Cabinets and Coalition Bargaining: The Democratic Life Cycle in Western Europe provides a comprehensive analysis of coalition politics in Western Europe over the post-war period. It champions a dynamic approach in which the various stages in the life of coalitions influence each other. After a review of the literature a theory chapter addresses the roles of bargaining and transaction costs in coalition governance. Eight comparative chapters address the
topics of government formation (government type, formation duration), coalition agreements, portfolio allocation, conflict management, cabinet termination and duration, and the electoral consequences of coalition
government. The book is based on the most comprehensive data set ever employed in coalition studies that includes both coalitional and single-party countries and governments. Each chapter first provides a comparative overview of the phenomenon under study and then moves on to state-of-the art statistical analysis. Conceptually and in the statistical analysis the study argues for an integrated approach stressing the relevance of countries, time, 'structural attributes', actors' preferences,
institutions, the coalition's bargaining environment, and 'critical events'. Indeed, sufficient explanations of most phenomena under study require independent variables from several of these categories.
Comparative Politics is a series for students, teachers, and researchers of political science that deals with contemporary government and politics. Global in scope, books in the series are characterised by a stress on comparative analysis and strong methodological rigour. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research. For more information visit www.essex.ac.uk/ecprThe Comparative Politics Series is
edited by Professor David M. Farrell, School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin, Kenneth Carty, Professor of Political Science, University of British Columbia, and Professor
Dirk Berg-Schlosser, Institute of Political Science, Philipps University, Marburg.
Author Biography:
Kaare Strøm is a Professor in Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Minority Government and Majority Rule co-editor of Challenges to Political Parties, Policy, Office or Votes?, Coalition Governments in Western Europe, Delegation and Accountability in Parliamentary Democracies, and the textbook Comparative Politics Today: A World View. He has published numerous articles in such scholarly
journals as the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, and the European Journal of Political Research. He has received the American Political Science Association's Franklin Burdette Pi Sigma Alpha
Award for best conference paper (1983), the Gabriel Almond Award for best dissertation in Comparative Politics (1984), and UNESCO's Sixth Stein Rokkan Prize in Comparative Social Science Research (1994). Wolfgang C. Müller is a Professor in Comparative Government at the University of Mannheim and former Director of the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES). Previously he taught at the Universities of Vienna, Humboldt University Berlin, University of California, San Diego,
Institute d'Études Politiques de Lille and was Academic Visitor, Nuffield College, Research Fellow University of Bergen, and Joseph A. Schumpeter Fellow at Harvard University. His book publications include
Policy, Office, or Votes? How Political Parties in Western Europe Make Hard Decisions (co-ed. with Kaare Strøm, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), Coalition Governments in Western Europe (co-ed. with Kaare Strøm, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), Delegation and Accountability in Parliamentary Democracies (co-ed. with Kaare Strøm and Torbjörn Bergman, Oxford University Press, 2003). Torbjörn Bergman is a Professor in
Political Science at the University of Umea. He has been a visiting scholar at the University of Californa, San Diego and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His book publications include Delegation and Accountability in European Integration: The
Nordic Parliamentary Democracies and the European Union (co-edited with Erik Damgaard, London: Frank Cass, 2000), Delegation and Accountability in Parliamentary Democracies (co-ed. with Kaare Strøm and Wolfgang C. Müller, Oxford University Press, 2003), and Democratic Institutions in Decline? (co-edited with Kaare Strøm, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, forthcoming 2008). His articles have appeared in journals such as European Journal of
Political Research, Journal of European Public Policy, Government and Opposition, Party Politics, and Scandinavian Political Studies.
