Why Do Some Minority Presidents Not Form Coalitions? A Cross-National Analysis

In recent years, the comparative literature on presidential democracy has emphasized the role of coalitional politics. Yet since the beginning of the Third Wave of democratization in 1974, roughly one third of minority presidents have failed to form cabinet coalitions (defined minimally as the awarding of at least one portfolio to a party other than the nominal party of the president). What explains the adoption of single-party cabinets by minority presidents? In this paper, we use cross-sectional time-series analysis to address this question. We test hypotheses relating to presidential party size, ideological distance between the president and possible partisan allies, the programmatic versus particularistic nature of the party system, and the relative balance of presidential and legislative power.