The Will of the People by Albert Weale;

Author:Albert Weale;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781509533299
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Published: 2018-11-12T00:00:00+00:00

Going in Circles

While debate raged in Folkland about the meaning of majority rule when no political grouping had an overall majority, the parties in parliament were trying to form a government. Those parties had seats in exact proportion to the votes they had gained in the most recent election. No party wanted to form a minority government, so a coalition was needed. Since no party could guarantee a government programme that represented its first preference, any coalition that was going to form would depend on the second, third and fourth preferences of the parties. For example, suppose the Old Left Party had to decide which coalitions it might enter. The decision it took on that question depended on whether it cared more for its tax-welfare position, in which case it would prefer to join the New Left Party, or for its position on social morality, in which case it would prefer to form a coalition with the Old Right Party. Similar considerations applied to the other parties. For example, the Old Right Party had to decide on whether its tax stance was more important than its stance on social morality. Each party had a preference for the policy platforms of the other parties, depending on which elements were more or less attractive and moving from most favourable to least favourable. The pattern is set out in Table 4.3.

Table 4.3. Preferences for Forming Coalitions

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.