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Bargaining Delays in the Government Formation Process
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Bargaining Delays in the Government Formation Process
S
ONA
N
ADENICHEK
G
OLDER
Florida State University
∗
16th August 2006
Abstract
In most parliamentary democracies, elections rarely determine the identity of the government.Instead, they usher in what can be long periods of negotiations in which party leaders bargainover the composition and policy objectives of the cabinet. While these delays can have quitesubstantial political and economic consequences for many actors, there are few studies that ex-amine bargaining delays in the government formation process. What studies there are reachcontradictory conclusions and many suffer from methodological problems that call their resultsinto question. Using data from the Parliamentary Democracy Data Archive, I examine howfactors relating to uncertainty and bargaining complexity influence the duration of the govern-ment formation process in sixteen West European countries from 1946 to 1998. In line with mytheoretical expectations, I find that factors increasing uncertainty over the type of cabinet that isacceptable always lead to delays in forming governments, but that factors increasing bargainingcomplexity such as the number of parties and ideological polarization in the legislature only doso when there is sufficient uncertainty among political actors. My analysis helps resolve thecontradictory findings in the literature.
Paper prepared for presentation at the 2006 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association,
Philadelphia.
∗
Political
Science
Department,
553
Bellamy,
Tallahassee,
FL
32309,
Email:
## email not listed ##,
Homepage:
http://www.fsu.edu/∼polisci/people/faculty/sgolder.htm.
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Bargaining Delays in the Government Formation Process
S
ONA
N
ADENICHEK
G
OLDER
Florida State University
∗
16th August 2006
Abstract
In most parliamentary democracies, elections rarely determine the identity of the government.
Instead, they usher in what can be long periods of negotiations in which party leaders bargain
over the composition and policy objectives of the cabinet. While these delays can have quite
substantial political and economic consequences for many actors, there are few studies that ex-
amine bargaining delays in the government formation process. What studies there are reach
contradictory conclusions and many suffer from methodological problems that call their results
into question. Using data from the Parliamentary Democracy Data Archive, I examine how
factors relating to uncertainty and bargaining complexity influence the duration of the govern-
ment formation process in sixteen West European countries from 1946 to 1998. In line with my
theoretical expectations, I find that factors increasing uncertainty over the type of cabinet that is
acceptable always lead to delays in forming governments, but that factors increasing bargaining
complexity such as the number of parties and ideological polarization in the legislature only do
so when there is sufficient uncertainty among political actors. My analysis helps resolve the
contradictory findings in the literature.
Paper prepared for presentation at the 2006 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association,
Philadelphia.
∗
Political
Science
Department,
553
Bellamy,
Tallahassee,
FL
32309,
Email:
## email not listed ##,
Homepage:
http://www.fsu.edu/∼polisci/people/faculty/sgolder.htm.
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