How parties compete: Electoral performance and government participation in parliamentary democracie

In this project, I use a new dataset on parties in parliamentary democracies to explore, empirically, the factors which affect a party's electoral performance and its success at obtaining cabinet posts. The analysis reveals that the primary determinants of a party's electoral performance are whether it is an incumbent or opposition party at the time of the election and, if incumbent, whether it controls the prime ministry. In addition, shifts in economic performance affect incumbent party fortunes, but the direction of this effect varies for left and right parties and is only felt by incumbent parties that hold a large percentage of the cabinet's legislative seats.;With respect to a party's chances of getting into the cabinet, the analysis reveals that the institutional process governing coalition formation is a critical determinant. In most systems, the institutional rules by which cabinets are created give a single party, the formateur, tremendous leverage to shape the composition of the cabinet to its liking. Not unexpectedly, then, these formateurs tend to pack the cabinet with parties that are ideologically similar to themselves. Given their critical role in shaping the cabinet, then, it is of interest to know what causes a particular party to become the formateur. My analysis of this question shows that the overwhelming determinant of the identity of the formateur is which party holds the most seats in the legislature.