Minority Governments Revisited

Kaare Strøm (UCSD) and I have a new book chapter out on Minority Governments Revisited! The chapter is part of Patrick Dumont, Bernard Grofman, Torbjörn Bergman, and Tom Louwerse, eds. New Developments in the Study of Coalition Governments. Studies in Public Choice, vol 9. Springer, Cham.

Abstract

Despite decades of scholarship on coalition bargaining in parliamentary democracies, minority governments remain a puzzle. From the 1970s on, cross-national empirical scholarship has shown minority governments to be surprisingly common across parliamentary democracies. Even though scholarship that sought to explain identify the conditions that favored the formation minority governments developed, our knowledge still remains somewhat parochial. In this chapter we ask whether our existing understanding of minority governments can be generalized to more recent decades and to recent democracies of Central and Eastern Europe. We review existing explanations of the incidence and performance of minority governments and ask whether they still apply in this broader context. We find that minority governments tend to form under disproportional bargaining power, a larger number of parties in parliament, when the vote of investiture is not required, and when even opposition parties can expect to have policy impact. Next, we inspect the governance mechanisms that permit minority governments to retain power. Finally, our analysis of their performance shows that although less durable than other cabinet types, minority governments are remarkably successful at the polls. This comprehensive analysis and our robust findings across regions and periods contribute to the “normalization” of minority governments.

 

Too Young to Run? Voter Evaluations of the Age of Candidates

Yoshikuni Ono (Waseda University) and I have a new article out in Political Behavior!

Abstract

Why do elected officials tend to be much older than most of their constituents? To understand the mechanisms behind the underrepresentation of young people in public office, we conducted two novel survey experiments in Japan. We asked voters in these experiments to evaluate the photos of hypothetical candidates while altering candidates’ faces using age regression and progression software. Contrary to the observed age demographics of politicians, the voters in our experiments strongly disliked older candidates but viewed younger and middle-aged candidates as equally favorable. Voters saw young candidates as less experienced but also more likely to focus on many policy issues over a longer period, including education, childcare, climate change, anti-corruption measures, and multiculturalism. Young voters especially liked young candidates, suggesting that greater youth turnout could increase youth representation. Conversely, elderly candidates were universally panned, seen as the least competent, least likely to focus on most policy issues, and least electable. Voter biases thus do not seem to be a driving factor behind the shortage of young politicians. To the contrary, voters appear perfectly willing to cast their ballots for young candidates.

 
Source: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/...

Legislative Resources, Corruption, and Incumbency

Shane Martin, Kaare Strøm, and I have a new article out in the British Journal of Political Science!

Abstract

Members of some legislatures enjoy long political careers, whereas elsewhere turnover is rampant. This variation is consequential since high-incumbency assemblies may facilitate legislative expertise at the expense of social representation. We explore cross-national differences in re-election (incumbency) rates by identifying ‘supply’ conditions such as legislative resources that benefit incumbents as well as ‘demand’ conditions such as political corruption that affect voters' willingness to re-elect incumbents. We hypothesize that legislative perquisites help incumbents win re-election, but only if there is relatively high public confidence in politics, as reflected in low corruption levels. We tested our argument using OLS and instrumental variable regression and new global data on sixty-eight democracies (2000–18) covering 288 elections and over 55,000 legislators. We found that legislative resources help incumbents get re-elected only under relatively low levels of political corruption. In contrast, under severe corruption, such resources can depress re-election rates.

 
Source: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/br...