Policy horizons and parliamentary government / Paul V. Warwick.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Warwick, Paul, 1947-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Coalition governments--Europe, Western.

Coalition governments.

Political planning--Europe, Western.

Political planning.

Europe, Western--Politics and government.

Europe, Western.

Western Europe.

Politics and government.

Physical Description:

x, 242 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Basingstoke [England] ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

Summary:

Policy Horizons and Parliamentary Government introduces a new hypothesis concerning the formation and survival of coalition governments in West European parliamentary democracies. The essence of this hypothesis is that parties in West European parliamentary systems have discrete thresholds or 'policy horizons' that mark the maximum extent of policy compromise that they are prepared to undertake in order to participate in government. Because this represents a fundamental change in our understanding of how parliamentary systems function in the absence of a majority party, it requires new evidence and new computer software to analyse that evidence. These take the form of a new computer program for analysing political systems, Horizons 3D[c], and a new survey of experts in West European political systems, the results of which are presented in this book. Through the analysis of this and other evidence, strong empirical support is found that policy horizons not only structure the government formation process but influence the survival of coalition governments as well.

Contents:

An overview of the policy horizon hypothesis 7

Finding a horizon effect 12

The plan of attack 14

2 The Nature and Testing of the Policy Horizon Hypothesis 18

Policy horizons and their consequences 19

Testing the hypothesis 28

3 Behaviour-based Horizons and Government Formation 41

Measuring policy horizons from coalition behaviour 42

Testing distance and horizons in West European systems 54

Model assumptions 65

4 Expert Estimates of Ideological Spaces and Party Bounds 74

The design and implementation of the new survey 75

The survey results: Coverage, reliability, and validity 79

5 Survey-based Horizons and Government Formation 92

Horizons versus distance 93

An examination of the anomalies 98

Model assumptions 107

6 Elaborating the Horizon Framework 115

Auxiliary effects in the manifesto-based data 116

Auxiliary effects in the survey data 129

Model assumptions 132

A closer look at minority governments 135

The explanatory impact of horizons 138

7 Policy Horizons and Government Survival 144

Modelling survival 147

Government survival in the manifesto-based data 154

Government survival in the survey data 168

What has been found 175

What we do not know 179

Is it worth it? 184

Appendix 1 The Horizons 3D[c] Program 187

Appendix 2 Results from the Expert Survey 195.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 236-239) and index.

ISBN:

1403997799

OCLC:

62282653

Publisher Number:

9781403997791