Accounting for Governing Capacity

This chapter develops an explanatory framework that can better account for government performance cross-nationally, including in multilevel states. Government performance is conceptualized in terms of governing capacity, that is, the government’s ability to make significant, authoritative decisions regarding the country’s public policies. The framework breaks new ground in drawing on insights from the literatures on minority parliamentary government and territorial politics. In particular, to better understand the performance of parliamentary regimes it incorporates lessons from politics in decentralized states, party competition between statewide- and regionally-based parties, and party competition on Center-Periphery issues.