Coalition governments in a model of parliamentary democracy

Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay and Mandar Oak
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Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay: University of Birmingham
Mandar Oak: Williams College

No 04-18, Discussion Papers from Department of Economics, University of Birmingham

Abstract: We analyse how the importance of party ideology relative to benefits from holding o±ce influences the formation of coalitions in a parliamentary democ- racy when no party has an absolute majority. In equilibrium, the types of coalitions that are formed may be minimal winning, minority as well as surplus and they need not be ideologically 'connected'. The type of government that is formed in equi- librium depends upon the importance of rents of o±ce relative to ideology as well as the seat shares of the parties. We ¯nd that when rents are high, governments cannot be surplus. When rents are low or the formateur is close to the median, minority governments occur for a wider ideological dispersion. Further, there is a non monotonic relationship between connectedness of coalitions and rents. Finally, we compare and contrast our model with existing models.

Keywords: coalitions; ideology; rents (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 D72 H19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39 pages
Date: 2004-09
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