Investiture Rules and Formation of Minority Governments in Parliamentary Democracies

Le LIEPP a le plaisir de vous inviter au séminaire-déjeuner avec le professeur invité
Bjørn Erik Rasch:

"Investiture Rules and Formation of Minority Governments in
Parliamentary Democracies"

[langue: Anglais]

Mardi 13 février 2018
12h30 - 14h30
Salle de séminaires du LIEPP
254 bvd Saint-Germain 75007 Paris

Merci de vous inscrire

   Bjørn Erik Rasch

   Professeur de science politique, Université d'Oslo

   Professeur invité du LIEPP du 01/02 au 02/03/2018

Résumé [EN]:

Scholars have long pondered the degree to which institutions and rules impact the type of government that is formed in parliamentary democracies. For example, the presence or absence of a parliamentary investiture vote is said to affect whether minority governments will be formed. We argue that the mere existence of an investiture rule does not necessarily change the likelihood of minority government formation. We demonstrate that real-world investiture rules vary significantly across a number of dimensions and argue that, theoretically, investiture requirements can affect the emergence of a minority government through a transaction costs or a transparency mechanism. Using new data on investiture rules for 32 parliamentary democracies since 1946 we find support for the transparency effect of investiture rules on the likelihood of minority governments: the requirement that governments face an investiture vote only reduces the chances of minority governments when it requires the public and explicit support of an absolute majority of legislators. Parliamentary rules shape government formation, but only when the salient detail of the rules are accounted for. The wider suggestion is that scholars of government formation need to employ more nuanced measures of institutional variation.