Abstract
Strom, Laver, Warwick, Richter, Franklin and Mackie, among others,
have analyzed the complicated, and sometimes arcane, procedures for
coalition formation in developed democracies. In multiparty democracies,
various "families" of parties seem most likely to form governments; whether
a leftist, centrist, or right wing coalition, some coalitions seem more intuitive
than others. And some coalitions that one would expect to see never
materialize. Why? Since the mid-1990s, Sweden has been governed by a
minority Social Democratic Party (SAP, the Swedish acronym) government
which has included support from the Greens and the former Communist Left
Party. Yet a similar left wing coalition/alliance was rejected out of hand after
the September 2005 election in Germany, not only by the parties of the right
(as would be expected) but also by all of the parties of the left (SPD, Greens
AND the new Left Party). The paper will compare these two cases to
investigate whether we can find any generalizable properties that enable or
discourage the formation of left wing coalitions in developed democracies.
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Convention