British Journal of Political Science · 2004 · 458 citations · 2 references
Social SciencesPolitical ScienceAmerican PoliticsDemocratizationLegislative PoliticsCoalition FormationCoalition GovernmentCoalition PoliticsDemocracyLegislative Coalition BuildingLegislative CoalitionsCoalition PowerMajoritarian GovernmentMajoritarian PoliticsMajority CoalitionsMinority CoalitionsMinority Government CoalitionsParliamentary CoalitionsPresidential Coalitions
The study questions whether presidential systems produce fewer coalitions, more legislative deadlocks, and greater governmental fragility than parliamentary systems. The authors aim to test these questions by examining nearly all democracies from 1946 to 1999. They analyze the frequency of coalitions, legislative deadlocks, and minority rule across presidential and parliamentary regimes. They find that coalitions are common even without a majority, minority governments perform as well legislatively as majorities, and coalition status does not affect democratic survival, implying presidentialism’s problems are not coalition-related.
Are government coalitions less frequent under presidentialism than under parliamentarism? Do legislative deadlocks occur when presidents do not form majoritarian governments? Are presidential democracies more brittle when they are ruled by minorities? We answer these questions observing almost all democracies that existed between 1946 and 1999. It turns out that government coalitions occur in more than one half of the situations in which the president's party does not have a majority, that minority governments are not less successful legislatively than majority coalitions in both systems, and that the coalition status of the government has no impact on the survival of democracy in either system. Hence, whatever is wrong with presidentialism, is not due to the difficulty of forming coalitions.
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The Brazilian legislature and political system
Choice Reviews Online · 1993 · 15 citations