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Black and white photo of Hanna Bäck. Photo.

Hanna Bäck

Professor

Black and white photo of Hanna Bäck. Photo.

Who Gets What in Coalition Governments? Predictors of Portfolio Allocation in Parliamentary Democracies

Author

  • Hanna Bäck
  • Marc Debus
  • Patrick Dumont

Summary, in English

Ministerial portfolios are the most obvious payoffs for parties entering a governing coalition in parliamentary democracies. This renders the bargaining over portfolios an important phase of the government formation process. The question of ‘who gets what, and

why?’ in terms of ministerial remits has not yet received much attention by coalition or party scholars. This article focuses on this qualitative aspect of portfolio allocation and uses a new comparative dataset to evaluate a number of hypotheses that can be drawn from the

literature. The main hypothesis is that parties which, in their election manifestos, emphasise themes corresponding to the policy remit of specific cabinet portfolios are more likely to obtain control over these portfolios. The results show that policy saliency is indeed an

important predictor of portfolio allocation in postwar Western European parliamentary democracies.

Publishing year

2011

Language

English

Pages

441-478

Publication/Series

European Journal of Political Research

Volume

50

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Wiley

Topic

  • Political Science

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0304-4130