Policy Horizons and Parliamentary Government

Policy Horizons and Parliamentary Government introduces a new hypothesis concerning the formation and survival of coalition governments in West European parliamentary democracies. The essence of this hypothesis is that parties in West European parliamentary systems have discrete thresholds or 'policy horizons' that mark the maximum extent of policy compromise that they are prepared to undertake in order to participate in government. Because this represents a fundamental change in our understanding of how parliamentary systems function in the absence of a majority party, it requires new evidence and new computer software to analyse that evidence. These take the form of a new computer program for analysing political systems, Horizons 3D[c], and a new survey of experts in West European political systems, the results of which are presented in this book. Through the analysis of this and other evidence, strong empirical support is found that policy horizons not only structure the government formation process but influence the survival of coalition governments as well. Book jacket.

Paul V. Warwick is Professor of Political Science at Simon Fraser University, Canada. He is the author of several books and more than two dozen scholarly articles, primarily in the area of parliamentary governance.