Coalition government is the most frequent form of government in Western Europe, but we have relatively little systematic knowledge about how that form of government has developed in recent decades. This book studies such governments, covering the full life-cycle of coalitions from the formation of party alliances before elections to coalition formation after elections (or in the sitting parliament), portfolio distribution among the coalition parties, governing and policy-making when parties work together in office, and the stages that eventually lead to government termination. A particular emphasis is on the study of how coalitions govern together even when they have different agendas. Do individual ministers decide, or the Prime minister or is the outcome a result of a process of coalition compromise? The volume covers 16 West European countries and introduces the case of Croatia, focusing mainly on governments formed during the past two decades.
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Torbjörn Bergman is Professor of Political Science at Umeå University, Sweden. His books on representative democracy, government formation, and political parties include Political Parties in Multi-Level Polities: The Nordic Countries Compared (with N. Aylott and M. Blomgren, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), The Madisonian Turn - Political Parties and Parliamentary Democracy in Nordic Europe (with K. Strøm, University of Michigan Press, 2011), Cabinets and Coalition Bargaining: The Democratic Life Cycle in Western Europe (with K. Strøm and W.C. Müller, Oxford University Press, 2008) and Delegation and Accountability in Parliamentary Democracies (with K. Strøm and W.C. Müller, Oxford University Press, 2003). He has also published in journals such as the European Journal of Political Research, the Journal of European Public Policy, the Journal of Legislative Studies, Party Politics, Government & Opposition, and Scandinavian Political Studies.
Hanna Bäck is Professor of Political Science at Lund University. She received her PhD from Uppsala University, and has previously held a position as Junior Professor at the University of Mannheim, and as Postdoctoral Fellow at Twente University and the European University Institute. Her research mainly focuses on political parties, legislators, and governments in parliamentary democracies, but she also works on topics related to political psychology and political behavior.
Johan Hellström is Senior Lecturer in Political Science at Umeå University.
Tim Bale is Professor of Politics in the School of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary University of London.
Nick Barlow is an academic based at Queen Mary, University of London.
Patrícia Calca is a Research Fellow in the Department of Political Science and Public Policy, CIES-ISCTE.
Lieven De Winter is a senior professor at the UCLouvain. His research focuses on the (comparative) analysis of government formation, legislatures, elections and political parties and political regionalism, mainly in Western Europe.
Marc Debus is a professor of Comparative Government at the University of Mannheim, Germany. His research interests include political institutions, in particular in multilevel systems, and their effects on political behaviour of voters and legislators, party competition, coalition politics and decisionmaking within parliaments and governments.
Holger Döring is head of the Data Services for the Social Sciences (DSS) Department at GESIS.
Patrick Dumont is a researcher at the University of Luxembourg. He is co-founder of the ‘Selection and Deselection of Political Elites’ (SEDEPE) network and co-editor of Routledge's ‘Research in Social and Political Elites’ book series. He has published on coalition theory, political elites, parties and party systems, and Europeanisation processes. He is a member of the Luxembourg National (and European) Election Study.
Alejandro Ecker is a postdoc fellow at the MZES, Mannheim, Germany.
Bonnie N Field is Professor of Political Science in the Department of Global Studies at Bentley University. Her research interests centre on political parties and political institutions in transitional and institutionalized democracies in Europe and Latin America. She studies minority governments, parliamentary regimes, interparty relations in parliament, processes of candidate selection and political appointments, and regime democratization. She has been a Visiting Scholar at the Center for European Studies at Harvard, a visiting researcher at the Universities of Barcelona and Oslo, Faculty Fellow at the University of California, Irvine, Visiting Fellow at UCI's Center for the Study of Democracy, and Fulbright Senior Researcher in Spain.
Isabelle Guinaudeau is a Political Scientist and CNRS Research Fellow at Sciences Po. Her research is at the juncture of comparative politics, electoral studies and public policy analysis.
Gunnar Helgi Kristinsson is Professor of Political Science, University of Iceland.
Indriði H Indriðason is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at University of California, Riverside.
Flemming Juul Christiansen is Associate Professor in the Department of Social Sciences and Business, Roskilde University.
Jonas Lindahl is a political scientist in the Department of Political Science, Umeå University.
Tom Louwerse is assistant professor of political science at the Department of Political Science, Trinity College Dublin. His research interests include political representation, parliamentary politics, VAAs and political parties
Paul Mitchell is Lecturer in Political Science at LSE, Great Britain.
Wolfgang C Müller is Professor of Democratic Governance at the University of Vienna (Austria). Previous appointments included Chair and Director of the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES) at the University of Mannheim. He is currently Speaker and Principal Investigator of the Austrian National Election Study (AUTNES). Since 2013 he has been co-editor of West European Politics. His research interests include government coalitions, political parties and political institutions.
Nikić Čakar is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb.
Andrea Pedrazzani is Associate Professor at the Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of Milan.
Simon Persico is a Professor of Political Science at Sciences Po Grenoble.
Tapio Raunio is Professor of Political Science, University of Tampere, Finland.
Torill Stavenes is a political scientist at the University of Exeter. Her research interests include new political parties, party development, party survival/death, political systems in Western Europe (in particular Scandinavia and Italy), state funding and legislation on political parties.
Kaare W Strøm is a Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego.
Arco Timmermans is Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Twente, the Netherlands.
Myrto Tsakatika is a Professor of Comparative Politics, University of Glasgow.
Francesco Zucchini is Professor of Positive Political Theory in the Department of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Milan. His research interests include electoral behaviour, law making, representation and courts.
