Cabinet Formation and Portfolio Distribution in European Multiparty Systems

Josh Cutler, Scott De Marchi, Max Gallop, Florian M. Hollenbach, Michael Laver, Matthias Orlowski

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    Abstract

    Government formation in multiparty systems is of self-evident substantive importance, and the subject of an enormous theoretical literature. Empirical evaluations of models of government formation tend to separate government formation per se from the distribution of key government pay-offs, such as cabinet portfolios, between members of the resulting government. Models of government formation are necessarily specified ex ante, absent any knowledge of the government that forms. Models of the distribution of cabinet portfolios are typically, though not necessarily, specified ex post, taking into account knowledge of the identity of some government 'formateur' or even of the composition of the eventual cabinet. This disjunction lies at the heart of a notorious contradiction between predictions of the distribution of cabinet portfolios made by canonical models of legislative bargaining and the robust empirical regularity of proportional portfolio allocations-Gamson's Law. This article resolves this contradiction by specifying and estimating a joint model of cabinet formation and portfolio distribution that, for example, predicts ex ante which parties will receive zero portfolios rather than taking this as given ex post. It concludes that canonical models of legislative bargaining do increase the ability to predict government membership, but that portfolio distribution between government members conforms robustly to a proportionality norm because portfolio distribution follows the much more difficult process of policy bargaining in the typical government formation process.

    Original languageEnglish (US)
    Pages (from-to)31-43
    Number of pages13
    JournalBritish Journal of Political Science
    Volume46
    Issue number1
    DOIs
    StatePublished - Feb 13 2014

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Sociology and Political Science

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of 'Cabinet Formation and Portfolio Distribution in European Multiparty Systems'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this