A Model of Endogenous Government Formation

Anna Bassi

American Journal of Political Science, 2013, vol. 57, issue 4, 777-793

Abstract: Political parties bargain over the allocation of cabinet portfolios when forming coalition governments. Noncooperative theories of legislative bargaining typically predict that the “formateur” enjoys a disproportionate share of government ministry positions. However, empirical evidence indicates that parties receive shares of portfolios proportional to their share of legislative seats that a government party contributes to the government coalition in support of Gamson's Law of portfolio allocation. This article examines government formation as a process in which both the government coalition and the formateur are determined endogenously. In equilibrium, if parties have similar preferences over cabinet portfolios, the share of seats they are allocated is proportional to the parties’ sizes.

Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12031

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:amposc:v:57:y:2013:i:4:p:777-793

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in American Journal of Political Science from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().