Major Cabinet Research Articles

Canada: Political Developments and Data in 2023

AbstractThere was no federal election in 2023 but change seemed to be in the air, as the official opposition Conservatives, under their new leader, made major gains in the polls and took a significant lead over the Liberals. Controversy over foreign interference in Canadian politics generated controversy, and foreign policy issues had an uncharacteristic impact on Canadian politics. The Liberal government responded with a major Cabinet shuffle, while by‐elections left the party positions in the House of Commons essentially unchanged.

Preliminary Insights into the Formation of Minimal Winning Coalitions in Western Europe

Coalition governments have prompted a stream of prominent research since the birth of modern political science. Several studies have been performed on the lifecycles of cabinets, focusing particularly on their formation and duration. The first investigations into such issues were carried out using game theoretic approaches. In their ground-breaking works, William Riker and Lawrence Dodd argued that office-seeking outcomes, i.e. minimal winning coalitions, are more frequent and stable than other cabinet types. However, more recent research suggests that this proposition is disputable. By relying on an original multilevel dataset on West European cabinets, this study examines the actual rationality of minimal winning coalitions by asking whether they have been more recurrent than different government formulae, as predicted by game theory. The analysis finds that such coalitions have not been formed more frequently than non-rational cabinet solutions, i.e., oversized majority cabinets. In addition, the article showcases that minimal winning coalitions may occur in both polarised and less polarised West European political systems. By shedding light on office-based game theoretic propositions and their observable empirical records, this study contributes to the scientific examination of a fundamental stage of democratic governance in Western Europe.

Presidential Activism and Success in Foreign and Defence Policy: A Study of Portugal’s Premier-Presidential Regime

This article investigates presidents’ foreign and defence policy activism under Portugal’s premier-presidential system from 1982 to 2021. First, the article discusses the extant literature on intra-executive conflicts in semi-presidential systems. Then, it provides an overview of Portugal’s experience with semi-presidentialism since 1976 and the powers of the Portuguese president. The third section describes all significant foreign and defence policy presidential interventions from 1982 to 2021 that resulted in disputes with the prime minister. This section estimates presidents’ and prime ministers’ ex-ante preferences over the issues at stake. We verify which preference is closest to the ex-post content of the policy implemented – if it is the president’s, it counts as a presidential win. We identify the formal and informal means by which presidents acted. Informal means are essentially going public tactics. In addition, we inductively pin down the necessary and sufficient conditions under which presidents intervene and succeed. The article’s main findings are two: first, the president’s second term, absence of a strictly unified executive and a majority cabinet are separately necessary but jointly sufficient for presidential interventions to occur; second, formal powers are a necessary but insufficient condition for presidential victory. Finally, we speculate on the policy, institutional, and electoral consequences of presidential activism.

Something old, something new? Votes of confidence, parliamentary dissolution, election timing, and judicial review under the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022

ABSTRACT Westminster ratified the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act in 2022. It provides that: (a) PMs’ ability to dissolve parliament through the monarch is restored. (b) Writs for general elections are bestowed upon the executive. (c) Some applications of the royal prerogative are non-justiciable. This article presents a critical summary of the history and content of the act, and it discusses its implications. (1) The repeal of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act re-introduces flexibility vis-à-vis election timing. (2) The DCPA implies a transfer of dissolution authority from parliament back to governments. (3) The elimination of statutory confidence motions implies a return to the convention-based confidence procedure. This article argues that the bill rekindles cabinet supremacy. (i) Elections can be more easily strategically scheduled to the ruling party’s advantage. (ii) PMs can substantiate the employment of confidence votes with the threat of dissolution again. (iii) Leaders might capitalise on the absence of judicial review to further their agenda or elude the test of confidence. Altogether, the bill reshapes the relationship between the government and the legislature by deepening executive dominance to pre-FTPA levels and perhaps even higher, given the non-justiciability clause, at least as long as elections produce single-party majority cabinets.

Stability of minority governments and the role of support agreements

How does the minority status of a government influence cabinet duration? This article analyzes the influence of minority status on cabinet duration by differentiating between different types of minority governments. Minority governments are not in general less stable than majority ones but different types of minority governments have different effects on cabinet duration. The main theoretical argument is that substantive minority governments without support agreements are less stable than majority governments, while contract minority governments that rely on written support agreements with non-cabinet parties which secure majority support in parliament are as stable as majority ones. Drawing on survival analysis, the effect of different minority cabinet types on cabinet stability is tested for 471 cabinets in 30 countries from 1977 until 2019. The results show that only minority governments without support partnerships have a substantially higher risk of early government termination than majority cabinets. The findings of this analysis have important implications for the coalition theory and the evaluation of minority governments.

Small in Size but Powerful in Parliament? The Legislative Performance of Minority Governments

Minority cabinets do not control a legislative majority and are thus vulnerable to parliamentary defeat. Consequently, the legislative performance of minority cabinets has been often brought into question. In this article, I argue that minority cabinets do not perform generally worse than majority cabinets. I hypothesize that only substantive minority cabinets which do not enjoy formal majority support by noncabinet parties work significantly worse than majority ones. The empirical analysis is based on a large new dataset that combines original information on minority‐cabinet attributes and legislative data for 197 governments in 21 parliamentary democracies since the 1980s. The results of a fractional logit analysis support my theoretical expectations and show that not all types of minority cabinets perform worse than majority governments. My findings provide a comparative insight into the functioning of minority governments and have important implications for our understanding of legislative politics, party competition, and policymaking.

Electoral incentives to coalition formation in multiparty presidential systems

Coalition theories of presidential regimes have frequently assumed that coalition formation is a mostly post-electoral phenomenon. We challenge this view by showing that pre-electoral bargaining shapes to a substantial extent minority presidents’ disposition to cooperate with the legislature by forming a majority cabinet. Examining a dataset of pre- and post-electoral coalitions from 18 Latin American countries, we find that majority coalition cabinets are more likely to occur when elected presidents form pre-electoral coalitions (PECs), to the extent that pre-electoral agreements create stronger incentives for cooperation, by relying on a broader set of rewards than any post-electoral agreement. Moreover, we find that the likelihood of majority coalition formation increases as the share of PEC seats increases, thus reducing the need to engage in post-electoral bargaining. Our findings carry important implications for the study of cabinet formation in presidential regimes by introducing pre-electoral agreements as a key determinant of cabinet formation.

Do Minority Cabinets Govern More Flexibly and Inclusively? Evidence from Germany

A widespread view in political science is that minority cabinets govern more flexibly and inclusively, more in line with a median-oriented and 'consensual' vision of democracy. Yet there is only little empirical evidence for it. We study legislative coalition-building in the German state of North-Rhine-Westphalia, which was ruled by a minority government between 2010 and 2012. We compare the inclusiveness of legislative coalitions under minority and majority cabinets, based on 1028 laws passed in the 1985–2017 period, and analyze in detail the flexibility of legislative coalition formation under the minority government. Both quantitative analyses are complemented with brief case studies of specific legislation. We find, first, that the minority cabinet did not rule more inclusively. Second, the minority cabinet’s legislative flexibility was fairly limited; to the extent that it existed, it follows a pattern that cannot be explained on the basis of the standard spatial model with policy-seeking parties.

Dimensions of Politics in the Czech Republic

This article deals with the dimensions of politics in the Czech Republic since the state’s establishment in 1993 until 2017. It utilizes MPs’ votes by roll call in the Chamber of Deputies, which is the polity’s centre of gravity. The analysis suggests that two principal drivers shape Czech politics – an ideological (socio-economic left vs right) dimension and an institutional (government vs opposition) division. Due to the changing forms of the ruling cabinets, the dimensionality oscillates between unidimensional and two-dimensional (with a specific phase of as many as three relevant dimensions between 1998–2002). Periods of right-oriented majority cabinets result in a unidimensional competition composed of a merged ideological dimension and an institutional division. Stages of left-oriented majority cabinets ideologically split the opposition camp and highlight the unique role of the socio-economic dimension separated from the still dominant institutional division. During the rule of both left- and right-oriented minority cabinets, political competition is mainly driven by the ideological cleavage since the conventional institutional patterns diminish.

Organizing to rule: structure, agent, and explaining presidential management styles in Africa

ABSTRACTRecent studies of comparative presidentialism have emphasized the importance of informal relationships between presidents and other political actors in explaining how presidents build governing coalitions. What has generally been under-investigated in the literature is how the characteristics of “presidents as agents” impact how they interact with other political actors – in particular, how presidents relate to their cabinets in terms of turnover and inclusiveness. We hypothesize that presidents who were former rebel leaders will behave very differently from presidents that do not have such backgrounds. To test our hypotheses, we collected data from 36 countries that are classified either as presidential or semi-presidential systems in Africa with 93 individual presidential administrations from 1990 to 2009. We found that presidents who were former rebel leaders were less likely to have major cabinet turnovers than other presidents. However, former rebel leaders did not have less politically inclusive cabinets (at least in partisan terms) but did have less ethnically inclusive cabinets than presidents with other backgrounds. The results suggest that agent characteristics, that is, the previous experiences of the president as a decision maker, are as important as the structural constraints he or she faces.

What's an Energy Manager to Do?

So, the new U.S. administration is (mostly) in place and many major cabinet and sub-cabinet positions have been filled. Let's assess the current conditions. The person appointed to head the U.S. De...

Public opinion feedback between elections, and stability of single-party majority governments

Why would a mid-term slump in public support destabilize a single-party government with a secure majority in parliament? We argue here that the answer can be found in the internal politics of the government party. Faced with declining government popularity, ordinary legislators in the government party, who above all fear loss of their seats, may withdraw support from the party leadership and thereby destabilize the government. We set out an informal model that suggests how, if public opinion shocks have different implications for different classes of politician in the government there may be well-specified circumstances in which these can destabilize a single party majority cabinet. We assess these theoretical conclusions using public opinion data from Japan.

A Special Majority Cabinet? Supported Minority Governance and Parliamentary Behavior in the Netherlands

AbstractThis article studies how the presence of the supported minority government Rutte-I affected patterns of legislative behavior. On the basis of the literature on minority cabinets, one would expect that during supported minority cabinets parliamentary parties cooperate more often across the division between coalition and opposition than under multiparty majority cabinet rule. Examining almost 30,000 parliamentary votes between 1994 and 2012, this study finds that on a host of indicators of coalition-opposition-cooperation, there was less cooperation “across the aisle” during the Rutte-I cabinet than during any cabinet before it. We explain this with reference to the encompassing nature of the support agreement as well as the impact of the cabinets’ ideological composition.

Trabalhadores e associativismo urbano no governo Jânio Quadros em São Paulo (1953-1954)

O artigo analisa a ação das organizações populares com base territorial, em especial aquelas vinculadas às demandas da população dos bairros operários, durante o curto governo municipal de Jânio Quadros na cidade de São Paulo, político eleito com forte apoio desses movimentos. Partimos, para isso, de uma análise ainda inicial de um corpus documental composto por mais de 250 processos, reunindo cartas, pedidos, petições, solicitações e abaixo-assinados encaminhados por Sociedades Amigos de Bairro ao gabinete do prefeito de São Paulo durante a gestão de Quadros nos anos de 1953 e 1954. Nesse sentido, o artigo procura avançar na compreensão do sistema político populista, ressaltando o papel da dimensão urbana na construção das estratégias de trabalhadores e lideranças políticas.

Een bijzonder meerderheidskabinet?

This article studies how the presence of the supported minority government Rutte-I affected patterns of legislative behaviour. Based on the literature on minority cabinets one would expect that during supported minority cabinets parliamentary parties cooperate more often across the division between coalition and opposition than under multiparty majority cabinet rule. Examining almost 30,000 parliamentary votes between 1994 and 2012, this study finds that on a host of indicators of coalition- opposition-cooperation, there was less cooperation ‘across the aisle’ during the Rutte-I cabinet than during any cabinet before it. We explain this with reference to the comprehensive nature of the support agreement as well as the impact of the cabinets’ ideological composition.

Factions with clout: Presidential cabinet coalition and policy in the Uruguayan parliament

We investigate bill passage by party factions in Uruguay and show that those joining cabinet coalitions earn policy influence. The policy advantage of coalition is therefore not collected by the president alone, as often implied: partners acquire clout in law-making and use it to pass bills of their own and to strike deals with outside factions. Analysis of all bills initiated between 1985 and 2005 reveals that the odds of passing a bill sponsored alone by a majority cabinet faction was about 0.5, up from about 0.15 otherwise. Contingent upon the cabinet status of factions involved, the odds of co-sponsored bills conform well to patterns expected by a view that policy rewards are a fundamental part of the politics of coalition in presidentialism.

Ideological Fractionalization and the International Conflict Behavior of Parliamentary Democracies1

Past studies examining the international conflict behavior of parliamentary democracies have reported inconsistent findings and produced some empirical puzzles. One of the main puzzles is that, despite a strong theoretical basis for expecting coalitional majority cabinets to be less conflict prone than single-party majorities, most studies found no difference in their conflict behavior. Still others report coalitional governments to be more conflict prone than single-party ones. In this study, I show that these empirical inconsistencies can be resolved once we take into account the ideological composition of the cabinet. The main contention is that relatively marginal coalitional partners may have a disproportionate influence when the government faces risky decisions, such as the initiation of international disputes. The key lies in their greater bargaining leverage in intra-coalitional politics, which is subsequently reflected in their influence over foreign conflict decisions. More generally, this study shows how different degrees of ideological diversity or cohesion abate and/or accentuate a state's conflict behavior. The expectations are tested empirically, and the findings more robustly predict the conflict behavior of parliamentary regimes than do the results of previous research.

Factions with Clout: Presidential Cabinet Coalition and Policy in the Uruguayan Parliament

We investigate bill passage between party factions in Uruguay and show they earn policy influence by joining coalition cabinets. The policy advantage of coalition is therefore not collected by the president alone, partners acquire clout in lawmaking. A faction should push legislation alone only if in a majority cabinet or else trade votes, preferably among those with resources to secure passage. Analysis of all bills initiated between 1985 and 2005 reveals that the odds of passing a bill sponsored alone by a majority cabinet faction was between (.4, .6), up from (.1, .2) otherwise. And contingent upon the cabinet status of factions involved, the odds of co-sponsored bills conform well to patterns expected by a view that policy rewards are a fundamental part of the politics of coalition in presidentialism.

Electoral Systems, Party Systems

The article provides a systematic test of the consequences of electoral rules for the format of party systems and the frequency of single-party majority cabinets. The test is based on Lijphart's 1994 dataset (extended to 1 November 2002), but excludes some of his cases and introduces an additional indicator of number of parties. Thanks to these changes in research design, the variance explained by multivariate regression is much higher than Lijphart's results, especially in respect of elective parties. However, the post-1990 data reflect a decline in the predictive power of the main independent variable (`effective' threshold). In explaining this decline, the author argues that account should be taken of a previously neglected factor, i.e. the growing destructuration of Western parties and party systems since the late 1980s. Indeed, entering an indicator of such a process into regressions (total net volatility) compensates for all the threshold's lost explanatory power, thus suggesting that structural consolidation is a crucial condition for the operation of electoral systems.

Intergovernmental Arrangements in Spanish and Swiss Federalism: the Impact of Power-Concentrating and Power-Sharing Executives on Intergovernmental Institutionalization

This article argues that the mode of decision making within federal sub-units affects the organizational patterns of intergovernmental relations (IGR) through which regional actors engage in cross-jurisdictional co-operation. In a nutshell, majoritarian executive-legislative relations tend to weaken the institutionalization of intergovernmental arrangements (IGAs), while power-sharing executive-legislative relations tend to facilitate it. This is, first, because one-party majority cabinets tend to increase ideological differences between the sub-units. Secondly, complete government alternations—which are less likely given coalition or oversized governments—strongly alter actors' interest constellations over time, thereby increasing the costs of maintaining stable intergovernmental structures. Thirdly, the heavy impact of a potential electoral loss induces politicians to shift the blame to the other governments, thereby undermining the potential for cross-boundary co-operation. Finally, autonomy losses caused by intergovernmental co-operation are higher for parties which govern alone when compared to coalition governments. Based on a typology of power-limiting democracies, which distinguishes federal systems along their respective executive-legislative relations, Spain and Switzerland are selected as cases. The analysis indicates that the much more power-concentrating executive-legislative relations within the Spanish regions and the power-sharing executive-legislative relations within the Swiss cantons help to explain why Spanish regional actors resort to ad hoc co-ordination within a weakly institutionalized environment instead of establishing strong IGAs as the Swiss regional actors.