Small in Size but Powerful in Parliament? The Legislative Performance of Minority Governments. Issue 1 (22nd February 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Thürk, Maria
• Is Part Of: Legislative studies quarterly. Volume 47:Issue 1(2022)
• Page Start: 193
• Page End: 224
• Publication Date: 2021-02-22
• Subjects: legislative performance -- minority governments -- support agreements; Legislative bodies -- Periodicals; Parlement; Procédure législative; Système parlementaire; Étude comparée (Descripteur de forme); Périodique électronique (Descripteur de forme); Ressource Internet (Descripteur de forme); 328
• DOI: 10.1111/lsq.12329
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0362-9805

Abstract

Abstract : Minority cabinets do not control a legislative majority and are thus vulnerable to parliamentary defeat. Consequently, the legislative performance of minority cabinets has been often brought into question. In this article, I argue that minority cabinets do not perform generally worse than majority cabinets. I hypothesize that only substantive minority cabinets which do not enjoy formal majority support by noncabinet parties work significantly worse than majority ones. The empirical analysis is based on a large new dataset that combines original information on minority‐cabinet attributes and legislative data for 197 governments in 21 parliamentary democracies since the 1980s. The results of a fractional logit analysis support my theoretical expectations and show that not all types of minority cabinets perform worse than majority governments. My findings provide a comparative insight into the functioning of minority governments and have important implications for our understanding of legislative politics, party competition, and policymaking.