Making and Breaking Governments
Cabinets and Legislatures in Parliamentary Democracies

Making and Breaking Governments theorizes on how parties create, maintain, or replace new governments.

Michael Laver (Edited by), Kenneth A. Shepsle (Edited by)

9780521438360, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 26 January 1996

316 pages, 41 b/w illus. 37 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm, 0.47 kg

"The authors have achieved a brilliant juxtaposition of theoretical rigor with practical application. Theorists, as well as commentators on political elections, can profitably use this book. It is well worth an analyst's time and effort to learn this model for applications to their respective parliaments." Douglas Wills, Public Choice

Making and Breaking Governments offers a theoretical argument about how parliamentary parties form governments, deriving from the political and social context of such government formation its generic sequential process. Based on their policy preferences, and their beliefs about what policies will be forthcoming from different conceivable governments, parties behave strategically in the game in which government portfolios are allocated. The authors construct a mathematical model of allocation of ministerial portfolios, formulated as a noncooperative game, and derive equilibria. They also derive a number of empirical hypotheses about outcomes of this game, which they then test with data drawn from most of the postwar European parliamentary democracies. The book concludes with a number of observations about departmentalistic tendencies and centripetal forces in parliamentary regimes.

Series editors' preface
Acknowledgements
Part I. The Context: 1. Theory, institutions, and government formation
2. The social context of government formation
3. The government formation process
Part II. The Model: 4. Government equilibrium
5. Strong parties
Part III. Empirical Investigations: 6. Two cases: Germany, 1987
Ireland, 1992–3
7. Theoretical implications, data, and operationalization
8. Exploring the model: a comparative perspective
9. A multivariate investigation of portfolio allocation
Part IV. Applications, Extensions, and Conclusions: 10. Party systems and cabinet stability
11. Making the model more realistic
12. Party politics and administrative reform
13. Governments and parliaments
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Political structures: democracy [JPHV]