Making and Breaking Governments: Cabinets and Legislatures in Parliamentary Democracies (Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions)

Cambridge University Press, 1/26/1996
EAN 9780521432450, ISBN10: 0521432456

Hardcover, 316 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English

Making and Breaking Governments offers a theoretical argument about how parliamentary parties form governments, deriving from the political and social context of such government formation its generic sequential process. Based on their policy preferences, and their beliefs about what policies will be forthcoming from different conceivable governments, parties behave strategically in the game in which government portfolios are allocated. The authors construct a mathematical model of allocation of ministerial portfolios, formulated as a noncooperative game, and derive equilibria. They also derive a number of empirical hypotheses about outcomes of this game, which they then test with data drawn from most of the postwar European parliamentary democracies. The book concludes with a number of observations about departmentalistic tendencies and centripetal forces in parliamentary regimes.

Series editors' preface
Acknowledgements
Part I. The Context
1. Theory, institutions, and government formation
2. The social context of government formation
3. The government formation process
Part II. The Model
4. Government equilibrium
5. Strong parties
Part III. Empirical Investigations
6. Two cases
Germany, 1987
Ireland, 1992–3
7. Theoretical implications, data, and operationalization
8. Exploring the model
a comparative perspective
9. A multivariate investigation of portfolio allocation
Part IV. Applications, Extensions, and Conclusions
10. Party systems and cabinet stability
11. Making the model more realistic
12. Party politics and administrative reform
13. Governments and parliaments
Bibliography.