Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T09:20:09.602Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Government Coalitions and Legislative Success Under Presidentialism and Parliamentarism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 September 2004

JOSÉ ANTONIO CHEIBUB
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Yale University
ADAM PRZEWORSKI
Affiliation:
Department of Politics, New York University
SEBASTIAN M. SAIEGH
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Pittsburgh

Abstract

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.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2004 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)