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A widespread view in political science is that minority cabinets govern more flexibly and inclusively, more in line with a median-oriented and 'consensual' vision of democracy. Yet there is only little empirical evidence for it. We study legislative coalition-building in the German state of North-Rhine-Westphalia, which was ruled by a minority government between 2010 and 2012. We compare the inclusiveness of legislative coalitions under minority and majority cabinets, based on 1028 laws passed in the 1985–2017 period, and analyze in detail the flexibility of legislative coalition formation under the minority government. Both quantitative analyses are complemented with brief case studies of specific legislation. We find, first, that the minority cabinet did not rule more inclusively. Second, the minority cabinet's legislative flexibility was fairly limited; to the extent that it existed, it follows a pattern that cannot be explained on the basis of the standard spatial model with policy-seeking parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arend Lijphart uses an average of five standardized variables – the executive-parties dimension (EPD) – to describe patterns of democracy and explain differences in democracies' performance. The article suggests ways to improve the descriptive part of the project. It argues that the EPD maps different approaches to achieving accountability and representation, rather than differences in consensus. This re-conceptualization leads to a more coherent and valid measurement. It is also argued that more systematic adjustments are needed for differences in constitutional structures (presidentialism and bicameralism). The article presents data on a revised EPD and its components for 36 democracies in the period from 1981 to 2010. As to the explanatory part of the project, we contend that the EPD often hinders adequate causal analysis rather than facilitating it. We show this by re-analysing democracies' performance with respect to turnout and capital punishment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article responds to four commentaries on the concept of semi-parliamentary government and its application to Australian bicameralism. It highlights four main points: (1) Our preferred typology is not more ‘normative’ than existing approaches, but applies the criterion of ‘direct election’ equally to executive and legislature; (2) While the evolution of semi-parliamentary government had contingent elements, it plausibly also reflects the ‘equilibrium’ nature of certain institutional configurations; (3) The idea that a pure parliamentary system with pure proportional representation has absolute normative priority over ‘instrumentalist’ concerns about cabinet stability, identifiability and responsibility is questionable; and (4) The reforms we discuss may be unlikely to occur in Australia, but deserve consideration by scholars and institutional reformers in other democratic systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses the type of bicameralism we find in Australia as a distinct executive-legislative system - a hybrid between parliamentary and presidential government - which we call ‘semi-parliamentary government’. We argue that this hybrid presents an important and underappreciated alternative to pure parliamentary government as well as presidential forms of the power-separation, and that it can achieve a certain balance between competing models or visions of democracy. We specify theoretically how the semi-parliamentary separation of powers contributes to the balancing of democratic visions and propose a conceptual framework for comparing democratic visions. We use this framework to locate the Australian Commonwealth, all Australian states and 22 advanced democratic nation-states on a two-dimensional empirical map of democratic patterns for the period from 1995 to 2015. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Veto player theory is a powerful approach to comparative politics. This article argues that the debate about its explanatory success would benefit from more systematic distinctions. The theory not only comes in different theoretical variants, it is also used in radically different ways empirically. Starting from recent debates about the 'testing' of theoretical models, the article distinguishes five ways in which theoretical models can be used empirically: contrastive, axiomatic, exploratory, presumptive and modular. The typology is applied to veto player theory and illustrated with exemplary studies and debates. The article concludes that each type raises different questions that should be answered in individual studies. Moreover, while veto player theory has an excellent track record on four empirical uses, the picture on its contrastive use is far more nuanced. More explicitly contrastive testing of the theory is desirable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are potential cabinets more likely to form when they control institutional veto players such as symmetric second chambers or minority vetoes? Existing evidence for a causal effect of veto control has been weak. This article presents evidence for this effect on the basis of conditional and mixed logit analyses of government formations in 21 parliamentary and semi-presidential democracies between 1955 and 2012. It also shows that the size of the effect varies systematically across political-institutional contexts. The estimated causal effect was greater in countries that eventually abolished the relevant veto institutions. It is suggested that the incidence of constitutional reform is a proxy for context-specific factors that increased the incentives for veto control and simultaneously provided a stimulus for the weakening of institutional veto power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An egalitarian approach to the fair representation of voters specifies three main institutional requirements: proportional representation, legislative majority rule and a parliamentary system of government. This approach faces two challenges: the under-determination of the resulting democratic process and the idea of a trade-off between equal voter representation and government accountability. Linking conceptual with comparative analysis, the article argues that we can distinguish three ideal-typical varieties of the egalitarian vision of democracy, based on the stages at which majorities are formed. These varieties do not put different relative normative weight onto equality and accountability, but have different conceptions of both values and their reconciliation. The view that accountability is necessarily linked to ‘clarity of responsibility’, widespread in the comparative literature, is questioned – as is the idea of a general trade-off between representation and accountability. Depending on the vision of democracy, the two values need not be in conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

What does the value of political equality imply for the institutional design of democracies? The existing normative literature highlights the importance of proportional representation and legislative majority rule, but neglects the choice of an executive format. This paper explores two potential egalitarian trade-offs in this choice. First, while presidential systems tend to achieve too little bundling of separable decision-making issues (within political parties), parliamentary systems often tend towards too much bundling (between political parties), thus establishing informal veto positions in the democratic process. This is a trade-off between the 'adversarial' and 'deliberative' aspects of equality. Second, there is a trade-off between 'horizontal' and 'vertical' equality. Neither pure presidentialism nor pure parliamentarism may be able to maximise both dimensions of equality simultaneously. The paper argues that certain hybrids between parliamentarism and presidentialism have the potential to mitigate both trade-offs. These hybrids establish power separation between the executive and legislature without allowing for popular executive elections. The argument also has potential implications for the democratisation of the European Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article critically reviews the conceptual ideas of G. Bingham Powell's Elections as Instruments of Democracy and explores ways to develop them further. Powell's conceptual alternative to the Westminster model - the 'proportional' vision of democracy - comes in two variants, one focusing on proportional representation (PR) and the other on proportional legislative influence. If one focuses on the former, it is possible to distinguish four visions of parliamentary democracy based on the main stage at which majorities are formed. The four stages are: party, alliance, cabinet, and law formation. The corresponding normative visions can be placed on a conceptual continuum between 'simple' and 'complex' majoritarianism. This article discusses the goals and trade-offs associated with them as well as their underlying institutional designs. It also re-emphasises Powell's insight that the congruence between policy makers and the median voter in a unidimensional policy space is a more appropriate normative standard for some visions of democracy than for others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Finnish electoral system has recently been changed to slightly increase proportionality, but nothing has been done to make cabinet alternatives more ‘identifiable’ before the election. This outcome poses a major puzzle for one important theoretical approach to electoral system change. This approach sees normatively ‘unbalanced’ systems as vulnerable to reform and would have expected a significant increase in the pre-electoral identifiability of competing cabinet options. The article explains the Finnish case by embedding it in a comparative model of normative tradeoffs in democratic design. Based on Finnish case evidence and a statistical analysis of 100 elections in 32 democracies (from 2001 to 2011), the article argues that the type of democracy exemplified by Finland is not normatively unbalanced. In particular, the lack of pre-electoral identifiability is compensated for by an unconstrained multidimensionality of partisan preferences. While it may be true that normatively balanced designs are more stable, there is more than one way to be balanced. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article analyses a certain type of bicameralism not merely as a form of legislative organisation, but as a form of government—as a hybrid between parliamentarism and presidentialism. A new typology of pure and hybrid forms of government is proposed, which classifies bicameralism in Australia and Japan as chamber-independent government. This type is systematically compared with other forms of government, including hybrids like semi-presidentialism, elected prime-ministerial government in Israel (from 1996 to 2002) and assembly-independent government in Switzerland. The article highlights how chamber-independent government has the potential to combine different visions of democracy without leading to presidentialisation of political parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political scientists regularly justify particular democratic institutions. This article explores two desiderata for such justifications. The first is a formal equality baseline which puts the burden of justification on those who favour more unequal institutions. This baseline is seen as an implication of the rule of law. The second desideratum, the comparison requirement, builds on the first: adequate justifications of particular institutions must compare them to the best alternative, and this comparison must consider the costs for political equality. The two desiderata are applied to political science debates about the proportionality of the electoral system and bicameral systems of legislative decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is corporate tax competition a threat to democracy in the European Union (EU)? The answer depends crucially on a positive analysis of the effects of tax competition on national policy autonomy. Most analyses focus on direct effects on corporate tax rates and revenues. We contend that this focus is too narrow. It overlooks the fact that corporate tax competition also has important indirect effects on the progressivity and revenue-raising potential of personal income taxation. We elaborate on these indirect effects theoretically and empirically, and explore the implications for the normative debate on the EU's democratic deficit. Our findings show that European integration can constrain national redistribution in a major way: the democratic deficit is real. Greater political contestation over the EU's policy agenda is desirable in order to mitigate this deficit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Denmark's income tax burden as the percentage of GDP is larger than the total tax burden of the United States, and it has increased further after 1980. How can this be explained, given increasing tax competition and widespread views that strong reliance on regressive taxes was conducive to building and maintaining large tax and welfare states? The article highlights three factors: First, large income taxes are feasible if the capital tax burden is moderated within the income tax. Second, the effective capital income tax burden that had developed up to the early 1980s was extremely low so that subsequent tax reforms could cut marginal tax rates on mobile types of capital income while increasing tax revenue. Third, drastic changes in the legal structure of the income tax and stability in aggregate tax policy outcomes were facilitated by proportional representation and legislative majority rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper questions the argument that strong and early reliance on 'regressive' taxes (consumption and payroll taxes) made it politically easier to build and maintain a large welfare state. It develops an alternative perspective which differs in two respects. First, a crucial 'advantage' of regressive taxes is that they imply moderate capital taxation, but this can also be achieved within income tax. Second, the direction of causality moves largely from high revenue needs to strong reliance on at least one of the two major regressive taxes, rather than the other way round. The paper aims to show that this alternative argument provides a better explanation of quantitative data patterns as well as the cases of Denmark, New Zealand, South Korea and the United Kingdom. Policy implications are also discussed: policymakers have good reason to defend the progressivity and revenue-raising potential of the income tax, and in so doing may require greater European tax coordination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In parliamentary systems, parties compete for votes and offices in the electoral arena, but in many systems they also cooperate in the legislative arena. This article examines the question of how the government status of parties affects their legislative behaviour. We develop a simple spatial model that includes parties' positional goals (vote, office, etc.) to formalize the notion of accommodating legislative behaviour. The model implies that government parties are most accommodating while opposition parties are least accommodating. The hypothesis is evaluated by comparing two pairs of similar political systems: Danish and Finnish coalition governments, as well as German and Australian bicameralism. The case studies support the main hypothesis that government status systematically affects parties' level of accommodation. We discuss the implications for two seminal approaches in comparative institutional analysis advanced by Lijphart (1999b) and Tsebelis (2002). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares national income tax reforms during the last 25 years. There were two competing models of income tax reform, ‘comprehensive’ and ‘dual’ income taxation, the latter of which was in many ways more successful. The reason lies in the structural constraints policy makers face. While taxation of capital income is very costly, creating incentives to lower marginal tax rates, the high overall tax burden on labour makes it difficult to reduce tax rates on labour incomes. These conflicting pressures point towards separate tax rate schedules for capital and labour, as is characteristic of dual income taxes. The analysis has implications for the role of income taxation in achieving social policy outcomes. Most importantly, while progressive taxation of capital income is constrained by high costs, policy makers willing to separate capital and labour income taxation can use the income tax to reduce the tax burden on low wages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past two decades there has been a worldwide fall in statutory corporate tax (CT) rales. Focusing on Australia. this article establishes three empirical facts which challenge much of the existing literature. First, CT competition was the crucial driving force behind CT cuts. Second, policy makers had to abandon tax-related investment incentives in order to pay for lower CT rates. This is broadening of the CT base is costly, because it potentially disadvantages domestic firms and may. over the longer term, erode the CT base. Third, CT cuts have put pressure on the personal income tax base, as low corporate rates provide tax avoidance Opportunities for high-income earners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Steffen Ganghof's Beyond Presidentialism and Parliamentarism: Democratic Design and the Separation of Powers (Oxford University Press, 2021) posits that "in a democracy, a constitutional separation of powers between the executive and the assembly may be desirable, but the constitutional concentration of executive power in a single human being is not" (Ganghof, 2021). To consider, examine and theorise about this, Ganghof urges engagement with semi-parliamentarism. As explained by Ganghof, legislative power is shared between two democratically legitimate sections of parliament in a semi-parliamentary system, but only one of those sections selects the government and can remove it in a no-confidence vote. Consequently, power is dispersed and not concentrated in the hands of any one person, which, Ganghof argues, can lead to an enhanced form of parliamentary democracy. In this book review symposium, George Tsebelis, Michael Thies, José Antonio Cheibub, Rosalind Dixon and Daniel Bogéa review Steffen Ganghof's book and engage with the author about aspects of research design, case selection and theoretical argument. This symposium arose from an engaging and constructive discussion of the book at a seminar hosted by Texas A&M University in 2022. We thank Prof José Cheibub (Texas A&M) for organising that seminar and Dr Anna Fruhstorfer (University of Potsdam) for initiating this book review symposium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]