GV101 Week 14

Cabinets:
Coalitions and
Single-Party Governments
 Which is Better?
This? Or this?
 Outline
1. Types of Governments
Majority, Minority
Single-party
Coalition: Minimum-winning, Surplus

2. Understanding How Governments Form

Office-seeking theory
Policy-seeking theory

3. Consequences of Coalition and Single-Party Governments

Duration
Policy-making
Accountability
Representation
 Types of Governments
Majority government
A government where the party/ies in government control/s a majority
of seats in the parliament

Minority government
A government where the party/ies in government DOES NOT/DO
NOT control a majority of seats in the parliament

Single-party government
A (minority or majority) government where 1 party has all the seats in
the cabinet

Coalition government
A (minority or majority) government where 2 or more parties have
cabinet seats
 Types of Coalition Governments

Minimum-Winning Coalition
A coalition government where there are no parties that are not required
to control a legislative majority
i.e. if one of the parties leaves the coalition, the government
will NOT control a majority of seats

Surplus Majority Coalition

A coalition government where at least one of the parties in the coalition
is not required to control a legislative majority
i.e. if that party leaves the coalition, the government will STILL
control a majority of seats
A Standard Coalition Formation Process
1. An election is held -> a proportion of seats for each party
2. If a party controls a majority of seats, it forms the government
3. If no party controls a majority of seats, the largest party (usually) is the
formateur (either by rule, or by invitation of the President/Monarch)
4. The formateur decides which government is best for its interests, and
invites its favoured coalition partner(s) to form a cabinet
5. Coalition partners negotiate over cabinet seats & portfolios
6. The government takes office (sometimes with a vote of investiture),
unless a different party can offer a better deal to the potential coalition
partners
7. If the largest party cannot form a government within a certain time (e.g.
14 days), the role of formateur shifts to the second largest party
8. If no majority coalition can be agreed within a certain period, then the
largest party is invited to form a minority government
 UK Coalition Cabinet, January 2015
Office Minister Office Minister

Prime Minister David Cameron (Con) Communities & Local Gov. Eric Pickles (Con)

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg (LD) Education Nicky Morgan (Con)

Leader of H of Commons William Hague (Con) Intern’l Development Justine Greening (Con)

Chancellor George Osborne (Con) Energy & Climate Change Ed Davey (LD)

Home Theresa May (Con) Transport Patrick McLoughlin (Con)

Foreign Affairs Philip Hammond (Con) Scotland Alistair Carmichael (LD)

Justice Chris Grayling (Con) Northern Ireland Teresa Villiers (Con)

Defence Michael Fallon (Con) Wales Stephen Crabb (Con)

Business, Innov. & Skills Vince Cable (LD) Culture, Media & Sport Sajid Javid (Con)

Work & Pensions Iain Duncan Smith (Con) Envir’t, Food & Rural Aff’s Elizabeth Truss (Con)

Health Jeremy Hunt (Con) Chief Secr. to Treasury Danny Alexander (LD)
 Gamson’s Law
Cabinet portfolios will be distributed among government parties in
proportion to the number of seats that each party contributes to the
government’s legislative majority (Gamson, 1961)

Example of the UK Con-LD coalition (with cabinet seats in May 2010 )

Party MPs % % of coalition Cabinet seats %

Cons 307 47.2 84.3 26 83.9
Lib Dems 57 8.8 15.7 5 16.1
 Theories of Coalition Formation
Office-Seeking Theory (e.g. Riker, 1962)
Assumption: Parties will try to maximise the number of cabinet seats
they can achieve
Proposition: Only minimum-winning coalitions should form, as this
minimises the amount of cabinet seats that have to be shared
between coalition partners

Policy-Seeking Theory (e.g. Axelrod, 1970)

Assumption: Parties will try to maximise their influence over policy
outcomes (get a policy agreement in a coalition which is as close as
possible to its ideal point)
Proposition: Only connected coalitions should form, between parties
that are next to each other on a policy scale, as this minimises the
likely policy disagreements between parties
Illustration of Government Formation
German Federal Election, 2009

Party Seats %
Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) 239 38.4
Social Democrats (SDP) 146 23.5
Liberals (FDP) 93 15.0
Left Party (LINKE) 76 12.2
Greens (B-90/Grüne) 68 10.9
Total 622 100.0
 Potential Governments
Parties Seats % Surplus seats
CDU/CSU+SPD+FDP+LINKE+G 622 100.0 310
CDU/CSU+SPD+FDP+LINKE 554 89.1 242
CDU/CSU+SPD+FDP+G 546 87.8 234
CDU/CSU+SPD+FDP 478 76.8 166
CDU/CSU+FDP+LINKE+G 476 76.5 164
CDU/CSU+SPD+LINKE 461 74.1 149
CDU/CSU+SPD+G 453 72.8 141
CDU/CSU+FDP+LINKE 408 65.6 96
CDU/CSU+FDP+G 400 64.3 88
CDU/CSU+SPD 385 61.9 73
SPD+FDP+LINKE+G 383 61.6 71 Minimum-
CDU/CSU+FDP 332 53.4 20 winning
CDU/CSU+LINKE 315 50.6 3 coalitions
SPD+FDP+LINKE 315 50.6 3
CDU/CSU+G 307 49.4 -5
SPD+FDP+G 307 49.4 -5
SPD+FDP 239 38.4 -73
CDU/CSU 239 38.4 -73
FDP+LINKE+G 237 38.1 -75
SPD+LINKE 222 35.7 -90
SPD+G 214 34.4 -98
 Location of German Parties

CDU/
LINKE G SPD FDP CSU
Left Right
Seats: 76 68 146 93 239

=> Only 2 possible minimum-connected-winning coalitions

CDU/CSU + SPD (385 seats)
CDU/CSU + FDP (332 seats)

=> CDU/CSU, as the largest party, was the formateur, and preferred a
coalition with FDP to SPD, as this would give the CDU/CSU most
cabinet seats and a coalition agreement closer to its ideal policy

=> CDU/CSU + FDP coalition government formed

 When is a Minority Government Stable?
Minority governments can be stable, if the party or parties in government
are in the centre -> in which case a majority coalition will not be preferred
by the other parties in the legislature to the minority government

Example: Current Swedish government (after the 2010 election)

Riksdag has 349 seats, so 175 seats are needed for a majority

Soc Chr.
Left Greens Dems Centre Libs Cons Dems Right
Left Right
Seats: 19 25 112 23 24 107 19 20

Coalition government
(173 seats)
 Consequences of Coalition and
Single-Party Governments
Duration
Are single-party governments more stable than coalition governments?

Policy-making
Is policy-making easier/faster in single-party governments than in
coalition governments?

Accountability (“clarity of responsibility”)

Are single-party governments more accountable than coalition
governments?

Representation (distance from median voter)

Are coalition governments more representative than single-party
governments?
Duration
 Policy-Making with
Single-Party Government
Assumptions:
A,B & C are in the Left party, and D & E are in the Right party
B is the Leader of the Left party (the agenda-setter)
=> if there is party cohesion, B is the dictator

X SQ

Left Right
A B C D E
Policy-Making with Coalition Government
Compromise, but Possible Gridlock
Assumptions:
A & B are in the Left party, C is in the Centre party
Left party and Centre party are in coalition
B is the Prime Minister (the agenda-setter)
=> B has to make a compromise proposal, because C is a veto player

X SQ

Left Right
A B C D E

set of policies that C

prefers to the status quo
(‘winset’)
Policy-Making with Coalition Government
Compromise, but Possible Gridlock
Assumptions:
A & B are in the Left party, C is in the Centre party
Left party and Centre party are in coalition
B is the Prime Minister (the agenda-setter)
=> B has to make a compromise proposal, because C is a veto player

Left Right
A B C D E

set of status quo policies

that B and C cannot agree
to change
(‘gridlock interval’)
Policy-Making with Coalition Government
Compromise, but Possible Gridlock
But, bigger distance between ‘veto players’
=> bigger gridlock interval

Left Right
A B C D E

set of status quo policies

that B and C cannot agree
to change
(‘gridlock interval’)
 Empirical Test: Number of Significant
Laws Passed by Governments
Tsebelis 1999
Observations
No. of “significant laws” (labour law)
passed between 1981 and 1991

15 parliamentary systems: AT, BE,

DK, FI, FR, DE, GR, IR, IT, LU, NL,
PT, ES, SW, UK

Measurement of Ideological
Distance
“Distance” between veto players =>
left-right positions of parties (using
expert judgements of party positions)
 Accountability:
“clarity of responsibility”

Accountable government
=> voters know which party is responsible for government policies (i.e.
who to reward or blame)

Single-party government => responsibility for policy is clear

Coalition government => responsibility for policy is less clear

Also, more parties in a coalition => less responsibility

Clarity of responsibility can be improved in coalition government

systems by ‘pre-electoral coalitions’:
e.g. Sweden Centre-Right Alliance (Con+Lib+Centre+Ch.Dem)
vs. Social Democrats
 Effect of Clarity of Responsibility
Hellwig and Samuels 2008
Dep. Variable:
% vote for
PM/Pres party

Indep. Variables:
Previous vote: %
vote in previous
election

Economy: GDP
growth in year
before election

Re-election:
PM/Pres is
standing for re-
election

Age of Dem.:
no. of years a
democracy
=> Clarity of responsibility allows governments to be
rewarded/punished for the performance of the economy
 Representation
One way of thinking about “representation”: the closer a government
is to the average (‘median’) voter, the more representative it is

A ‘representative’ government => a government which contains the

party the median voter supported in the election

UK in 2010 Govt
Other SNP+PC Other
left +SDLP Lab LD Con UKIP right
Left Right
Votes (%): 1.8 2.6 29.3 23.3 36.5 3.1 3.2

Median voter

UK in 2015 Other SNP+PC Govt Other

left +SDLP Lab LD Con UKIP right
Left Right
Votes (%): 4.4 5.6 30.5 7.9 36.8 12.7 1.0

Median voter
Citizen-Government Distance
Huber and Powell 1994
coalition
governments

Single-party
governments
 In Sum
Democracies can have single-party or coalitions governments, and
majority or minority governments

Office-seeking theories predict that minimum-winning coalitions will

form and that cabinet seats will be allocated in proportion to parties’
seat-shares

Policy-seeking theories predict that connected coalitions will form,

between parties next to each other on a policy dimension, and that
parties will bargain about the content of a ‘coalition agreement’

Single-party governments tend to be more stable, more decisive and

more accountable (with higher ‘clarity of responsibility’)

Coalition governments tend to be more consensual and more

representative (closer to the median voter)
 References
Axelrod, Robert (1970) Conflict of Interest: A Theory of Divergent Goals with Applications
to Politics, Chicago, IL: Markham.
Gamson, William A. (1961) ‘A Theory of Coalition Formation’, American Sociological
Review 26: 373-382.
Hellwig, Timothy and David Samuels (2008) ‘Electoral Accountability and the Variety of
Democratic Regimes’, British Journal of Political Science 38: 65-90.
Huber, John D. and G. Bingham Powell Jr. (1994) ‘Congruence Between Citizens and
Policymakers in Two Visions of Liberal Democracy’, World Politics 46(3) 291-326.
Müller, Wolfgang C. and Kaare Strøm (eds) (2000) Coalition Governments in Western
Europe, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Riker, William H. (1962) The Theory of Political Coalitions, New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press.
Strøm, Kaare (1990) Minority Government and Majority Rule, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Strøm, Kaare, Wolfgang C. Müller and Torbjörn Bergman (eds) (2003) Delegation and
Accountability in Parliamentary Democracies, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Tsebelis, George (1999) ‘Veto Players and Law Production in Parliamentary
Democracies: An Empirical Analysis’, American Political Science Review 93: 591-608.
Tsebelis, George (2002) Veto-Players: How Political Institutions Work, Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
 To Do
Does your adopted country tend to have coalition governments or
single-party governments?

Does an office-seeking theory or a policy-seeking theory explain

coalition formation in your adopted country – e.g. are coalitions
always formed between parties with similar policy preferences?

Do you prefer single-party governments or coalition governments,

and why?