Investiture rules and formation of minority governments in European parliamentary democracies

Abstract

In parliamentary systems, political parties must often bargain with each other in order to form a government. Do parliamentary rules regulating government formation impact the type of government that is formed? Existing scholarship suggests that the need for an investiture vote -a requirement that a new government must face a parliamentary vote at some point during its formation -reduces the likelihood of a minority government. This paper suggests that while real-world investiture rules can vary across several dimensions, only the investiture decision rule-which specifies the size of the majority required for a decision to be made-impacts the propensity for parties to form minority governments. Using new data on investiture rules for 26 European countries since 1946 or the first year of democracy, we find that parliamentary democracies that have an investiture requirement are not less likely to experience minority governments than those where governments come to power without an investiture vote. However, when an absolute majority is required for a government to succeed at the investiture stage, minority governments are considerably less likely to form; absolute majority investiture rules reduce the frequency of minority governments.

Small in Size but Powerful in Parliament? The Legislative Performance of Minority Governments

“…Minority governments emerge especially if parliaments are highly fragmented and polarized (Dodd 1976; Strøm 1990; Warwick 1998) and if institutional settings favor their formation (Strøm et al 1994). One common argument is that formal investiture votes minimize the chances for forming minority cabinets (e.g., Cheibub et al 2019; Strøm 1990). Bergman (1993) states that investiture votes only influence the formation of minority cabinets negatively if they require a majority vote in favor of the cabinet (i.e., positive parliamentarism) while negatively formulated or no requirements favor their formation.…”

“…But how do minority cabinets avoid policy defeat and stay in control over the legislative agenda? Despite the recently raising interest in minority cabinets by political scientists (Anghel and Thürk 2021; Cheibub et al 2019; Ganghof et al 2019; Kefford and Weeks 2020; Klüver and Zubek 2018; König and Lin 2020; Matthieß 2018; Potrafke 2019), there is still little comparative research about the legislative activity of minority governments. Minority cabinets have become a more common phenomenon worldwide due to the decline in vote (and seat) shares of parties as well as the growing fractionalization and polarization of party systems.…”

Beyond Presidentialism and Parliamentarism

“…Spain's constitution is somewhat exceptional in this regard. It requires an absolute majority for a constructive no-confidence vote but only a simple majority in the second round of an investiture vote (Ajenjo 2015;Cheibub et al 2021). Even in this case, though, the constructive no-confidence vote may work against (single-party) minority cabinets.…”

Designing Democratic Constitutions: The Search for Optimality

“…Sieberer (2015) has shown that cabinet selection and removal rules are correlated in this way. Yet when the cabinet has to be voted into office by a majority in parliament, or at least when this majority must be absolute, the formation of minority cabinets becomes more difficult (Bergman, 1993;Cheibub, Martin, & Rasch, 2019). When simple majorities are ultimately sufficient in an investiture vote, the formation of (singleparty) minority cabinets becomes relatively easier, Spain being a case in point (Field, 2016).…”