Responsiveness under Minority and Majority Cabinets: A Comparative Analysis

• In Event: Voters, Parties and Responsiveness

Abstract

In representative democracies, governments are expected to respond to changes in voters’ preferences and issue priorities. Previous research on government responsiveness shows that this happens to different extents, conditional on institutional settings (Chaqués Bonafont & Palau, 2011; Wlezien & Soroka, 2012) and electoral pressure (Bernardi, 2020). In this study, we examine whether government parties' changing coalition prospects during the electoral term, which result from changes in party popularity, lead to different responses in minority and majority cabinets. Minority governments lack a majority of seats in parliament, meaning they have to find support from other parties, which is facilitated when they can rely on public support. Following the theoretical approach by Pickup & Hobolt (2015), we argue that there is a complex relationship between changes in voters’ issue priorities, government status and government responsiveness, which is additionally moderated by coalition prospects (i.e. government popularity). While Pickup and Hobolt provide case evidence for Canada, longitudinal and comparative analyses – which also cover multi-party systems – are so far non-existing. We close this gap by including data from various parliamentary democracies in the time period between 1990 and 2020 to test whether (and under which conditions) minority governments are more responsive to shifts in voters’ issue priorities in light of different coalition prospects. Empirically we investigate two forms of responsiveness: First, we cover rhetorical responsiveness by focusing on which topics are addressed in parliamentary speeches and which members of government participate in legislative debate. We interpret debate participation by high-ranked party members, e.g. ministers, as a stronger signal to the voters, thus, indicating more responsiveness. Second, we examine policy-based responsiveness and number of proposed bills in different policy areas. The findings will be relevant for a comprehensive evaluation of democratic representation in parliamentary democracies.

Authors

• Jasmin Rath, University of Cologne

• Sven-Oliver Proksch, University of Cologne