Bras. Political Sci. Rev.2007;1(2):182-216.
Government Coalitions in Brazilian democracy
DOI: 10.1590/1981-3834200700020006
Introduction
The online encyclopaedia Wikipedia defines “government coalition” as “ in which several parties cooperate. The usual reason given for this arrangement is that no party on its own can achieve a majority in the parliament.” (Emphasis added.) This commonsense view predominated until very recently in academic circles. Studies of government coalitions were limited to countries with parliamentary systems and the comparative literature assumed that presidents, because they have fixed terms that are independent from the legislature, would not have incentives to form coalitions. The assumption that coalition governments are peculiar to parliamentary systems has, however, been demolished, both theoretically and empirically.1
Coalition governments occur in 53.6% of the situations in which the president’s party does not obtain a sufficient number of seats to govern alone (, 574). In other words, presidents also seek to form governments that increase their support in the legislature and the reasons leading them to do so are not much different from those that motivate prime ministers.
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