1993/01/01 by Torbjörn Bergman · 180 citations
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Social Sciences · #Control (management) #Economics #Electoral Systems and Political Participation #Game Theory and Voting Systems #Government (linguistics) #Law and economics #Legal and Constitutional Studies #Management #Political economy #Political science #Positive economics
paper · doi:10.1111/j.1475-6765.1993.tb00348.x
published in European Journal of Political Research 23(1), 55-66 (Wiley)
openalex publication_date 1993/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
Abstract. This research note focuses on the importance of rules for coalition formation in parliamentary democracies. Traditionally, coalition theorists have assumed that only majority coalitions can be winning. The more recent literature has shown that coalitions can be winning even if they do not control more than half of all legislators. However, the literature has continued to overlook the fact that there exist two different types of government formation rules. In this note, the two types—positive and negative rules—are presented and it is shown that minority governments are more frequent in the countries with negative rules.