This edited volume suggests promising new avenues of research in analyzing coalition politics. Written by a group of leading scholars, the book clarifies a number of institutional rules too often taken for granted in the existing literature, performs theoretically-driven comparative studies of the effects of institutions on coalition formation and termination, and analyzes the types of coalition governance solutions implemented by party leaders to anticipate and/or contain risks pertaining to multi-party governing.
The first chapters clarify core concepts in the literature such as positive and negative parliaments; they also provide typologies of empirical phenomena such as early elections and caretaker cabinets and include analyses of the conditions under which the latter are most likely to occur. Chapters turn to the effects of institutions on the time it takes to form a coalition government in progressively fragmented environments. Further chapters analyze conditions brought about by the frequency of minority situations and complex bargaining settings, such as the contents of increasingly long and comprehensive coalition agreements and the most frequent combinations ex ante and ex post coalition control instruments adopted by coalition leaders. Finally, given the 21st century challenges to coalition politics, the literature on minority governments from the 1980s onwards is expertly revisited, and a chapter is specifically dedicated to the increasingly burning question of the coalition participation or exclusion of radical, populist parties.
Building on comparative theoretical and empirical knowledge over multi-party governments to draw useful lessons and recommend new research paths in increasingly recent challenging times for the formation and stability of coalitions in European countries, this volume will be of use to students and scholars interested in electoral politics, governance, and European politics.