2
Abstract
Theory: Majoritarian and proportional visions of democracy value party compe-
tition and coalition government differently. The majoritarian vision puts a premium
on decisive, accountable one-party government; the proportional vision emphasizes
the better representativeness attained by coalitions.
Data: Using election and survey data from German and Spanish regions, this pa-
per compares coalitions to one-party cabinets and different coalition governments
to each other. Ideological polarization within cabinets is measured using expert
scores.
Results: The analysis demonstrates that citizens of German and Spanish regions
evaluate one-party governments more favorably than coalitions, all else equal. In
the German case, citizen satisfaction also correlates negatively with cabinet polar-
ization.
Conclusion: The findings imply that government effectiveness and cohesion matter
more than ideology and interest representation at the regional level, and supports
the theory of a trade-off between representativeness and implementation.