning ministerial co-responsibility in cabinet decisions. Using data of cabinet decisions in Israel, we test when and under what conditions co-responsibility is assigned. We find that co-responsibility is assigned strategically by cabinet members weighing the risk of a drift against the costs of imposing co-responsibility. These findings demonstrate an understudied mechanism through which coalition governments narrow ministerial autonomy and informational advantage once policies reach the cabinet. In doing so, this research contributes to a better understanding of policymaking in coalition governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional scholarly wisdom has held that the popularity/approval of political leaders is determined by a governments' ability to provide peace, prosperity, and security to its citizens. However, for coalition governments in multiparty parliamentary democracies, popularity may also be shaped by legislative and structural divisions among ruling parties. Lower legislative cohesion may decrease the coalition's political feasibility while structural divisions indicate that policy preferences in the government are diverse, and the government is more constrained to act on potentially divisive issues. These two factors are tested in the context of recent Israeli political history where prime ministers have been historically dependent on coalition governments. Focusing on the consequences of coalition governments characteristics in Israel between 2006 and 2015, this study shows how coalition behavior and structure impact the prime minister's popularity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In light of the oft-cited benefits of power sharing, this paper compares two cases of coalition governments that emerged from domestically initiated transition processes in the Arab world: the Tunisian Troika (2011–2014) and the Yemeni Coalition Government (1993–1994). While the former facilitated Tunisia's democratization, the latter's disintegration contributed to the 1994 war and Yemen's authoritarian backsliding. It asks why coalition cooperation endured in Tunisia but not in Yemen, exploring intra-elite relations, the power dynamics at play, as well as elites' motivations in launching and maintaining cooperation. The paper reveals that both coalitions' internal functioning was hampered by adverse power configurations and ideological differences. In Yemen, intra-elite relations were further impaired by mutual distrust. Crucially, a history of sustained partnership along with normative commitment to the idea of power sharing, existent in Tunisia and not in Yemen, explains why cooperation within the Troika remained solid amid unfavorable circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does policy-making in coalition governments affect cabinet parties' electoral performance? Previous research shows that about two thirds of all propositions promised in coalition agreements are actually enacted. But does non-compliance with pledges made in the agreement affect subsequent electoral support? Drawing on the literature on performance voting, we expect that non-compliance is punished by voters, but the effect is conditioned by the importance of the issue and by a parties' seniority status within the coalition. To test our argument, we have compiled the new comparative COALITIONPOLICY dataset on the enactment of more than 7000 policy pledges by 217 cabinet parties in 19 Western and Eastern European countries from 2000 to 2015. Across a broad range of models, we find no effect of pledge fulfillment on subsequent electoral performance. If anything, adherence to policy-promises only increases support for the prime minister party. These results have important implications for our understanding of political representation, coalition governance, and electoral competition in multiparty democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to capture the participation of political parties in the governments of the Czech Republic in the years 1992 to 2021, the distribution of Seats in the Government, occupation of the Prime Minister’s Office and the type of coalitions formed. The study presented is theoretically grounded in the office-seeking approach to the study of coalitions and uses comparative and statistical methods. The data are analysed and interpreted in relation to the changes and development trends of the participation of political parties in the government. The case study concludes that the dynamics of the transformation of government coalitions can be divided into three stages. The first stage is represented by two decades of alternating dominant parties with a clear right-wing orientation: the ODS and the CSSD, which had a prime minister’s office, a share of more than 50% in the government and their coalition partners were smaller political parties. The second stage since 2010 is characterized by the weakening of the dominant parties and the emergence of more proportional government coalitions, where the strongest parties in the coalitions have less than a 50% share in the governing seats. The third final stage since 2017 is characterized by the arrival of a new dominant party: ANO gaining the position of prime minister, and for the first time by the formation of only a two-member government coalition.

During the time he led the Conservative–Liberal Democrat Coalition Government, David Cameron used, in a highly selective and contestable manner, the kind of Thatcherite language with regard to deficit reduction which those on the right of the Conservative Party could relate to, and he did so in the interests of party unity. This argument is framed within the context of the limits of modernisation under Cameron's leadership, and it emphasises the role which rhetoric can play in politics. The primary source is a selection of Cameron's speeches as Coalition Prime Minister, particularly those geared towards audiences in his own party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article studies the behavioral models of parties in democratic change in terms of building coalitions and concluding "pacts" within the framework of their own value system. The party coalitions established as a consequence of Armenia's presidential and legislative elections over the past 20 years are analyzed. Since 2003, and to this day, coalitions in Armenia have assumed only the consolidation of political personalities pursuing power and the formation of coalitions with "minimal gain". The ineffectiveness of the political coalition is due to the formal nature of thematic and doctrinal discussions as a result of the absence of genuine communication between the ruling elite. The method is supported by evidence that the inefficiency of coalitions established in Armenia during the democratic transition period suggests that coalitions are one of the causes of political growth crises only in terms of maintaining their own interest-based system. With this method, the authors demonstrate the persistence of Armenia's political development crises in the context of democracy transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spain became one of the most affected countries both in terms of the number of cases and deaths from COVID-19, and in terms of the damage caused to the economy, which had not fully recovered from the 2008 crisis. The pandemic crisis is now being tackled by a coalition government comprised of the center-left Spanish Socialist Labor Party (PSOE) and the left-wing Unidas Podemos, with external support from small regional forces. It is opposed by the rightwing bloc of parties, which includes recently shifting to the right Partido Popular (PP), the right-wing Vox and the center-right Ciudadanos, rapidly losing political weight. The key question today is whether the government, which is forced to turn to other parties for help, will be able to fulfill its responsibilities until the elections scheduled for the end of 2023. Last November marked two years since the last elections. The purpose of this article thereto is to determine the main features of the modern political process in Spain and take stock of the government’s actions, analyze expectations of society and predict further development of internal politics of Spain during the pandemic and in the post-pandemic reality. The author used a wide range of methods: the analysis and synthesis of information, the statistical method, as well as the system analysis; the author also relies on research by domestic and foreign Hispanists, opinion polls, government and party documents. The author concludes that the political process in Spain today is subject to negative influence of a strong confrontation between the coalition government and the opposition, and the Spanish society is split on a number of issues.

This article argues that the serious, negative consequences of austerity have discouraged political participation in many of its forms, because affected citizens believe that political participation will not achieve anything. Based on interviews with members of the public across England, many people feel that participating is not worthwhile because the government will not listen. This belief stems at least partially from the coalition and Conservative governments' narrative choices since 2010, in which they argued that austerity is the only viable option for economic recovery following the financial crisis. As a result, individuals feel they lack influence, which further undermines their motivation to participate. It is fundamental to understand why citizens facing rising poverty, health problems and food bank usage are reluctant or unable to engage in politics. A lack of political voice may exacerbate the issues faced by vulnerable people living under austerity, meaning this research makes an important contribution to understanding the consequences of austerity, both in the UK and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parliamentary elections often result in the formation of a coalition government. While the legislative process allows actors within a coalition government to monitor each other, little attention has focused on how opposition parties respond to coalition government. We argue that opposition parties have incentives to uncover and highlight differences and tensions within the governing coalition. A strategy by the opposition to use legislative tools to uncover policy conflicts and ministerial drift within the coalition increases intra-coalition tensions, potentially generating electoral costs for the governing parties, and potentially even hastening the coalition's demise. To test our argument, we build and analyse a new dataset of parliamentary questions in the British House of Commons covering the 2010–15 coalition. As expected, the main opposition party appears to strategically focus questions towards policy areas that uncover intra-coalition tensions. This research highlights the importance of opposition parties in parliamentary democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cabinet ministers in parliamentary democracies have significant agenda‐setting power. However, not all ministers use it equally. This paper examines what affects the ministers' use of their agenda‐setting power. It explores this question based on the case of Israel, using three measures of agenda change and in‐depth interviews with former ministers. The paper finds that limited agenda capacity constrains the ministers' agenda‐setting power. However, the ministers themselves do not see this as a significant constraint and point at motivation instead. Ministers holding a portfolio that is salient to their party are not likely to change the agenda more. Ministers from small parties change the agenda less, and so do ministers in ministries where a significant proportion of services are provided by street level bureaucrats. Ministers in ministries that are seen as more salient change the agenda more. These findings are consequential for understanding policy responsiveness and proportionality in policy response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the political biography of Sebastian Kurz, who held the post of Federal Chancellor of Austria till autumn of 2021. He is being accused of abuse of power in order to achieve political goals. In Europe Kurz was considered to be one of the most promising politics, who came all the way to the top over the decade – a stellar career path, which would require entire political lifetimes for others to cross. Without higher education degree he over the few years rose from the position of a mere activist of youth movement of Austrian’s People’s Party to the role of the party leader. At the age of 27 he took up the post of Foreign Minister, and aged 31 he reached the top of the national politic as the Federal Austrian Chancellor. During the second decade of the XXI century Kurz used to be one of the interlocutors of the European and world leaders and one of the main officials in EU.

The aim of this paper is to capture the participation of political parties in the governments of the Czech Republic in the years 1992 to 2021, the distribution of Seats in the Government, occupation of the Prime Minister's Office and the type of coalitions formed. The study presented is theoretically grounded in the office-seeking approach to the study of coalitions and uses comparative and statistical methods. The data are analysed and interpreted in relation to the changes and development trends of the participation of political parties in the government. The case study concludes that the dynamics of the transformation of government coalitions can be divided into three stages. The first stage is represented by two decades of alternating dominant parties with a clear right-wing orientation: the ODS and the CSSD, which had a prime minister's office, a share of more than 50% in the government and their coalition partners were smaller political parties. The second stage since 2010 is characterized by the weakening of the dominant parties and the emergence of more proportional government coalitions, where the strongest parties in the coalitions have less than a 50% share in the governing seats. The third final stage since 2017 is characterized by the arrival of a new dominant party: ANO gaining the position of prime minister, and for the first time by the formation of only a two-member government coalition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on portfolio allocation generally recognizes proportionality as the norm for distributing cabinet seats in coalition governments. However, more recent studies have been increasingly concerned with the value or salience of different ministerial portfolios, as an access to explaining deviations from the proportionality norm. Although significant progress has been made in the study of coalition governments and portfolio allocation in Eastern Europe, there is still a gap between the data and research available for this region, compared to Western Europe. The article aims to fill a part of this gap by conducting a case study on portfolio allocation in post-communist Romania, particularly focused on the preference for defense and foreign affairs portfolios. Thus, I study the data from 22 coalition governments in Romania, between 1992 and 2020. The article examines the assertion that, while proportionality remains the norm for Romanian coalition governments, the second most important coalition partner is regularly rewarded with either the defense or foreign affairs ministry. In the end, I explore new opportunities for further research based on the findings, and future contributions to the debate on the allocation of foreign affairs and defense portfolios in Eastern Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the RepResent Voter Panel Survey conducted in Belgium since the 2019 Federal elections, we investigate the relationship between affective polarization and voters' coalition preferences, in the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Results confirm a strict negative link between affective polarization and preferences for coalitions in general. Such result is robust to different types of coalitions, in terms of number and size of parties, as well as the ideological position of voters. However, we also show how the negative effect of affective polarization can be moderated if the coalition includes the voter's in-party. Overall, our results help better understanding the political consequences of affective polarization in a multiparty setting.

Getting a new government together in Germany requires building a coalition. The process for doing so has evolved, becoming more institutionalized but remaining part of informal politics. Looking closely at the coalition building in 2021 shows that its organizational structure was vertically slimmer and horizontally more differentiated than in previous years. The role of parliamentary actors was more pronounced than before, and parliamentary organization was mirrored throughout it. Yet the strong inclusion of the Länder (party) perspectives prevailed, making coalition building a multi-level task. While the process in 2021 had more procedural transparency than before, its content remained largely out of public sight. At defined steps, party approval was gathered through formal votes. Whether the established account of better personal trust among the involved partners is more than a nice narrative remains to be seen in the analysis of the coalition's governing practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 2021 local government elections, the ANC lost electoral power to opposition political parties to govern Tshwane, Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni. In these three metropolitan municipalities, no single party received majority votes to solely constitute a municipal government. These hung municipalities presented an opportunity for political parties to canvass one another in order to form co-governing coalitions. In this article, we argue that the political parties' policy agendas and governing principles are diametrically opposed to each other and, therefore, should they decide to go into coalition government, these differing party policy agendas and principles will hamper the delivery of service. Therefore, are political parties lobbying for coalitions solely to weaken the ANC as the dominant party or to improve service delivery? It is against this backdrop that this paper examines the efficacy of coalition governments as a solution to electorally divided governments in contemporary South Africa, using Ekurhuleni, Johannesburg and Tshwane as case studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does globalization affect politics? One of the most controversial aspects of globalization is offshoring, when manufacturing operations and business functions move abroad. Although voters generally dislike offshoring, it remains unclear how moving jobs abroad impacts democratic elections. Using a difference-in-differences estimation strategy, the author finds that incumbent government parties lose more votes in municipalities where a local plant moved production abroad between elections than in municipalities that did not experience such an event. The result holds across various time periods, different incumbent parties and diverse types of elections. In both national and regional elections, voters punish incumbent government parties when a local firm moves production abroad. Incumbent parties' vote shares fall as the number of jobs lost due to offshoring increases. In multiparty governments, voters disproportionately punish the largest coalition party for offshoring. The results of an original survey administered in Spain verify the importance of offshoring for voters' retrospective evaluations of incumbents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rally 'round the flag effect is a well-known phenomenon in the nexus between public opinion and international relations. This phenomenon has been well studied for the US. It has not been studied extensively for multiparty coalition systems. This study analyses the effect of a diplomatic crisis on the popularity of the Prime Minister of the Netherlands. It makes three key contributions to the literature on the rally effect. Firstly, it considers the effect of a diplomatic incident on the popularity of the head of government in a parliamentary system with coalition government. Secondly, it considers the effect of this incident on both the Prime Minister and the Vice Prime Minister who come from different parties. Thirdly, it employs a matching quasi-experimental design to get a better grip on the causal relationship between an international conflict and the support for government leaders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The resurgence of radical and populist parties has stimulated renewed discussions about the resilience of parliamentary democracy in Europe. This work contributes to this debate by analysing the extent to which positive parliamentarism, the prime minister's parliamentary dissolution powers, the government's power to table votes of confidence and the majority requirements for votes of no confidence serve as 'shock absorbers' moderating the effect of ideological polarisation in European parliaments. Fitting several Cox Proportional Hazards models to data for 752 cabinets from 28 European democracies between 1945 and 2019, the well-established finding that the restrictiveness of the constructive vote of no confidence mitigates the destabilising effect of strong extreme parties on non-electoral cabinet replacements is confirmed. More counter-intuitively, the absence of positive parliamentarism reduces the risk of non-electoral cabinet replacements when ideologically extreme parties are strong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When coalition leaders have powers to call a vote of confidence, they can invoke the threat of government resignation or early elections, and raise other actors' costs of voting down the government. In this paper, this insight is applied to coalition replacements. The procedure, argued here, allows leaders to reduce their risk of losing office between elections by (i) managing the coalition's cohesion and (ii) denying parliament the option of replacing the government without intervening elections. Premiers, moreover, can be expected to use these powers for partisan benefit, protecting primarily their own rather than their coalition partners' incumbency status. To test this expectation, a novel measure of vote of confidence powers is applied to the analysis of coalition replacement risks in 20 European democracies. The results show that premiers with extensive confidence powers significantly reduce their risk of replacement between elections while their coalition partners do not benefit equally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines one arena of decision-making in cabinet government: cabinet committees. It assesses the relationship between the composition of cabinets – their party make-up – and the structure of cabinet committees. Cabinet committees are groups of ministers tasked with specific policy or coordination responsibilities and can be important mechanisms of policymaking and cabinet management. Thus, the structure of committees informs our understanding of how cabinets differ in their distributions of policy influence among ministers and parties, a central concern in parliamentary government. We investigate two such dimensions: collegiality – interaction among ministers – and collectivity, the (de)centralization of influence. We find that cabinet committees in coalitions are significantly more collegial, on average, than single-party cabinets, though this is driven by minority coalitions. At the same time, influence within cabinet committees is less collectively distributed in most types of coalitions than in single-party cabinets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much recent research on coalitions and policy‐making in parliamentary democracies requires high‐quality data on the strength of legislative institutions. In this article, I introduce a new index of committee policing strength which improves on existing measures in important ways. I specify key index parameters using a binary rooted tree model and engage human coders to score formal rules. I obtain a novel time series of committee policing strength in 17 western and eastern European democracies since 1945. I validate the new estimates through convergent validation and discuss ways in which the new index contributes to future work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent empirical studies show that winning or losing an intra-party decision affects party members' attitudes and behavior concerning their party. This paper builds on these findings and examines how political parties can narrow this intra-party winner-loser gap. More specifically, it argues that the gap in attitudes and behavior of party members is influenced by how the outcome of a decision is justified. A survey experiment conducted among two Flemish parties examines the effect of winning or losing the decision of government participation and the moderating impact of focusing on a specific set of a party's goals and negative references to other parties. Results show a negative effect of focusing on a specific set of a party's goals on the level of decision acceptance but this effect does not spill over to other potential attitudinal or intentional behavioral reactions including party and membership satisfaction, support for the decision-making process, activity within the party, leaving the party, and casting a deviant vote. In addition, no moderating impact is found for negative references to other parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the parliamentary elections in Portugal (held on October 6, 2019) the Socialist Party won with more than 37% of the votes. Such a convincing result was predicted by political observers after four years of socialists in power and the obvious success in overcoming the economic crisis. The party has good chances to create a stable minority government in alliance with other leftist forces – and in fact repeat the scenario of previous legislature, which lasted the entire term allotted to it by the Constitution after elections in 2015.