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Legislative Party Switching and Executive Coalitions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2008

CAROL MERSHON
CAROL MERSHON*
Affiliation:
Department of Politics, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4787USAcam6m@virginia.edu
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Abstract

In parliamentary systems, legislative parties are the building blocks for executive coalitions. A standard assumption in the large literature on coalition politics is that legislative parties form fixed units from one election to the next. Under some conditions, however, this assumption falls flat. For instance, about one-fourth of legislators in the Italian lower house switched parties between 1996 and 2001. How is legislative party switching linked to the politics of executive coalitions? This paper examines how government composition affects the direction of party switching, and how party switching affects the reallocation of cabinet office. I devote in-depth scrutiny to Italy. Subsidiary country cases, chosen to maximize institutional variation, are Australia, Britain, Canada, France, and Spain.

Type
Research Article
Information
Japanese Journal of Political Science , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , December 2008 , pp. 391 - 414
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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