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Constraints on Cabinet Formation in Parliamentary Democracies Kaare Strom; Ian Budge; Michael J. Laver American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 38, No. 2. (May, 1994), pp. 303-335. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0092-5853%28199405%2938%3A2%3C303%3ACOCFIP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-K American Journal of Political Science is currently published by Midwest Political Science Association. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/journals/mpsa.html. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers, and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community take advantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. http://www.jstor.org Mon Nov 5 07:06:42 2007 Constraints on Cabinet Formation in Parliamentary Democracies * Kaare Strgm, Department of Political Science, University of California, San Diego Ian Budge, Department of Government, University of Essex Michael J . Laver, Department of Political Science, Trinity College, University of Dublin Coalition theory typically treats political parties involved in government formation in parliamentary democracies as if they were unconstrained players in an institution-free world. Yet actual coalition options are often severely constrained by institutional arrangements and prior commitments. We develop. a systematic account of different constraints on . government formation and examine their frequency across 10 parliamentary democracies. Hypothetical and empirical examples demonstrate how a small number of constraints can dramatically reduce the range of coalition options and redistribute bargaining power among political parties. More adequate coalition theories need to recognize the effects of such constraints and to build on the theoretical lessons of the neoinstitutionalist approach to legislative behavior. On 22 April 1977, King Baudouin entrusted Leo Tindemans with the task of giving Belgium a new government. On the surface, Tindemans's task appeared unproblematic. The elections of 17 April had just boosted his Flemish Christian People's Party's (CVP) representation in the Chamber of Representatives from 50 seats to 56 (out of a total of 212), far ahead of any other party. Tindemans himself was an experienced political leader, having served as prime minister without interruption since April 1974. No fewer than 10 parties gained parliamentary representation, seemingly offering Tindemans a wide range of coalition options. Technically, these parties allowed for over a thousand different coalitions, half of which would include Tindemans's own party. His task, it might seem, was simply to pick and choose from this sea of possibilities. In practice, however, Tindemans's political options were severely circumscribed, and well over a month of difficult negotiations lay ahead before Belgium would have a new government. *We are grateful to the members of the Manifesto Research Group, who have conducted much of the research on which this article is based and contributed to the development of the ideas expressed herein. All interpretations and errors, however, are our own responsibility. American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 38, No. 2, May 1994, Pp. 303-35 O 1994 by the University of Texas Press, P.O. Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819 304 Kaare Srrgm, Ian Budge, and Michael J . Laver Tindemans first sought to form a "grand coalition" of the three traditional party families in Belgium: Christian Socials, Socialists, and Liberals. This greatly "oversized" coalition would have comprised 175 out of 212 parliamentary seats and no fewer than six parties, since the Christian Social and Liberal "families" at this point ran separate lists in the Flemish and Walloon regions, while the Liberals even had a third section in Brussels. The Socialists quickly rejected any coalition with the Liberals, however, and instead proposed a solution that included the three regional parties: the Flemish Volksunie, the Walloon Rassemblement Wallon (RW), and the Front Democratique des Francophones (FDF), operating in Brussels. After protracted negotiations, Tindemans finally succeeded in forging a coalition of the Christian Social and Socialist parties, the FDF and the Volksunie. With 172 legislative seats, this coalition was only marginally smaller than the original grand coalition. Thus, after painstaking bargaining, Tindemans came up with a coalition that not only seemed much larger than what he needed but which also contained parties with markedly divergent positions along all of Belgium's three dominant issue dimensions: clericalism, class, and language (Dewachter and Clijsters 1982, 187-97). In other words, his cabinet challenges both the coalition-theoretic size principle (Riker 1962) and the policy compactness criteria that underlie policy-based coalition theory (Axelrod 1970; De Swaan 1973; Laver and Schofield 1990; Leiserson 1966; Schofield 1993). Why were Tindemans's real political options much more limited than simple arithmetic appears to suggest? Why were the negotiations so difficult? Why did he choose a coalition of so many diverse parties whose votes were not needed for a parliamentary majority? These are puzzles that call into question fundamental assumptions in coalition theory. To resolve them, we have to consider the institutional environment within which Tindemans operated. A major source of troubles for Tindemans lay within the Belgian Constitution itself. Its requirement that any incoming government pass a parliamentary majority investiture vote severely limits the probability of any minority government (Hear1 1992). Moreover, Article 86B of the Constitution states that "with the possible exception of the Prime Minister, the cabinet comprises an equal number of French speaking and Dutch speaking ministers" (Rudd 1986, 122). Since all the relevant parties but the Socialists drew their support from one and only one of the two language communities, this provision meant that a careful balance had to be struck between Flemish and Walloon parties. In practice, the implication was that no branch of any traditional party would enter government without its counterpart in the other linguistic community and that, if one of CONSTRAINTS ON CABINET FORMATION 3O5 the regional (i.e., linguistic) parties was included in government, steps had to be taken to preserve the linguistic balance. Finally, Article 59B of the Constitution presented another potential stumbling block. It states that constitutional amendments require a two-thirds majority in parliament and a majority within each linguistic bloc. Constitutional reform was critical to Tindemans's political agenda, and in fact the Egmont Pact concerning federal devolution was secretly negotiated as part of his coalition bargaining (see Cove11 1982). The need for constitutional amendments to implement this plan made the options for Tindemans even narrower. Collectively, these institutional features eliminated all but a small number of coalitions. They go a long way toward explaining why Tindemans's task was so difficult. In short, he had to contend with a number of political constraints that severely circumscribed his choice set. Institutions are a large part of what constrains parties in their bargaining. Government formation and maintenance are highly structured processes, and a variety of institutional features impinge on the choice set available to government formateurs. This is no news to the student of legislative institutions or political parties. Scholars well versed in the institutional environment of particular party systems often reject coalition theories as inapplicable to their particular countries precisely because most (though not all) attempts to apply deductive theories to the formation of cabinet coalitions assume a bargaining environment free from institutional features that add complexity to coalition politics (see Laver and Schofield 1990 for examples of such criticisms). We concur in many criticisms thus leveled against traditional coalition-theoretic studies. We disagree, however, with the dismissive attitudes frequently found among empiricists about the general value of game-theoretic studies of cabinet formation. There are strong reasons, we believe, not to throw the baby out with the bath water. The neoinstitutionalist revolution in formal theories of politics holds great promise for more realistic theories of government coalitions. Before we can elaborate comprehensive deductive models of institutional effects, however, we need to develop a systematic and empirically grounded account of the main procedural constraints that are likely to bear upon government formation. That is indeed the central purpose of this article. In developing this account, we are in the fortunate position of being able to draw on a growing number of collections of comparative empirical studies of government formation (Bogdanor 1983; Browne and Dreijmanis 1982; Laver and Budge 1992; Pridham 1986). We thus examine the role of bargaining constraints both generally and in the specific practice of a number of parliamentary democracies. Our purpose is first to consider real-world constraints on cabinet 306 Kaare Srr$rn, Ian Budge, and Michael J . Laver coalitions in ways that allow their incorporation in formal models; second, explicitly to identify some common constraints operating in realworld coalition systems; and third, to explore the effect of constraints on the distribution of bargaining power and actual coalition outcomes. Thus, in the next section, we discuss the role of institutions and their place in coalition theory. The following part presents a general account of constraints on coalition bargaining. We then consider five specific types of constraint, giving empirical examples of their forms and effects. Following this account, we provide a survey of the incidence of different constraints in 10 parliamentary democracies. We then discuss the potential interactive effects of different constraints, giving a hypothetical illustration of how the interaction of just a few very simple coalitional constraints can radically change the feasible set of coalition options and thereby transform the bargaining power of different parties. From this example, we return to the case of Belgium at the time of Tindemans and show that constraints actually were a better guide to coalition formation than any conventional coalition theory. We conclude by discussing the lessons of bargaining constraints for the study of cabinet coalitions in parliamentary democracies. Institutions and Government Formation In its application to government formation, coalition theory tends to be institution free. Most theorists assume that parties shop around freely for potential cabinet partners in a world in which all possible combinations of parties represent feasible governments. The predicted outcomes are entirely preference induced, or in Riker's (1980) words "equilibria of tastes." Such assumptions have been embedded in cooperative coalition theory, where the object has been to characterize the set of equilibria, which is generically large and unstable.' Empirically, this institution free approach is commonly applied in cross-national research, where the approach is quite convenient, since it allows theories to be operationalized at a level general enough to bear upon a range of political systems. Thus, identical hypotheses and techniques can be applied to broadly comparable data sets. Indeed this approach can be, and often is, applied by investigators with no country-specific specialization, since typically many of the data come from standard sources and are used with no contextual interpretation. The ease with which "unconstrained" coalition theories can be applied clearly represents a major advantage. However, the as- 'The classic theoretical work, of course, is Riker (1962). CONSTRAINTS ON CABINET FORMATION 307 sumptions upon which they are based are hardly realistic. The real world of coalition politics is one of constraints, in which it is quite definitely not the case that everything is possible. To the extent that we neglect such constraints, our theories of government formation will be unrealistic in their assumptions, and their predictions may well lead us astray. The parsimony of conventional coalition theory comes at a huge cost in plausibility (Laver 1986). Yet the importance of political institutions has not gone unnoticed in the recent literature on legislative behavior. Studies of U.S. legislative politics have been revolutionized over the last decade or so by attempts to model the effects of institutional structures (see Shepsle 1986, 1989). Increasingly, formal theorists have turned to extensive-form games, which allow structural features of the bargaining situation to be taken into account much more explicitly than previously. A similar revolution is beginning in the cross-national study of cabinet coalitions, as neoinstitutional approaches have begun to explore the consequences of procedures for bargaining (Austen-Smith and Banks 1988, 1990; Baron 1991, 1993; Baron and Ferejohn 1989; Laver and Shepsle 1990a, 1990b). Though so far only selected procedural effects have been considered, typically those that generate a high theoretical payoff in formal modeling, we have no doubt about the fruitfulness of a broader exploration of these lines of inquiry. We seek to contribute to an empirically informed development of that tradition by identifying ways in which structure impinges on government formation through constraints on coalition bargaining. In large part, constraints are institutions, by which we mean "rules about behavior, especially about making decisions" (Riker 1980, 432; see also Ostrom 1986). Constraints affect many aspects of coalition politics, such as cabinet formation, portfolio allocation, coalition termination, and the process of coalition governance itself. In this article, however, our focus is on coalition formation. This is the area in which coalition theory has been most adequately applied; yet there is much to be gained by systematically taking constraints into account. Although our main interest is in the initial formation of executive coalitions, our account of the institutional environment cannot confine itself narrowly to the government formation process. Coalition bargaining may be affected by a variety of rules that operate in other arenas where parties interact. Thus, the politics of government formation is nested within other games that parties play and must be understood in this broader context (see Austen-Smith and Banks 1988; Laver and Shepsle 1990b; Strem 1990a; Tsebelis 1990). Hence, coalition bargaining constraints must be broadly conceived. It is to the more precise definition of this term that we now turn. 308 Kaare Strpim, Ian Budge, and Michael J . Laver Constraints A constraint on coalition bargaining can be defined as any restriction on the set of feasible cabinet coalitions that is beyond the short-term control of the players. Constraints need not be etched in stone for all time, but can nonetheless be taken as given for the particular bargaining situation to which they are attributed.* Note that what we take to be a bargaining constraint depends upon the time frame. If the time frame is long enough, all constraints may possibly be "endogenized," that is, explained as products of the interaction between political players, rather than taken as limitations on their freedom of action. The institutions in which many constraints are embedded are, after all, themselves political artifacts. If we had a fully developed and historically comprehensive model of political behavior, then there would be no need to invoke constraints in our account of government formation. Since the current understanding of party competition falls very far short of this mark, however, many constraints must be taken as given. Also, any given player will face constraints not of his or her own choosing. Treating limitations on the behavior of key actors as exogenous constraints on coalition bargaining therefore has considerable heuristic value in furthering our understanding of party behavior. Although exogenous institutional constraints are the most clear-cut restrictions on the set of feasible coalitions, they are not the only ones. Political parties may also impose "endogenous" constraints upon themselves to strengthen their hand in bargaining. In late 1986, for example, the Irish Labour party, having faced disastrous losses in the opinion polls during its coalition with Fine Gael, decided to enter no further coalitions until its electoral fortunes had improved substantially. This formal decision by the party conference effectively bound the party leadership. No coalition could form that included the Labour party unless the party membership gave its approval in a specially convened delegate conference. Although the party clearly had imposed this constraint upon itself, its leaders nonetheless faced a major restriction on their freedom of a ~ t i o n . ~ 'In our definition, the "short term" refers to the particular bargaining situation under consideration. We assume that in the short run the resources (e.g., parliamentary representation) of each party remain constant. j ~ f t e rmore than doubling its legislative representation in the November 1992 Dail election, the Labour party became pivotal in Irish government formation. The Labour leader convened a special delegate conference in January 1993, when he recommended that the party enter a coalition with Fianna Fail. The conference had the clear power to reject this proposal, and this possibility was a significant constraint on coalition bargaining. In the event, the conference approved the proposal, and Labour entered a coalition government with Fianna Fail. CONSTRAINTS ON CABINET FORMATION 3O9 Other examples of self-imposed constraints include governing coalitions that commit themselves to continue in office in the event that the electorate renews their parliamentary majority, or parties that pledge themselves never to go into coalition with some particular rival. Not all constraints are equal. We distinguish between hard constraints, which effectively eliminate particular combinations of parties, and soft constraints, which simply make certain coalitions more or less likely. Hard constraints must be both speciJic and enforceable (i.e., they must clearly specify which coalitions are or are not permissible, and they must be backed up by credible enforcement mechanisms). For constitutional rules, an independent judiciary clearly may serve this latter function. But even less formalized enforcement mechanisms may do, such as the anticipated wrath of the voters or activists in cases where politicians consider breaking their solemn promises (party rules) concerning coalitional bedfellows. Soft constraints, which are less specific, less enforceable, or both, simply reflect the way that institutional arrangements "load the dice" in coalition bargaining. Even soft constraints, however, can have a major influence on coalition bargaining. For example, when Socialist Franqois Mitterrand won the 1988 French presidential election, beating Prime Minister Jacques Chirac of the rival Gaullist party (RPR), Chirac immediately resigned as prime minister, giving way to a quite different cabinet under Socialist Michel Rocard. No law required this change of government-and nothing had changed in the legislature. Yet the presidential contest suggested that the Socialists would gain in a legislative election, and the Constitution of the Fifth Republic gave the president the power to dissolve the legislature and call such an election. This constitutional provision shifted power toward the Socialists, even before the legislative election was called shortly afterward. The 1988 French presidential election thus had a very strong effect on legislative bargaining, deriving from the president's constitutional power to dissolve the legislature. If the president's powers had been weaker, Chirac very likely would have decided differently. Before we proceed to a more systematic account of bargaining constraints, a note of caution is in order. Although even soft bargaining constraints may well be important, we should require of any account of government formation that its constraints be identifiable objectively and ex ante from a defensible comprehensive conception of the bargaining process. There are obvious dangers involved in constructing a "theory" of government formation that can be customized to any particular bargaining situation by picking and choosing, in a post hoc manner, from an open-ended menu of constraints. Considerations of parsimony and intersubjectivity alike militate against such explanations. 3 10 Kaare Str$m, Ian Budge, and Michael J . Laver Cabinet Formation Rules Many of the most important institutional constraints on coalition bargaining are rules concerning the cabinet formation process itself. Many of these in turn derive from constitutional provisions that can be specified in a reasonably straightforward manner. We can easily identify several important ways in which the formal rules of the political game in a particular country affect coalition bargaining by "loading the dice": (1) the constitution or other laws may contain rules concerning the size or composition of the executive coalition; (2) the rules of government investiture may privilege certain parties and coalitions by creating hurdles for coalition formation; and (3) recognition rules may vest special powers in a partisan head of state or privilege the status quo coalition. Size and Composition Requirements As might be expected, no European constitution actually prohibits any particular political party from entering government once it has won seats in the legislature. In a number of countries, however, electoral law precludes certain parties from winning seats in the legislature in the first place, either as a result of specific proscriptions (as was the case with the Communist party of Germany between 1956 and 1972) or as a result of electoral thresholds (set at 5% in Germany, for example, and at 4% in Sweden). Thus, parties that may be electorally salient are institutionally prevented from cabinet participation. Given a particular distribution of legislative seats, however, hard institutional constraints on bargaining are uncommon. The main exceptions can be found in divided societies that have consociational provisions in their constitutions, the most obvious example of which is Belgium. As mentioned above, Articles 59B and 86B of the Belgian Constitution impose very explicit and rigid constraints on coalition membership that dramatically reduce the range of options. The British government imposed a similar provision for the representation of the two major religious communities during the short life of the ill-fated Northern Ireland Assembly (1973-75). Beyond these examples, however, formal institutional constraints on the parties that can go into government are rare, a product no doubt of the fundamental principle of equality before the law enshrined in most European constitutions. Given such equality (or, more precisely, "anonymity" or "undifferentiatedness") provisions, institutional factors more often "softly" constrain coalition bargaining. One significant qualification of the basic norm of parliamentary democracy is the requirement of a "constructive" vote of no confidence. Under this provision found in the German and Spanish constitutions, a CONSTRAINTS ON CABINET FORMATION 311 successful vote of censure must simultaneously propose an alternative government. Thus, a government can be defeated only by a coalition that is explicitly prepared to take office together (and which must, of course, include a member of the outgoing government if the latter controls a majority). In this case, the government cannot be dislodged by a "coalition" that is no more than a disparate gang of disaffected legislators, by the kind of "snipers" (franchi tiratori) that have sometimes brought down Italian governments. Thus, the constructive vote of no confidence effectively prohibits minority governments and favors the status quo in bargaining. Investiture Rules The process by which a new cabinet is formed and installed can significantly affect coalition bargaining. The rules in many countries, Italy among them, require any incoming government to present itself to the legislature and gain its approval in the form of an investiture vote before taking office. In some countries in which an investiture vote is required, however, there is a strong presumption that the outgoing government will re-present itself to the legislature. The search for alternatives, then, only formally begins if the incumbent government is defeated. In other cases, the "candidate government" presenting itself for investiture is favored by the investiture decision rules. In Italy, for example, abstentions on investiture votes effectively count in the government's favor. Thus, in 1976 Giulio Andreotti's famous government of non sfiducia ("non-no confidence") was supported by no more than 258 deputies out of 630; yet Andreotti comfortably gained office, since all but 44 of the remaining members abstained. In many parliamentary democracies, particularly those shaped by the Westminster tradition, no formal investiture vote is required, and the existing government remains in office until it loses a vote of ~onfidence.~ Any constitutional presumption in favor of the incumbent government obviously places it in a privileged position compared to all others. The incumbents represent the reversion point in the event the other parties fail to agree on an alternative. The existence of such a status quo coalition, which completely transforms the bargaining game, is rarely taken into account by formal coalition theories (though see Laver and Shepsle 40bviously, all governments implicitly face an investiture vote whenever they first expose themselves to the possibility of a parliamentary no confidence vote. Yet when no investiture vote is required, the "burden of proof" shifts to the opposition. And some parties may find it acceptable tacitly to lend their weight to a government that they could not openly support in an investiture vote. 312 Kaare StrQm, Ian Budge, and Michael J . Laver 1990a, 1990b, and Lupia and Strem 1993, for models incorporating a status quo government). Recognition Rules A third important feature of the government formation process concerns the recognition rule, which specifies which parties will be asked to form governments, and in what order. Few constitutions make specific provisions in this area, but in some countries, relatively clear conventions have been established, such as giving the task first to the largest party, the party recommended by the majority of party leaders, or the party most responsible for bringing about the resignation of the previous government (see Hermeren 1976; von Beyme 1970). Interestingly, recent neoinstitutionalist theories of government formation have begun to explore this aspect of the bargaining environment (Austen-Smith and Banks 1988; Baron 1991, 1993; Baron and Ferejohn 1989) that until now too often has been neglected. In the absence of hard and fast recognition rules, considerable discretion may be vested in the head of state, who may be allowed or obliged to play a more or less active role in setting the agenda of cabinet formation. Under some constitutions, especially republican ones, the head of state is integral to the bargaining process. Typically in such states, of which Finland and Italy are good examples, the president may influence the choice of prime minister and occasionally the set of governing parties. The Finnish president has used this influence extensively (Anckar 1987; Nousiainen 1988). In 1987 the unprecedented coalition of Conservatives and Social Democrats came about in large part at the insistence of President Koivisto (Berglund 1987).5 Even in monarchies, the head of state may play a significant role in government formation. The Netherlands is a good example, where the monarch designates a formateur, who initiates coalition bargaining and is normally expected to lead the incoming government. If there is conflict over who the formateur should be, the head of state may nominate a senior politician as inforrnateur, whose task is to identify a formateur after consultations with the relevant parties. In other cases, however, the head of state effectively plays no part in government formation. In Ireland or Germany, for example, the president simply acts on the nomination of the legislature. The extreme case is Sweden, where the king does not even play a ceremonial role in appointing a new government, a role given instead to the Speaker of the Parliament. Only in this latter case is the ' ~ n1992 the Finnish Parliament initiated constitutional reforms that may restrict the president's power over cabinet formation. CONSTRAINTS ON CABINET FORMATION 3I3 head of state unable to exert any direct influence on coalition bargaining. In all other cases, the head of state may effectively attempt to impose an agenda of protocoalitions for consideration. At the very least, the preferences of the head of state may then be a factor if there are multiple viable options. Cabinet Operation Rules Once an executive coalition has been successfully forged, the rules of cabinet decision making (or operation) continue to affect its viability and success. Of course, to the extent that such rules significantly impinge on interparty relations, parties will anticipate their effects in their initial coalition bargaining. For these reasons, two sets of rules concerning executive operation are particularly likely to be salient in coalition bargaining: (1) cabinet decision rules and (2) rules regarding cabinet termination. Cabinet Decision Rules The internal rules of cabinet decision making may well affect coalition bargaining. The doctrine of collective cabinet responsibility, for example, imposes common policies on all coalition parties, even those that argued strongly against them at the cabinet table. This may force some parties to defend publicly policies that contradict their commitments in their election programs. Where the doctrine of collective cabinet responsibility is weaker, parties that lose out in cabinet may be able to distance themselves more explicitly from government policy. In the former case, there may hence be a premium on finding ideologically congenial coalition partners; in the latter case, this may be less important. This effect may apply even if the party leaders in question have adopted their policy positions for purely opportunistic reasons. To the extent that voters or activists take policy commitments seriously, party leaders have to worry about whether they appear to live up to them. Individual ministerial responsibility, especially as it affects the delegation of policymaking authority within the cabinet, is also important. The more autonomous each cabinet member is within his or her jurisdiction, the less feasible mutually beneficial policy compromises may be. This is because each party distrusts its ability to enforce policy positions outside the ministries it controls. At the limit, each party may be an effective dictator in the policy areas its ministers control but have no influence in the areas controlled by its coalition partners. Laver and Shepsle (1990a, 1990b) have demonstrated analytically how this institutional arrangement may drastically restrict the range of otherwise feasible coalitions. At the very least, a decentralized cabinet decision-making 3 I4 Kaare StrGm, Ian Budge, and Michael J . Laver environment forces parties to look for partners with compatible portfolio preferences (see Budge and Keman 1990). Rules of Cabinet Termination The rules concerning cabinet resignation can affect the expected duration (and thereby the "value") of different coalition options. The more the rules favor certain coalitions (e.g., majority cabinets), the more attractive such coalitions will be relative to the alternatives. A defining feature of parliamentary democracies is that governments must resign if censured by the legislature. Not every legislative defeat is fatal to a government; only defeats designated as no confidence votes have this effect. Obviously, the precise procedures concerning no confidence motions are important in this regard. Some constitutions, such as those of France and Spain, place various restrictions on the use of no confidence motions (Huber 1992; Lopez Pina 1985). As mentioned above, the constructive vote of no confidence, found in Germany and Spain, effectively favors the status quo in coalition bargaining situations. Moreover, if the government has a firm grip on the legislative agenda, it can manipulate this agenda to avert those defeats that might provoke votes of no confidence. The greater the cabinet's agenda control, the more attractive otherwise feeble coalitions will be. Legislative Rules Coalition bargaining is affected not only by the rules of the executive branch but also by those pertaining to the legislature. Three types of legislative rules are particularly likely to affect coalition bargaining: (1) the effective decision rule for legislation and budgeting; (2) rules concerning legislative dissolution; and (3) the legislative electoral system. Decision Rules Certain systems, such as Belgium's, require a qualified majority of the legislature (two-thirds in the Belgian case) before a constitution can be amended. When constitutional reform is an issue, a viable coalition (one that has effective control of the legislature on issues that matter) may well need more than a majority of all seats.6 This may in effect give veto powers to some of the larger parties. In Finland until 1992, supermajorities were needed even for some nonconstitutional legislation. The need for a qualified majority is not strictly a hard constraint on government formation, since not all members of the legislative coalition 6 0 n the concept of a viable coalition, see Budge and Laver (1986). CONSTRAINTS ON CABINET FORMATION 3I5 need to be represented in the cabinet. It is, however, a major influence on bargaining, one that can impede the formation of stable and effective cabinet coalitions. Similarly, in France restrictive legislative rules such as the guillotine and the package vote may facilitate minority government formation (Huber 1992). Dissolution Rules The precise rules for dissolving the legislature and calling elections can also have a considerable bearing on coalition bargaining. In Finland and Italy, for example, government resignations have rarely caused premature elections. This is at least partly because the power to call elections in these countries rests with the president, who is less likely than a prime minister to resort to this option opportunistically. But even monarchies may severely restrict the use of premature elections. Under the new Swedish Constitution, parliamentary elections are held every three years, even if early elections have occurred in the meantime. So far, this constitutional provision has prevented any early dissolution of the Riksdag. The extreme case, however, is Norway, whose Constitution permits no early dissolution of the Storting. In other countries, however, a government's collapse precipitates a new election, a factor that can have a major impact on coalition stability. Political elites today have access to voluminous opinion poll data about the likely results of elections. Thus, governing parties expecting to do well electorally may have a greater incentive to bring down the government and force an election than those that are doing badly. In anticipation of this, parties gaining in opinion polls should acquire more bargaining power within existing governments (Lupia and Strem 1993). If elections are effectively fixed in time, there may be less of an incentive to launch a preemptive strike, since there is no opportunity to gain bargaining power by consulting the voters prematurely. Electoral Rules The electoral system can affect the coalitional process in a number of ways. The most obvious effect lies in the incentives provided by certain electoral systems, notably the Irish STV system, the French doubleballot system, and the British simple plurality system, for parties to form preelectoral coalitions. A similar effect exists in proportional representative (PR) electoral systems with apparentement, where parties themselves can form electoral alliances for the purpose of sharing their "excess" votes. Apparentement has been used in the Netherlands, in the 316 Kaare Strgm, Ian Budge, and Michael J . Laver French Fourth Republic, and in Norway and Sweden until the late 1940s.' The so-called swindle law, under which the Italian elections of 1953 were contested, was an especially potent (and controversial) form of apparentement. This electoral law would have given two-thirds of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies to any electoral alliance of parties that collectively polled a majority of the popular vote. Electoral laws do not favor particular coalitions as much as electoral coalitions in general. They may shift the coalition-formation phase of party politics to the preelectoral period and encourage preelectoral coalitions that can be sold to voters as well as to legislators. The Irish STV electoral system particularly encourages coalitions to form before rather than after elections, since cooperating parties may systematically transfer votes among themselves to their mutual benefit (Laver 1992). Preelectoral coalitions were announced explicitly in 1973, 1977, and 1989-winning and forming in 1973, losing in 1977 and 1989. There were also implicit preelectoral coalitions in 1981 and twice in 1982-winning and forming in 1981 and once in 1982, losing once in 1982. The French double-ballot system provides strong inducements for parties to make electoral deals between the first and the second ballots (see Tsebelis 1990). In the 1988 presidential elections, for example, the second ballot involved a runoff between the Socialist candidate, Franqois Mitterrand, and Gaullist Jacques Chirac. Particularly among supporters of various first-round candidates on the right, there was very considerable interparty maneuvering to build an antisocialist electoral coalition and thereby to mount a credible challenge to Mitterrand before the second ballot. In short, the electoral system has a major effect on coalition bargaining. Systems not based on PR lists tend to force parties to coalesce before elections in order to exploit electoral economies of scale. The more disproportional the electoral system, the greater the incentives for preelectoral alliances. For this strategy to be effective, it is often necessary for the parties in the electoral coalition to declare their intention to collaborate after the election is over. Coalition bargaining is thus moved forward to the period before the election. Whether preelectoral coalitions subsequently transform themselves into executive coalitions is, of course, an empirical matter. There is no doubt, however, that there is a strong tendency for this to happen. It is very rare and presumably quite damaging for a combination of parties to fight an election as a coalition and then to refuse to share power once they have the chance to do so. ' ~ nNorway apparenternent was reintroduced for the election of 1985 and subsequently abolished again before the 1989 election. CONSTRAINTS ON CABINET FORMATION 3I7 Party Rules In addition to the institutional constraints discussed above, particular coalition systems may well feature powerful endogenous constraints. These are limitations that parties impose upon themselves for tactical purposes, yet they may be no less potent restrictions on the set of feasible coalitions. Party leaders may declare that they will, or will not, form particular coalitions. As long as they are simply "cheap talk," such declarations do not strictly constitute constraints on behavior. But party leaders may find ways of binding themselves to these commitments-for example, by passing party conference resolutions that cannot legally be undone without the consent of the conference, thereby giving these declarations the force of private law, or simply by putting their reputations on the line (on credible commitment, see Schelling 1960; Dixit and Nalebuff 1991; Elster 1989). The systematic exclusion of certain parties from coalition bargaining is the most striking party constraint found with any regularity. While most constraints that exclude specific parties from office are specific to particular countries and particular historical periods, we can identify a few general trends. The examples of the Gaullists or Communists in the French Fourth Republic, Sinn FCin in Ireland, or the Italian Communists in the 1950s show that certain parties, as a consequence of their strong "antisystem" stance, can effectively be discounted as members of any potential government. Such a stance involves fundamental and nonnegotiable points of opposition to the existing constitution, which might conflict with the policy commitments of potential coalition partners. Consequently, there is no prospect of agreement on a policy package, and the party concerned is effectively excluded from office unless it can "go it alone. ' ' Such exclusions may be self-imposed, or they may be imposed by rival parties. After the advent of Eurocommunism, for example, some communist parties were prepared to join governments, and their demands became negotiable. Notwithstanding this change of heart (or strategy) among the communists, most other parties still treated them as antisystem outcasts and refused to bargain. Besides antisystem parties, taboos are often attached to parties associated with previous political regimes, especially undemocratic ones. Thus, the neo-Fascist MSI in Italy has, for most of its history, been treated as a pariah by the other Italian par tie^.^ To a lesser extent, this was also true of the now-defunct Monarchists. 'The exclusion of the MSI from coalition bargaining has been based less on its policy program, which has certainly been conservative though not really extremist, than on its ties to a discredited and embarrassing Fascist past. 318 Kaare Strqim, Ian Budge, and Michael J . Laver In other cases, perfectly "coalitionable" parties may voluntarily forgo coalitions with any other party. One such case, the Irish Labour party in 1986, has been discussed above. Another case is the Italian Socialist party, which took itself out of the coalition game from the breakdown of the center-left coalition in the early 1970s until the end of the "historic compromise" in 1979. The Norwegian Labor party, which adopted an anticoalition policy in the 1930s and which has never entered a peacetime coalition government, is a third example. While refusal to consider coalition membership can severely reduce a party's bargaining power in the government formation game, it may be an effective electoral strategy for a party hoping to win a legislative majority on its own. Such a strategy may allow the party to cast itself as a strong, stable alternative to the squabbles, inefficiencies, and instabilities of coalition government. Thus, a strategy that seems self-defeating in the government formation game may make sense in electoral competition (Strem 1990a). One of the most striking examples of this strategy can be seen in Britain. Both Labour and the Conservatives scorn the possibility of coalitions during election campaigns, even when opinion polls indicate that a hung Parliament is a distinct possibility. Their intention clearly is to dissuade a sufficient number of strategic voters from voting for minorparty opponents. With a little help from the electoral system, they have been successful so far. If the two big British parties were to open themselves to the possibility of coalitions with the center, the likelihood of a hung Parliament might indeed increase significantly. Yet not all self-imposed constraints can be explained through reference to the competition between parties, even if our attention extends to the electoral arena. Intraparty politics may be just as important, as senior politicians interact with activists in their own parties. Party leaders may believe that some coalitions would be sufficiently detrimental to their recruitment of candidates or activists to be avoided under all circumstances. Or they may believe that the benefits of a potential coalition would be outweighed by the costs their own activists would impose in irate retaliation. Such costs may consist in an increased likelihood of being removed from party leadership positions (see Luebbert 1986). Consciousness of these risks may induce party leaders to refrain from otherwise attractive coalitions. In some such situations, a party may decide to impose rigid restrictions on its participation in particular coalitions. This could be because party leaders themselves suspect "weakness of will" if they were tempted to make concessions during coalition bargaining (see Elster 1984). Alternatively, lower-ranking officers and activists may not trust their leaders ("agents") to put the interests of the party above the lure CONSTRAINTS ON CABINET FORMATION 3I9 of the trappings of office. In practice, this may lead an annual party conference to pass a resolution proscribing particular coalitions. In the long run, of course, a party that can bind itself to a particular strategy can also unbind itself, and spectacular, strategic U-turns are by no means unknown. Yet since cabinet bargaining is typically played against the clock (see Strgm 1994), parties may find ways to bind themselves so that the constraint cannot be lifted during this process. External Veto Players Finally, constraints may come in a less obvious guise when they reflect restrictions imposed by players outside the parliamentary arena altogether, such as influential foreign governments. As De Swaan notes, "Certain institutions and organizations in the surrounding society, e.g., business, finance, churches, trade unions, the army, universities, may entertain ties with only a relatively small number of representatives in parliament and yet such interests may occupy a position that makes it necessary to seek their consent, or to form large majorities in order to overcome their opposition, if the parliamentary decision is not to remain ineffective" (1973, 86). We refer to such institutions and organizations as external veto players. The exclusion of communists from governments all over Western Europe in the late 1940s and early 1950s was in no small part caused by the anticipated resistance of the United States to such coalitions. Given its military and economic power, its role as provider of economic assistance, and in some cases its involvement as an occupation power, fear of U. S. displeasure at, and even active intervention to prevent, communist participation in the government of a NATO country acted as a potent constraint on coalition bargaining in several places, notably I t a l ~ . ~ External veto players need not be foreign. Domestic interest groups may equally well be able to proscribe coalition options. The armed forces may play such a role, especially in less stable democracies. During the transitions to democracy in Spain and Portugal, and particularly in their early phases, certain coalitions were effectively ruled out by the military. Thus, a very left-wing government in Spain or a very right-wing government in Portugal would have met with (perhaps armed) military resistance. The anticipation of such intervention clearly constrained the leading politicians. Other interest groups, such as trade unions or churches, may occasionally play a similar role. When Christian Democratic Prime Minister Ferdinand0 Tambroni in 1960 attempted to govern Italy with the active support of the neo-Fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI), the 9Whether or not this fear was realistic, it was certainly real. Table 1. Constraints and Their Effects on Coalition Bargaining Class of Constraint Example Impact on Bargaining Germany: Constructive vote of no confidence Precludes minority governments and changes bargaining power Constitution specifies composition of coalition Belgium: Combination of Flemish and Walloon parties Specified parties gain bargaining power: Where two or more specified parties exist, relative bargaining power will be unpredictable, a matter of pure strategic interaction Investiture requirement Belgium Israel Italy Favors majority coalitions Particular coalition forms status quo in the event of stalemate Finland Ireland Status quo coalition may gain bargaining power Head of state plays active role in formation process Italy Finland President's preferred party may gain bargaining power Sweden United Kingdom Favors policy-compact coalitions Italy: Patronage ministries especially Denmark Disfavors parties with strong policy preferences Legislative rules: Extraordinary majority decision rules Belgium: Constitutional amendments Favors parties capable of forming blocking coalitions Guillotine and similar restrictive rules France: Guillotine and package vote Favors minority coali- tions Easy to call elections Ireland Denmark Favors policy-compact coalitions Cabinet formation rules: Constitutional provisions preclude governments below a size threshold Cabinet operation rules: Collective cabinet responsibility Cabinet authority delegated to individual ministers or legislative committees CONSTRAINTS ON CABINET FORMATION 32 I Table 1 (continued) Class of Constraint Electoral systems: Plurality , STV, apparentement, doubleballot Example Impact on Bargaining United Kingdom Ireland France Favors preelectoral alliances Italy: MSI, PC1 Ireland: Sinn Fein Disfavors excluded parties Norway: Nonsocialist parties Germany: Preelectoral alliances May favor allied parties Italy: U.S. ban on PC1 participation Italy: Union ban on MSI participation Favors permissible parties Favors permissible parties Party rules: Particular parties or combinations of parties excluded from government Preelectoral party coalitions External veto players: Foreign governments Domestic interest groups trade unions displayed their readiness to mobilize against the government in strikes and civil disorder. The Christian Democrats forced Tambroni to resign, recognizing this constraint on their ability to cut deals with the extreme right. Constraints and Coalition Bargaining The general constraints that we have discussed are summarized in Table 1, which provides more specific examples and identifies their likely effects on coalition bargaining. Table 2, which complements Table 1, presents an empirical overview of the incidence of different constraints in 10 post-World War I1 multiparty democracies, using data drawn from Laver and Budge (1992).1° From Table 1, we see that some constraints affect bargaining power in systematic ways (e.g., party exclusions and status quo coalitions), whereas the effects of others (e.g., preelectoral coalitions) may be more difficult to predict. "Because of the difficulty of objectively identifying them ex ante, we have excluded external veto player constraints from the ,examples in Table 2. CONSTRAINTS ON CABINET FORMATION 323 Table 2 demonstrates a great deal of variation in the frequency of various constraints. Note, for example, that Belgium and Italy both exhibit a wide range of constraints on coalition bargaining. The same two countries are notoriously difficult cases for most coalition theories, with frequent departures from the size principle and other solution concepts. Israel and Sweden, by contrast, have simpler bargaining environments. While the interaction of only a few constraints can create quite a complex strategic situation, constraints generally reduce the range of feasible coalitions and thus simplify bargaining. In extreme cases, indeed, the interaction of a set of constraints can leave only one or even no feasible possibility. In other cases, a large number of initial possibilities may be reduced very dramatically. For example, if only one out of six parties is excluded from the set of feasible coalitions, the effect is to reduce the number of arithmetically possible coalitions from 63 to 31, excluding the null coalition (Laver 1989). One of the most striking effects of constraints is that, through reductions of the set of feasible coalitions, bargaining power is redistributed. This is because bargaining power is based on the ability to threaten rivals with alternative coalitions. As the range of such threats is altered, so is bargaining power. A Hypothetical Example The effects we have described can be illustrated by a hypothetical example. Table 3 describes a simple four-party system and imposes on this six bargaining constraints discussed above. Twelve different scenarios are constructed, each characterized by a particular combination of constraints. For each scenario, Table 3 illustrates the effects on the set of feasible coalitions. Through these examples, we show how constraints can shift the feasible set of coalitions away from the predictions of institution-free cooperative coalition theory. The first scenario depicts a completely unconstrained bargaining situation, in which all 15 coalitions (again excluding the null coalition) are feasible. Given the well-documented possibility of viable minority governments (Budge and Laver 1986; Strqm 1990b), we have not a priori excluded such coalitions from our feasible sets." All our scenarios but the first, however, involve some form of majority requirement and hence eliminate minority cabinets. The next two scenarios involve a single " w e make no assumption, of course, that minority coalitions are feasible in all realworld institutional settings. Clearly they are not. Nor do we assume that such governments are as valuable to their participants as coalitions with majority support. Our point is simply to insist that any constraint on minority coalition formation be modeled explicitly. If minority coalitions remain in the feasible set, whether they emerge will depend on the preferences of the relevant parties. CONSTRAINTS ON CABINET FORMATION 325 constraint; the following eight, a combination of two; and the final scenario, a set of three. Table 3 demonstrates that every possible majority coalition is in the feasible set of at least one scenario, whereas none is feasible in all scenarios. Note also that, as the number of constraints increases, the set of feasible coalitions diminishes quickly. In scenario 3, for example, a single constraint reduces the number of feasible coalitions to five. In general, the interaction effects of various constraints can be quite striking. Thus, the two constraints in scenario 7 permit no more than two feasible coalitions. In the most extreme case, which we have not illustrated here, a small set of constraints may render no feasible coalition at all. One example would combine a qualified majority constraint with the exclusion of a party large enough to have a blocking vote. In this event, no coalition can simultaneously satisfy both constraints. If a communist party with 40% of the seats was excluded from office, for example, and constitutional reform was on the agenda, then no government could form that consisted of "permissible" parties and that controlled a two-thirds majority. Note that different constraints vary as to whether they shift the feasible set of coalitions toward oversized or undersized solutions. Preelectoral coalitions and consociational solutions may permit only very large coalitions. Party exclusions, on the other hand, have the opposite effect. Note also how frequently minimum winning coalitions may be blocked by different combinations of constraints. Coalition AD (52 seats), the smallest minimal winning coalition in our example, is excluded in all but three of our constrained scenarios. This result suggests that deviations from the size principle may be structure induced as well as preference induced. Bargaining Power Table 3 gives us some clear examples of the ways in which constraints may shift coalition bargaining power. It thus illustrates the limitations of most conventional indices of bargaining power, which assume away most of the constraints that interest us here (see Banzhaf 1965; Holler 1982; Shapley and Shubik 1954). While it is beyond the scope of this article to develop more adequate measures of bargaining power, it is possible to get some sense of the changes brought about by our various scenarios. We do this in the form of modified Shapley and Shubik power indices for each of the various scenarios. We have modified the Shapley and Shubik index only by (1) counting as pivotal the party that brings the coalition into conformity with all the applicable constraints and (2) discounting coalition sequences in which an "impermissible" party is included before the coalition satisfies all constraints. These power indices are presented in Table 4. 326 Kaare StrGm, Ian Budge, and Michael J . Laver Table 4. Bargaining Power under Different Sets of Constraints Partv Scenario 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 A B SO0 .583 .250 ,417 .600 SO0 .I67 .333 .417 SO0 .083 .I67 .250 .083 ,083 .200 SO0 .333 .333 .083 ,167 ,250 C D .I67 .083 .583 .417 .I67 .083 ,083 .083 ,200 0 0. .I67 0 .250 .I67 .417 0 .333 .333 .250 .I67 .250 Note: Entries are modified Shapley and Shubik values under constraint scenarios described in Table 3. See text for further detail. Note the striking variations in the bargaining power of different parties, depending on constraints. A comparison of scenarios 2 and 3 shows that, compared to a pure majority, a supermajority constraint seems to boost the bargaining power of the larger parties. Yet a comparison of scenarios 6 and 7 reveals that raising the majority requirement may not always benefit the largest party. Obviously, the exclusion of a party from coalitions reduces its short-term bargaining power, as clearly can be seen from the same two scenarios.12 Scenarios 8 and 9, compared with 2 and 3, suggest that if two parties announce a preelectoral coalition, they may significantly enhance their bargaining power. Given a majority constraint, a preelectoral coalition between two parties who, combined, gain a legislative majority can give these parties collectively all of the bargaining power, just as if they were a single majority party. But since a credible preelectoral coalition equalizes bargaining power among its members, it favors smaller parties more than larger ones. Consequently, we should expect large parties to form preelectoral coalitions with small ones only where the latter have other bargaining advantages, such as, for example, I2If a party excludes itself from coalitions, it may, of course, do so in the hope or expectation of making electoral gains. Thus, in the longer term, it may gain power by gaining seats. CONSTRAINTS ON CABINET FORMATION 327 a position close to the core of the policy space. German and Norwegian evidence on preelectoral coalitions of unequally sized parties suggests that this may indeed be the case. Finally, we see from scenario 12 that a set of seemingly innocuous constraints may have the effect of totally transforming bargaining power, to the extent that the largest (and in most scenarios most powerful) party is almost totally emasculated. The Case of Belgium, 1977-80 Having explored the general effects of constraints on coalition bargaining, we now return to the historical case that provided the starting point for our excursus. In this section, we more systematically explore the effects of institutional constraints on coalition bargaining in Belgium in the period 1977-80, the time of the constitutional resolution of the country's devolution into distinctive linguistic regions. The Egmont Pact, which proposed a partial devolution of power to Belgium's three regions (Flanders, Wallonia, and Brussels), was drawn up at the time of the negotiation of the Tindemans V coalition and implemented in a modified form in August 1980. We consider the five bargaining situations that occurred at the height of debate over the "community problem" in Belgian politics (see Cove11 1981, 1982), that is, the situations resulting in the formation of the governments Tindemans V through Martens I11 (Dewachter and Clijsters 1982; Hear1 1992; Rudd 1986). The first two of these bargaining situations occurred during the Parliament elected on 17 April 1977, the latter three after the election of 17 December 1978. In this set of cases, we can straightforwardly identify four important bargaining constraints discussed in the introductory section: (1) the requirement of a two-thirds legislative majority for constitutional amendments (Article 59B); (2) the stipulation that equal numbers of Flemishand French-speaking ministers be represented in the cabinet (Article 86B); (3) the related party rule that no linguistic segment of any of the national parties would enter the government without its counterpart in the other linguistic community; and (4) the similar rule that any representation of the purely regional parties would have to be balanced. To this we add a party exclusion rule: (5) no coalition would form involving either of two independent deputies elected in 1978.13 Note that none of these constraints was perfectly hard. While the constitutional provisions were certainly enforceable, they did not specifically dictate the composition of 130neof these deputies represented the extreme right-wing Vlaams Blok, whereas the other represented the "Poujadist" UDRT-RAD (Dewachter 1987,290). There is no evidence that either played any role in coalition bargaining, and we have no measure of their policy positions. 328 Kaare StrGm, Ian Budge, and Michael J . Laver the cabinet. For example, a cabinet lacking two-thirds legislative support could conceivably have negotiated such support for the Egmont Pact from opposition parties on an ad hoc basis. The set defined by these constraints therefore does not exhaust the set of feasible outcomes. Rather, it represents the set of solutions most favored by critical rules impinging on cabinet formation. The purpose of our analysis here is to assess how much knowledge of the operable bargaining constraints helps us in understanding cabinet formation. As a way to accomplish this, we compare the explanatory power of the relevant bargaining constraints alone to those of several prominent solution concepts in the coalition-theoretic literature. The first of these solution concepts is Riker's (1962) size principle, the proposition that coalitions should be minimal winning. We take "winning" in this context to mean controlling the number of legislative votes necessary to win an investiture vote. Second, we consider a traditional policy-based solution concept developed by Axelrod (1970), requiring government coalitions to be minimal connected winning in unidimensional policy space. Finally, we consider two versions of the prediction that coalitions should include the core party in policy space, that is, in a unidimensional policy space the party controlling the median legislator (Laver and Schofield 1990). The most radical version of this theory predicts that the core party should be able to govern alone, since there is no alternative that is preferred by a legislative majority on policy grounds alone. Alternatively, we also offer the more permissive prediction that the coalition formed should at least include the core party. For data on coalitions and party policy positions, we rely on Hear1 (1992).14 The third column of Table 5 reports the number of arithmetically possible coalitions (excluding the null coalition), whereas the next column gives the number of feasible coalitions under the specific constraints identified above.'' The remaining columns (C-F) represent the prediction sets of the different solution concepts identified above. A plus indicates that the actual coalition belongs to this prediction set. Note that different I4Several of the coalition theories tested here require that parties be ordinally ranked in a unidimensional policy space. While the Belgian policy space is clearly multidimensional, we have for analytical purposes adopted Hearl's left-right dimension, which he claims "provides an eminently interpretable one-dimensional view of Belgian politics during the study period" (1992, 247), which includes the era that interests us here. he fluctuation in the number of possible coalitions across bargaining situations reflects changes in the party system. In 1978 the Socialist party officially split into two separate parties: one Flemish and one Walloon. As noted above, the December 1978 election resulted in the election of two independent deputies. Two regional Liberal parties, the PRWL of Wallonia and the P L of Brussels, merged to form the PRL on 23 June 1979. Table 5. Cabinet Coalitions in Belgium, 1977-80 (A) Year Cabinet Formed Different Coalitions 1977 1978 1979 1980 1980 Tindemans V van den Boeynants I1 Martens I Martens I1 Martens I11 1,023 2,047 8,191 4,095 4,095 Predictive success: (no. correctlno. cases) Predictive efficiency: (no. correctlno. predictions) (B) Feasible Coalitions under Constraints Minimal Winning 18+ 18 + 17 17 17+ 7 7 8 8+ 8 .60 (315) .034 (3187) .20 (115) .026 (1138) Minimal Connected Winning Core Party Alone Core Party Included 0 0 0 0 1 (515) .016 (51320) Note: Entries represent the number of coalitions that qualify under each criterion. A plus indicates that this set includes the coalition that actually formed. Source: Hear1 (1992). 330 Kaare Strqm, Ian Budge, and Michael J . Laver solution concepts yield prediction sets of very different sizes. For example, there is in each case a unique solution consisting of the core party alone (col. E), whereas an additional 63 possible coalitions include the same party (col. F). Simply comparing the success rates (the number of correct predictions) of these two is obviously unfair to the more parsimonious solution concept (see Taylor and Laver 1973). We compensate for such differences by considering the efjciency as well as the success rates of each solution concept. Success (no. correctlno, cases) refers to the proportion of cabinets correctly predicted (postdicted). Efficiency (no. correctlno. predictions), on the other hand, measures the proportion of all predictions that are correct. For analytical simplicity, we have excluded from the prediction sets of all the behavioral theories any coalition that violates either constraint 3 (i.e., one linguistic branch of a major national party joining a coalition without the other) or constraint 5 (the party exclusion rule).16 The effect of these simplifications is to improve the fit of these coalition theories, since a large number of implausible coalitions are removed from their prediction sets, while no coalition that actually formed is similarly deleted. The theories (solution concepts) with large prediction sets (C and F) benefit in particular. Several conventional coalition theories clearly are at a loss to explain the five Belgian cabinets from Tindemans V through Martens 111. Not one of these coalitions was minimal connected winning, and none consisted of the core party (the Socialist party in the first two cases and the Christian Socials thereafter) alone. Though the actual coalition invariably fell within the set of coalitions that included the core party, this solution set is so large that its predictive efficiency is nevertheless unimpressive. On the other hand, the constraints we have identified eliminate the vast majority of all possible coalitions, nowhere less than 98% and in the case of Martens I, 99.8%! And in three out of five cases, the actual coalition fell within the constraints set. The deviant coalitions (Martens I and 11) resulted from the successive withdrawals of two regional parties from van den Boeynants's original coalition. In the first case, the resignation of the Volksunie left the cabinet linguistically unbalanced (constraint 4) and caused a three-and-a-half-month cabinet crisis. The subsequent withdrawal of the French-speaking FDF left Martens I1 two votes short of a two-thirds parliamentary majority (constraint 1). Both of these cabinets proved short-lived. I 6 ~ h isimplification s was necessary because we do not have separate measures of the policy positions of the different linguistic branches of the national parties or of the independent deputies. CONSTRAINTS ON CABINET FORMATION 33I As the bottom line of Table 5 shows us, the bargaining constraints alone provide a more efficient way to identify the actual coalition than any of the behavioral theories we have tested. Despite the advantages our test has given to the behavioral coalition theories, and despite the fact that Martens I and I1 fell outside the set of coalitions most favored by the institutional constraints, these rules nevertheless are our best guide to coalition formation in Belgium in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In at least some cases, cabinet formation has more to do with structural constraints than with choice. Clearly, if we can synthesize our recognition of institutional determinants with a theory of choice under those constraints, we should be able to make considerable progress in our understanding of party coalitions that have so far baffled the analysts. Conclusion Using an apparently anomalous case as our point of departure, we have given a systematic account of constraints on coalition bargaining, a previously neglected topic in the study of parliamentary governments. Although the effects of constraints have been casually recognized in many studies of coalition politics, there has been no systematic or comprehensive account of such effects. We have identified different types of constraint, surveyed their incidence in a number of parliamentary democracies, and discussed their effects on bargaining power and coalition outcomes. The basic lessons to be drawn from this exercise are quite straightforward, though putting them into practice is not easy. Most theoretical approaches to the study of government formation are "institution poor," in the sense that their accounts of the institutional environment are extremely spartan stylizations. Empiricists have long pointed out that these assumptions are both unrealistic and misleading. Simultaneously, neoinstitutionalist analyses of the U.S. Congress have demonstrated that the institutional environment within which political bargaining takes place can have a fundamental impact on outcomes. Our survey of constraints on government formation in parliamentary democracies highlights a similar problem. This leaves us where a behavioral theory of government formation could profitably begin. Once we have identified the set of feasible outcomes and the rules by which a decision might be reached, we need to consider the parties involved in the bargaining process, their preferences, and the information they possess. A successful model of their bargaining process requires that we specify preferences as well as structure. Yet the latter task has until now been more seriously neglected, and it is to this task that this article has been devoted. A full consideration of the impact of constraints could proceed in one of two ways. One option would 332 Kaare StrQm, Ian Budge, and Michael J. Laver involve careful modeling of coalition politics on a country-by-country basis. Alternatively, the theorist could begin exploring the effects of prevalent constraints under different behavioral assumptions. In any case, we believe a set of conceptual tools and an inventory of the sort we have provided will be of great value to the theorist. The emerging theory of noncooperative games would probably provide the best behavioral foundation for such efforts. Whereas conventional cooperative coalition theory can only recognize constraints as exogenous restrictions on the set of feasible coalition, noncooperative theory can generate constraints endogenously through more explicit modeling of the bargaining process. Neoinstitutionalist approaches, using the powerful tools of extensive-form games, allow us to distinguish between constraints imposed by ex ante agenda control (e.g., presidential appointment powers or party precommitments) and those resulting from ex post vetoes (e.g., investiture requirements or external veto players). But such theoretical projects can be a daunting task. Austen-Smith and Banks (1988), for example, look at the effect of a simple recognition rule, which specifies the order in which different parties are given the chance to form a government. Even in their rudimentary three-party, one-dimensional game, the analysis quickly gets complex. To model in any complete sense the game generated by the interaction of two or three constraints and, say, a five-party system with two salient issue dimensions, would be quite challenging. The challenges multiply when we consider the range of potentially relevant rules and the cross-national variation in such institutions. Obviously, these challenges go far beyond the scope of the present analysis. The main purpose of this article, therefore, is heuristic. It provides the first systematic survey of the constraints that future theories need to consider and accounts for their effects on coalition bargaining. Above all, it shows how the feasible set of potential coalitions can be radically altered, and bargaining power transformed, by a few simple and apparently common constraints. This will not surprise country specialists, long accustomed to elaborating the institutional detail of the political systems in which they specialize. 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