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This book explores why political parties negotiate lengthy coalition contracts, and argues that these agreements are important control devices that allow coalition parties to keep their partners in line. The authors draw on a large dataset of 229 coalition agreements negotiated in 24 Western and Eastern European countries between 1945 and 2015.
Prime Ministers (PMs) are the most influential, powerful, and visible politicians in parliamentary democracies. Their prominent role has been increasing in Western democracies due to the 'presidentialization of politics'. But is this also true for new democracies, such as those in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)? As politics in CEE has been characterized by high personalization, weak voter-party linkages, and strong media influence of political leaders, prime-ministerial performance may be even more important for the functioning of parliamentary democracy in those countries. At the same time, conventional wisdom suggests that prime ministers in CEE perform weakly because they...
Approximately one-third of parliamentary democracies are or are typically ruled by a minority government - a situation where the party or parties represented at cabinet do not between them hold a majority of seats in the national legislature. Minority governments are particularly interesting in parliamentary systems, where the government is politically responsible to parliament, can be removed by it, and needs (majority) support in the parliament to legislate. The chapters in this volume explore and analyse the formation, functioning, and performance of minority governments, what we term the why, how, and how well. The volume begins with overviews of the concept of and puzzles surrounding mi...
This volumes examines two major developments in contemporary democratic politics-- the change in party-society linkage and political personalization--and their relation to each other.
By whatever name they are known (Parliaments, Legislatures, or Assemblies, to name but three) legislative assemblies in democratic societies face the twin challenges of institutional capacity and accountability to their citizens. In addressing these challenges, assemblies vary in the extent to which they serve the respective interests of three critical sets of actors: their members, party leaders, and voters. In this book, Shane Martin and Kaare W. Strøm identify three ideal types of democratic assemblies - the members' assembly, the leaders' assembly, and the voters' assembly - and analyze national legislative assemblies in the world's 68 most populous democracies, from Finland to Papua Ne...
Exploring the debates about political issues that drive current research, this text provides a real insight into comparative politics. The book looks closely at the work of comparativists and the methods they use.
This fully revised and updated second edition of Scandinavian Politics Today describes, analyzes and compares the contemporary politics and international relations of the five nation-states of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden and the three Home Rule territories of Greenland, Faeroes and Åland that together make up the Nordic region. Thirteen chapters cover Scandinavia past and present; parties in developmental perspective, the Scandinavian party system model, the Nordic model of government, the Nordic welfare model, legislative-executive relations in the region, the changing security environment and the transition from Cold War "security threats" to the "security challenges" of today, and a concluding chapter that looks at regional co-operation, Nordic involvement in the ‘European project’ and the Nordic states as "moral superpowers." The book will be of interest not only to students of Scandinavia, but to those wishing to view Scandinavian politics and policy-making in a wider comparative perspective.
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