New Developments in the Study of Coalition Governments

This edited volume suggests promising new avenues of research in analyzing coalition politics. Written by a group of leading scholars, the book clarifies a number of concepts too often taken for granted in the existing literature, performs theoretically-driven and methodologically novel comparative studies of the effects of institutions on coalition formation, revisits old empirical puzzles, provides seminal analyses of how party leaders combine coalition governance solutions to anticipate risks pertaining to multiparty governing, and confronts coalition theories to new empirical terrains.

The first chapters clarify core concepts found in the literature, such as the distinction between positive and negative parliaments, and investigate the internal variety of important phenomena, such as early elections and caretaker cabinets. These chapters  provide new typologies and analyses of the conditions under which they are most likely to occur. The following contributions look at the effects of institutions, such as bicameralism, on coalition formation processes and outcomes. We then focus on one of the most enduring empirical puzzle in coalition theory, minority governments. One chapter provides a comprehensive analysis of the incidence, maintenance and performance of these governments that do not rely on a majority in parliament. Several other chapters of the volume, using different research strategies and angles, also revisit the old puzzle of their frequency; together these chapters constitute the richest comparative study to date on what classical coalition theories failed to predict. The final chapters of the volume provide an array of new research paths taken in coalition studies: the first of these contributions looks at coalition governance and investigates the various combinations of mutual control mechanisms set up by coalition partners; the two final chapters expand the empirical coverage of coalition studies to respectively presidential settings and the local level of government authority. The latter looks in particular at one of the major challenges of coalition politics in the 21st century, the increasingly burning question of the coalition participation or exclusion of radical, populist parties.

Building on comparative theoretical and empirical knowledge over multiparty governments to draw useful lessons and recommend new research paths in increasingly challenging times for the formation and stability of coalitions across a wide range of political settings, this volume will be of use to students and scholars interested in electoral politics, comparative institutions and governance.