Single-party Majority Governments Research Articles

The BJP's Drive for Hegemony

ABSTRACT: In 2014, the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party captured national power in the world's largest democracy. Under its controversial new leader, Narendra Modi, the BJP established India's first single-party majority government since 1984 and became the only party besides the Indian National Congress to accomplish this feat since the country won independence, in 1947. In the 2019 general election, despite a disappointing economic record, growing communal strife, and disruptive policy decisions, the BJP increased its vote share and seats in Parliament. The victory emboldened the party to further its longstanding agenda to transform India's secular constitutional democracy into a de facto Hindu nation. Modi remained popular throughout India's terrible pandemic. Now, with a return of high economic growth and the unity of opposition parties in question, most observers expect him to win the 2024 general election, which concludes in June.

An Analysis of Article 356 in Coalition Era of Indian Politics

Article 356 of the Indian Constitution has often been subjected to the partisan use by the successive Central governments since 1950. However, the shift from a single-party majority government to a multi-party coalition governments in national politics since early 1990s has largely influenced the scope and intent of invoking this Article. The coalition government’s survival with the backing of regional parties has indeed been a major factor in diminishing the incentives for the arbitrary and frequent invocation of Article 356. In this backdrop, the present article explains how the political change brought about by the coalition governments since 1990s has created the conditions for restraining Central transgressions on state governance, and also discusses the prospects of rationally employing this Article in the changing political conditions of the country. The argument of this paper is that—although the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party to national political dominance since the 2014 general elections has raised apprehension about the move towards centralised federalism, it is not likely to upset the current pattern of restrained use of this Article.

The Rise of Developmental Statism in India: Focusing on the Resurgence of State-owned Enterprises in the Modi Government's Infrastructure Development Strategy

This paper explores how the Narendra Modi administration has used state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to achieve its infrastructure development goals. After implementing global neoliberal policies in 1991, India had reduced the state's role and promoted private sector activities. However, these reforms failed to attract private sector investment, which led to a decline in growth. This decline in economic growth and slow progress in infrastructure became major political issues after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. India witnessed a significant political shift in 2014 with the election of BJP-led Narendra Modi government, marking the first single-party majority government in three decades. The Modi administration identified infrastructure development as a critical factor in reviving India's growth story. It embraced what I term 'Developmental Statism' by extensively utilizing SOEs as 'developmental means' to implement crucial infrastructure developmental projects. India’s this developmental strategy led to the creation of new SOEs and an expansion of the existing ones. The paper also highlights that the resurgence of SOEs in the Indian economy doesn't oppose the market economy. Instead, it facilitates the market economy by promoting public-private partnerships.

Minor parties and employment relations at the 2023 election

After three years of the first single-party majority government of the Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) era, the 2023 general election in Aotearoa New Zealand will result in a return to the historical norm: a government containing a major party with one or more minor political parties in a formal coalition, or a minority government relying on minor parties for support. Thus, the employment relations policies, the priorities and the power of these minor parties becomes important for assessing the likely trajectory of employment relations policy (ER) in the coming three years. Indeed, recent polling suggests that minor parties will have an unusually large degree of influence. At the time of writing, opinion polls suggest that the combined support for the minor parties is at levels not seen since 2002, with support for the two major parties correspondingly low. This article analyses the positions of the various minor parties likely to be in parliament after the election and speculates on how these parties might seek to influence the employment relations agenda of the next government.

Parliamentary Opposition in Conditions of a Single-party Majority Government – A Few Remarks on the Basis of Polish Political Experience

<p>Zasadniczy problem badawczy zarysowany został wokół pytania o efektywność działań opozycji parlamentarnej w sytuacji konkurencji z homogeniczną większością parlamentarną. Odnosząca się do niego hipoteza badawcza zakłada, że skuteczność działań opozycji parlamentarnej w takich warunkach uzależniona jest od strategii stosowanych przez obydwie strony politycznego sporu. Strategie te zbudowane są zaś na dominującym sposobie postrzegania przeciwnika politycznego.</p>

Republika Czeska: Wyrok Sądu Konstytucyjnego Republiki Czeskiej z dnia 12 grudnia 2017 r. w sprawie o numerze 11/17

The Mixed Member Proportional electoral system introduced in New Zealand in 1993 resulted in major changes to the political system. In a multi-party environment, government formation required cooperation between different political parties. Hence, single-party majority governments have been replaced by coalition governments, and support contracts emerged as a new form of an agreement made between parties in addition to or instead of the traditional coalition agreement. This book discusses coalition politics and government formation in New Zealand after 1993. It argues that support contracts, as an innovative form of cooperation between political parties in the government formation process question traditional government-opposition and minority government-majority government divides.

Conditional Accountability for the Economy, Insecurity, and Corruption Across Latin American Party Systems

ABSTRACTThe association between how citizens perceive economic performance, insecurity, or corruption and how they evaluate the president varies systematically across Latin American countries and within them over time. In particular, while presidential popularity reflects these outcomes in the average Latin American country, survey data from 2006–17 confirm that the connection between government performance and presidential approval is generally stronger when unfragmented party systems or single-party majority governments make assessments of political responsibility easier. While these results suggest that the region’s citizens do not blindly blame the president for outcomes where political responsibility should be shared, they also remind us that there are many countries in the region where fragmented party systems weaken the conditions for effective political accountability.

Right-wing populism and feminist politics: The case of Law and Justice in Poland

This article disentangles the complexity of right-wing populism and feminist politics using an original framework based on inputs (representative claims) and outputs (policies) to examine a Polish case. In 2015, the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS) formed a single-party majority government led by a female prime minister after winning the elections. PiS is ideologically conservative, promotes traditional and national values and is supported by the Catholic Church. Additionally, it is hostile towards what it calls ‘gender-ideology’ and is reluctant to implement feminist policies. This article also reveals that PiS represents conservative women’s interests and advocates an aspect of conservative feminism, therefore possessing a duality in its claims and policies. Overall, this article draws inferences about the nexus between social conservatism, populism and feminism, and thus seeks to contribute to the scholarly literature by examining a timely issue against the backdrop of rising populism, illiberalism and anti-gender campaigns.

Parties, governments and the integration of immigrants

ABSTRACT Integration of immigrants into the labor market is a sizeable policy concern for developed democracies. This article argues that government type influences immigrants’ labor market outcomes. Since immigrant integration constitutes a multidimensional policy space, differences in party preferences and the dynamics of intragovernmental and legislative bargaining make it hard for coalition and minority governments to implement effective labor market integration policies. Consequently, single-party majority governments are better able to foster the labor market integration of immigrants. Fixed-effects estimations in a panel of OECD countries provide evidence in favor of this argument. A single-party majority government reduces the employment gap between the foreign and the native-born population with several percentage points.

Responsibility attribution for corruption scandals

ABSTRACTThis paper studies the effect of the type of government on responsibility attribution for corruption scandals. Most studies on corruption voting have assumed that voters punish all kinds of governments. This article challenges this assumption by distinguishing between two types of governments: single-party majority governments and minority/coalition governments. This hypothesis is tested using data from the 2011 Spanish local elections. Our findings reveal that the effect of coalition governments on corruption voting is not statistically different than majority ones. However, when we differentiate between welfare-enhancing and welfare decreasing corruption, we find that welfare-decreasing corruption has a clear negative effect on the electoral performance of the mayor’s party when it impacts single-party majority governments, but not when the mayor needs the support of other parties (minority or coalition governments).

Government fragmentation and fiscal deficits: a regression discontinuity approach

Some electoral systems favor strong single-party majority governments, while others the formation of coalitions. Having one or the other is likely to affect economic outcomes in ways that are unintended when the electoral rules are approved. In this paper, we show that government fragmentation has large fiscal implications. We also provide results that have a causal interpretation. Using a panel of Spanish municipalities, along with a close-elections regression discontinuity design, we find that single-party majorities run budgets with a 1.5% point larger primary surplus than that of coalitions. In addition, we show that lower deficits are driven mainly by single-party majority governments’ capacity to raise more revenues. These findings are robust to several model specifications.

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.

After the Election: Where Now?

After the Election: Where Now?

The Economic Vote in Presidential Systems

This paper analyzes the impact of the economy on Latin American presidential elections between 1990 and 2010. My results demonstrate that the incumbent’s ideology and the political context condition this impact, and that, therefore, the degree of accountability for the economy varies between countries and presidential administrations. The economy has only affected the electoral performance of centrist incumbents, suggesting that voters put more emphasis on non-economic issues when they evaluate the administration of left- and right-wing presidents. Secondly, the economy has only affected the electoral performance of incumbents in contexts of single-party majority governments. This indicates that Latin American voters do not hold presidents accountable for the economy when his or her party depends on the cooperation of allies or the opposition to govern.

Constraining or enabling? The effects of government composition on international commitments

ABSTRACTThe effect of government composition on the ability to make international commitments is an ongoing debate in the literature. Using the veto players and clarity of responsibility theories, I introduce a nuanced understanding of government composition that considers the different types of multiparty governments and the degree of policy incongruence inside them. I test the effects of these variables on the intensity of international commitments with a post-Cold War events dataset of parliamentary European governments. The results of multilevel analyses show that oversized coalitions make more intense commitments than single-party majority governments through responsibility diffusion, though neither approach explains the commitment behavior of minimum winning coalitions. Finally, commitment intensity increases for minority coalitions if their ideological setup leaves the parliamentary opposition fragmented. Ultimately, a government's arithmetic and ideological composition conditions the intensity of its international commitments. I also find that European Union membership has no significant effect on commitment intensity.

In Search of Successful Reform: The Politics of Opposition and Consensus in OECD Parliamentary Democracies

Why are some governments able to undertake controversial policy reforms and others are not? Conventional wisdom argues that single-party majority governments are best able to implement reforms because there are fewer veto actors within the government that can block the reforms. However, these accounts fail to consider the veto power of societal actors and particularly of trade unions, which can stall reform even in the presence of a unified executive. This paper argues that controversial reforms require broad societal and, consequently, political consensus, which are easier to achieve under minority governments or governments of broad coalitions. Evidence from 22 OECD parliamentary democracies over 35 years shows that minority and large coalition governments have been more successful in reducing social security contributions and pensions than narrower majority governments. This is especially true in countries where trade unions are militant and often resort to industrial action.

On the Determinants of Fiscal Adjustment

This paper examines the role that fragmentation of the government's fiscal policymaking process plays in determining the size (or performance) of deficit reductions during periods of fiscal adjustment. The results show that the fiscal target is effective for reducing public deficits during periods of fiscal adjustment in European countries. However, in non-European countries the political leadership of single-party majority governments is the key determinant of deficit reduction.

So What Went Wrong with the Electoral System? The 2010 Election Result and the Debate About Electoral Reform

Single-member plurality is often thought to facilitate a two-party system of alternating single-party majority government. However, no party secured an overall majority in the 2010 UK election, which was followed by the formation of the first peacetime coalition government since the 1930s. This article assesses whether this outcome was a one-off occurrence or was symptomatic of longer term changes in voting patterns in the UK that have reduced the likelihood of singe party majorities. To do so it charts trends in the level of third party support and representation, the incidence of marginal seats, and bias in the treatment of the two largest parties.

Economic Performance and Political Coordination in Portugal’s ‘Dry’ Political System

We posit that sound, growth-promoting economic policy is more likely to be formulated when major political players have incentives to cooperate. Using Portugal as an arena to test this theory, we provide an in depth analysis of its policymaking environment, finding that Portuguese institutional arrangements are what we term “dry.” That is, they are not well suited to provide incentives for cooperation among actors in the policymaking process. Portugal has had difficulty sustaining economic growth in the long term. Our arguments are supported with both contextual analyses and a statistical examination, in which we find a strong link between single-party majority government and positive economic and fiscal performance. These findings have broad implications for democratic economies across the world.

Democracy and Diversion: Government Arrangements, the Economy, and Dispute Initiation

Do legislative constraints constrain or compel democratic executives’ conflict behavior during periods of economic decline? Although institutional constraints are thought to reduce democratic executives’ propensity to engage in interstate conflict, other research suggests that such constraints may provide incentives to engage in diversionary uses of force. Incorporating work from the comparative study of economic voting and cross-national research on the diversionary use of force, this article contends that government arrangements — coalition, minority, weak party cohesion — influence democratic conflict behavior by (1) shaping the extent to which the executive is held accountable for the economy and (2) determining the executive’s capacity to address the economy with legislation. Specifically, the argument presented here suggests that governing parties in coalition governments share the blame for a poor economy, reducing the likelihood that the executive initiates disputes in response to the economy. Compared to single-party majority governments with high party discipline, executives presiding over minority governments, or whose parties are plagued by a lack of cohesion, are more likely to initiate disputes when faced with poor economic conditions, because these executives are likely to face resistance to remedial economic policy. Probit analyses of the interactive effects of government arrangements and economic performance on dispute initiation among industrialized democracies, 1950—97, support the argument. The article concludes with implications for research in comparative politics and international relations, including, for example, executive—legislative relations and strategic conflict avoidance.