Minority Governments in Parliamentary Democracies

Abstract

Minority cabinets account for about 35% of all governments in 15 parliamentary democracies since 1945. Conventional explanations associate minority government formation with political crises, instability, polarization, factionalization, and failures of interparty bargaining. Such explanations are tested and found lacking in empirical support. Instead, minority governments are explained as rational solutions under specified conditions. Minority cabinets form when even oppositional parties can influence parliamentary legislation, and when government participation is likely to be a liability in future elections. This rationalist explanation receives substantial empirical support in tests against competing hypotheses. The results suggest important modifications to theories of government and coalition formation.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 214 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.