Coalitions in Parliamentary Government / / L. Dodd.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton Legacy Lib. eBook Package 1931-1979
• VerfasserIn: Dodd, L.,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2015]; ©1976
• Year of Publication: 2015
• Language: English
• Series: Princeton Legacy Library ; 1247
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (306 p.)

For eighty years, students of parliamentary democracy have argued that durable cabinets require majority party government. Lawrence Dodd challenges this widely held belief and offers in its place a revisionist interpretation based on contemporary game theory. He argues for a fundamental alteration in existing conceptions of the relationship between party systems and parliamentary government.The author notes that cabinet durability depends on the coalitional status of the party or parties that form the cabinet. This status is created by the fractionalization, instability, and polarization that characterize the parliamentary party system. Cabinets of minimum winning status are likely to endure; as they depart from minimum winning status, their durability should decrease. Hypotheses derived from the author's theory arc examined against the experience of seventeen Western nations from 1918 to 1974. Making extensive use of quantitative analysis, the author compares behavioral patterns in multiparty and majority party parliaments, contrasts interwar and postwar parliaments, and examines the consistency of key behavioral patterns according to country. He concludes that a key to durable government is the minimum winning status of the cabinet, which may be attained in multiparty or majority party parliaments.Originally published in 1976.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Tables -- Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- 1. Introduction -- Part I. Theory -- 2. A Theory of Cabinet Formation and Maintenance in Multiparty Parliaments -- 3. Party Systems and Coalition Processes -- Part II. Measurement -- 4. Party System Fractionalization and Stability -- 5. The Degree of Cleavage Conflict -- 6. Cabinet Coalitional Status and Cabinet Durability -- Part III. Analysis -- 7. Party Coalitions in Multiparty Parliaments -- 8. Party Government and Cabinet Durability: All Peacetime Parliaments -- 9. Interwar-Postwar Contrasts -- Part IV. Conclusion -- 10. The Analysis of Parliamentary Coalitions: Problems and Prospects -- 11. Party Systems and Democracy -- Appendix A -- Appendix Β: The Location of Parliamentary Parties on Salient Cleavage Dimensions -- Selected Bibliography -- Index