The Formateur’s Bonus in European Constitutional Monarchies, 1901–99

Abstract

In this article, we examine bonuses garnered by government formateurs in all European democracies that began the 20th century as constitutional monarchies. Using a new data set on how portfolios were allocated in each democratic coalition cabinet formed 1901–99, we show that formateurs’ bonuses were positive and significant when the monarch still exercised discretion in choosing them but declined after the monarch’s role was constrained. Relatedly, Gamson’s Law was more strongly violated when monarchs played a larger role. After identifying the dates at which monarchs were constrained, we conduct a difference‐in‐differences analysis, comparing formateurs’ bonuses in each reformed country with those in otherwise similar countries that did not reform at the same time. The results support the hypothesis that greater royal discretion engendered larger formateurs’ bonuses.

Coalition policy in multiparty governments: whose preferences prevail

“…Importantly, the outcome for the closeness to the Median Legislative Party provides supporting evidence to the median voter theorem of Black (1948), and, together with the result for the formateur, represents a positive test of the non-cooperative theory of government formation of Baron (1991). Furthermore, the result for the formateur is consistent with recent literature on portfolio allocation (Akirav and Cox, 2018;Sharkansky, 2015). Additionally, and perhaps surprisingly, voters seem to have a compatible perception of the coalition policy compromise.…”

Gamson going global? Cabinet proportionality in comparative perspective

“…We augment this dataset with legislative seat shares of cabinet-represented parties. 10 8 Interestingly, Bucur's findings on contemporary European presidential heads of state find parallels in a historical paper by Akirav and Cox (2018) on the cabinet-facing role played by the head of state in early constitutional monarchies. Silva (2023) provides strong evidence that in pure presidentialism, the size of the formateur bonus is directly related to what Shugart and Carey (1992) called 'constitutional powers' of the president.…”

Coalition Formation in Legislative Bargaining

“…They find that markets resemble a collection of bilateral trading islands in which payoffs are split equitably between coalition partners, rather than a competitive market.12 Supermajorities can also be explained in theBaron and Ferejohn [1989] model under the assumption of deliberations under an "open rule." Even in this case however, the size of the coalition converges to the size of a minimal winning coalitions as the number of legislators is sufficiently large.13 See Section 5.3 for a more complete description of the literature.14 Alternative models in which the head of state plays a role in legislative bargaining are presented byBloch and Rottier [2002] andAkirav and Cox [2018]. These models, however, assume purely redistributive environments in which all coalitions generate the same amount of surplus, in which therefore there is no scope for welfare analysis.…”