The Governance Cycle in Parliamentary Democracies

The Governance Cycle in Parliamentary Democracies PDF Author: Scott de Marchi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009315463
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
Parliamentary democracy involves a never-ending cycle of elections, government formations, and the need for governments to survive in potentially hostile environments. These conditions require members of any government to make decisions on a large number of issues, some of which sharply divide them. Officials resolve these divisions by 'logrolling'– conceding on issues they care less about, in exchange for reciprocal concessions on issues to which they attach more importance. Though realistically modeling this 'governance cycle' is beyond the scope of traditional formal analysis, this book attacks the problem computationally in two ways. Firstly, it models the behavior of “functionally rational” senior politicians who use informal decision heuristics to navigate their complex high stakes setting. Secondly, by applying computational methods to traditional game theory, it uses artificial intelligence to model how hyper-rational politicians might find strategies that are close to optimal.

The Governance Cycle in Parliamentary Democracies

The Governance Cycle in Parliamentary Democracies PDF Author: Scott de Marchi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009315463
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 229

Get Book Here

Book Description
Parliamentary democracy involves a never-ending cycle of elections, government formations, and the need for governments to survive in potentially hostile environments. These conditions require members of any government to make decisions on a large number of issues, some of which sharply divide them. Officials resolve these divisions by 'logrolling'– conceding on issues they care less about, in exchange for reciprocal concessions on issues to which they attach more importance. Though realistically modeling this 'governance cycle' is beyond the scope of traditional formal analysis, this book attacks the problem computationally in two ways. Firstly, it models the behavior of “functionally rational” senior politicians who use informal decision heuristics to navigate their complex high stakes setting. Secondly, by applying computational methods to traditional game theory, it uses artificial intelligence to model how hyper-rational politicians might find strategies that are close to optimal.

Government Survival in Parliamentary Democracies

Government Survival in Parliamentary Democracies PDF Author: Paul Warwick
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521470285
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
A highly puzzling phenomena in politics is why some parliamentary democracies, such as Britain, manage to produce highly durable governments, whereas others, such as Italy, experience governmental instability. This book reports the results of a quantitative investigation of the issue, using an innovative statistical methodology and a new data set covering sixteen West European countries over the entire postwar period. The results fundamentally challenge current theorizing on government survival and point to an alternative perspective on the relationship among governments, parties, and voters.

Delegation and Accountability in Parliamentary Democracies

Delegation and Accountability in Parliamentary Democracies PDF Author: Kaare Strøm
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 019152297X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 780

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Book Description
Parliamentary democracy is the most common way of organizing delegation and accountability in contemporary democracies. Yet knowledge of this type of regime has been incomplete and often unsystematic. Delegation and Accountability in Parliamentary Democracies offers new conceptual clarity on the topic. Taking principal-agent theory as its framework, the work illustrates how a variety of apparently unrelated representation issues can now be understood. This procedure allows scholarship to move well beyond what have previously been cloudy and confusing debates aimed at defining the virtues and perils of parliamentarism. This new empirical investigation includes all seventeen West European parliamentary democracies. These countries are compared in a series of cross-national tables and figures, and seventeen country chapters provide a wealth of information on four discrete stages in the delegation process: delegation from voters to parliamentary representatives, delegation from parliament to the prime minister and cabinet, delegation within the cabinet, and delegation from cabinet ministers to civil servants. Each chapter illustrates how political parties serve as bonding instruments which align incentives and permit citizen control of the policy process. This is complemented by a consideration of external constraints, such as courts, central banks, corporatism, and the European Union, which can impinge on national-level democratic delegation. The concluding chapters go on to consider how well the problems of delegation and accountability are solved in these countries. Delegation and Accountability in Parliamentary Democracies provides an unprecedented guide to contemporary European parliamentary democracies. As democratic governance is transformed at the dawn of the twenty-first century, it illustrates the important challenges faced by the parliamentary democracies of Western Europe.

The Cycle of Coalition

The Cycle of Coalition PDF Author: David Fortunato
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108890253
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
How does coalition governance shape voters' perceptions of government parties and how does this, in turn, influence party behaviors? Analyzing cross-national panel surveys, election results, experiments, legislative amendments, media reports, and parliamentary speeches, Fortunato finds that coalition compromise can damage parties' reputations for competence as well as their policy brands in the eyes of voters. This incentivizes cabinet partners to take stands against one another throughout the legislative process in order to protect themselves from potential electoral losses. The Cycle of Coalition has broad implications for our understanding of electoral outcomes, partisan choices in campaigns, government formation, and the policy-making process, voters' behaviors at the ballot box, and the overall effectiveness of governance.

The Governance Cycle in Parliamentary Democracies

The Governance Cycle in Parliamentary Democracies PDF Author: Scott de Marchi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009315471
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
This book provides tractable computational analyses of the crucial but complex processes of government formation and survival.

Parliaments and Coalitions

Parliaments and Coalitions PDF Author: Lanny W. Martin
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199607885
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 187

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Book Description
Argues that in coalition governments, the norm in most parliamentary democracies, strong legislative institutions play a critical role in allowing parties to deal with the electoral competition and the necessity of delegating authority to ministers affiliated with specific parties which threaten compromise agreements.

Making and Breaking Governments

Making and Breaking Governments PDF Author: Michael Laver
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521432456
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
Making and Breaking Governments offers a theoretical argument about how parliamentary parties form governments, deriving from the political and social context of such government formation its generic sequential process. Based on their policy preferences, and their beliefs about what policies will be forthcoming from different conceivable governments, parties behave strategically in the game in which government portfolios are allocated. The authors construct a mathematical model of allocation of ministerial portfolios, formulated as a noncooperative game, and derive equilibria. They also derive a number of empirical hypotheses about outcomes of this game, which they then test with data drawn from most of the postwar European parliamentary democracies. The book concludes with a number of observations about departmentalistic tendencies and centripetal forces in parliamentary regimes.

Reforming Parliamentary Democracy

Reforming Parliamentary Democracy PDF Author: Leslie Seidle
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773570829
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
The authors address issues of representation - the move to a proportional electoral system in New Zealand, the unsuccessful attempt to establish a domestic head of state in Australia, and the reform of the British House of Lords - and demonstrate that citizens increasingly want legislative institutions to more closely reflect the societies they serve. To discuss responsiveness, the governance of indigenous communities and their place within the broader society in Canada and New Zealand are examined, as is the role of institutions other than legislatures that are involved in protecting minority rights and responding to various forms of diversity. A separate chapter analyses the basis for and merits of proposals to reform the Canadian House of Commons. In addition, authors review the dynamics of federalism, intergovernmental relations, and other processes of multi-level governance in Canada, the United Kingdom, and South Africa. Public debate about adapting governance processes to changing conditions and citizen values is a necessary condition of successful democracies and there is much to learn from progress and false starts in other parliamentary democracies. Contributors include Jonathan Boston (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand), Paul Chartrand (consultant, Victoria, British Columbia), Stéphane Dion (minister of Intergovernmental Relations, Government of Canada), David Docherty, Mason Durie (Massey University), Robert Hazell (University College London), Christina Murray (University of Cape Town), Cheryl Saunders (University of Melbourne), Leslie Seidle, Jennifer Smith (Dalhousie University), and Lord Wakeham (former chairman of the Royal Commission on House of Lords Reform).

Cabinets and Coalition Bargaining

Cabinets and Coalition Bargaining PDF Author: Kaare Strøm
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 470

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Book Description
This analysis of coalition politics in Western Europe is based on the most comprehensive data set ever employed in coalition studies exploring both coalitional and single-party countries and governments.

Party Government in the New Europe

Party Government in the New Europe PDF Author: Hans Keman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136279040
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
This truly comparative volume examines the "life cycle" of party governments in Europe from 1990 onwards, and analyses its role and function in contemporary European parliamentary democracies. The life and the performance of party governments in Europe became more and more volatile and publicly contested. In some cases, it has even challenge the democratic quality of the state. This book presents comparative analyses of party governments from formation and duration, to performance. It brings together some of the foremost scholars researching on party government to evaluate existing theories and compare both the developments in the Western and the ‘new’ Eastern Europe in an empirically-grounded comparative analysis. The book discusses the interaction between various institutions, political parties and policies, and evaluates how institutional change and party behaviour can drive the "life cycle" of party government. Party Government in the New Europe will be of interest to students and scholars of Comparative Politics, Democracy, Government and European Politics.