Making and Breaking Governments: Cabinets and Legislatures in Parliamentary Democracies

by Edited by Michael Laver , Kenneth A. Shepsle

• ISBN13: 9780521432450
• ISBN10: 0521432456
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1996-01-26
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

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.

Table of Contents

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, 1992-93

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.