In the study, we analyze the impact of political institutions on cabinet formation. Institutional rules can either provide significant leeway but also seriously constrain political parties in forming sustainable (coalition) cabinets that are close to their ideological ideal points. Differences in institutional designs can considerably alter the cabinet formation process in parliamentary democracies. Theoretically, we expect that a high number of institutional veto points should significantly constrain policy making. Hence, when forming cabinets, we expect parties more likely to build inclusive cabinets such as surplus majority coalitions under restrictive rules. On the contrary, political parties in systems with fewer institutional constrains on policy making are more likely to form narrow cabinets in order to gain more flexibility in the policy process. We draw on veto player models to explain these strategic choices in coalition formation.
Our empirical understanding of the nexus between institutions and coalition building is still limited to a particular set of institutional rules (esp. presidential power, bicameralism, investiture rules) and is mainly based on West European democracies. In the study, we look at thirty advanced democracies over the entire post-war era to analyze the impact of institutional rules on cabinet formation. To test our argument, we draw on finer grained measures of institutional constrains on coalition building. The results of the statistical analysis confirm the impact of institutional rules on cabinet formation for the overall sample as well as for a subsample of Western European democracies. However, for new democracies from Central-/Eastern Europe, the results are less clear cut. By looking at three cases in the region, Slovenia (2004), Poland (2005), and the Czech Republic (2006), we are able to demonstrate that institutional rules have an impact on cabinet formation in CEE as well.
