Coalition Governance Patterns across Western Europe

Abstract

We here summarize and compare the empirical results found by our country authors, focusing on the coalition life cycle in seventeen countries. The chapter starts with a description of the changes that have occurred during the past decades in the party systems of Western Europe, and some institutional rules surrounding government formation and duration. We then turn to the comparing patterns of government formation across countries, showing that coalitions constitute almost 70 per cent of the cabinets in Western Europe, and that the Scandinavian countries have been dominated by minority cabinets. Focusing on the coalition governance stage, we analyse the variation in the use of different control mechanisms across countries, for example showing that many coalition governments draft extensive contracts to control their partners in cabinet. The comparative data we present also shows that such agreements have become longer over time. Focusing on the last stage of the life cycle, we show that in a majority of countries, it is more common that a cabinet terminates early than serves the full term. There has also been a clear trend towards more government instability, even though the variation in cabinet duration across countries is large. We conclude this chapter by returning to the three coalition governance models described earlier in this volume, classifying the countries as being closer to one of the three models, based on a number of indicators and the information provided by our country experts.