Formation rules and minority governments

Abstract. This research note focuses on the importance of rules for coalition formation in parliamentary democracies. Traditionally, coalition theorists have assumed that only majority coalitions can be winning. The more recent literature has shown that coalitions can be winning even if they do not control more than half of all legislators. However, the literature has continued to overlook the fact that there exist two different types of government formation rules. In this note, the two types—positive and negative rules—are presented and it is shown that minority governments are more frequent in the countries with negative rules.