Parliamentary, Presidential, and Semi-Presidential Democracies - Making and breaking governments in parliamentary democracies - A simple model of government formation

4 important questions on Parliamentary, Presidential, and Semi-Presidential Democracies - Making and breaking governments in parliamentary democracies - A simple model of government formation

We can think of two types of politicians in the formation process:

  • An office-seeking politician: interested in the intrinsic benefits of office; he wants as much office as possible
  • A policy-seeking politician: only wants to shape policy

Gamson's law states that:

Cabinet portfolios will be distributed among government parties in strict proportion to the number of seats that each party contributed to the government's legislative seat total.

In an office-seeking world, a minimal winning coalition (MWC) is preferred, this is a coalition:

In which there are no parties that are not required to control a legislative majority. A least minimal winning coalition is the MWC with the lowest number of surplus seats.
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One implication of the policy-seeking logic is that you will want to form governments with parties that are located close to you in the policy space. A connected coalition is one:

On which the member parties are located directly next to each other in the policy space.

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