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Early in the twentieth century, parliamentary democracy developed within an 1809 constitution based on separation of powers. By the mid‐1970s, the last remnants of this constitution had disappeared. After that, measures such as more openness in candidate nominations, positive preference voting and more scrutiny by parliamentarians were introduced to strengthen the democratic chain. But a weakening of political parties and an increased importance of external constraints are again moving Sweden towards a de facto separation‐of‐powers system. There is once again a considerable discrepancy between the written constitutional framework and the 'working constitution'. In particular, local and supranational constraints on national policy making provide reason for a reconsideration of the constitutional framework.

Abstract. The Principal–Agent approach guides a comparison of the scrutiny and implementation records of the EU member states. The main argument is that there is systematic co–variation. Cross–nationally, an influential scrutiny process is associated with a strong implementation record. But because both of these variables also co–vary with the North–South dimension of EU politics, a fundamental challenge for future research is to evaluate the importance of existing between–country variation relative to the new Principal–Agent relationships that are emerging within the integration process.

The Principal-Agent approach guides a comparison of the scrutiny and implementation records of the EU member states. The main argument is that there is systematic co-variation. Cross-nationally, an influential scrutiny process is associated with a strong implementation record. But because both of these variables also co-vary with the North-South dimension of EU politics, a fundamental challenge for future research is to evaluate the importance of existing between-country variation relative to the new Principal-Agent relationships that are emerging within the integration process. (European Journal of Political Research / FUB)

This study starts with two theoretical puzzles within the rational choice oriented literature on government formation in parliamentary democracies: the relative importance of constitutional rules and the existence of multiple party goals. From these puzzles stem the research questions that guide the study: First, what is the theoretical and empirical link between constitutional arrangements (including rules) and party goals? Second, what are the goals of political parties and how can these be studied? Third, relative to the goals of political parties and other constitutional arrangements, what is the importance of government formation rules for the empirical record of minority and majority governments?Coalition theory provides the theoretical starting point from which the research questions stem. The historical-institutional strand of new institutionalism is used to guide the general understanding of the importance of institutional context. The rational choice oriented strand is used for a detailed study of the design of the Swedish government formation rules and an analysis of how the formation rules affect the goal seeking (micro-logic) of actors.Based on both cross-national data and an in-depth study of Swedish coalition and government formation, the analysis shows that the answer to research question number one is that the link between constitutional arrangements and party goals is one of co-determination. The answer to research question number two is that party leaders pursue four main goals and that this should be an explicit model assumption. The answer to research question number three is that the government formation rules help determine the parties' bargaining positions and for that reason they are of significant importance for the formation of minority and majority governments. ; digitalisering@umu

In the early 1970s the Swedish parties designed new rules for government formation. In this study it is shown that the choice of a new voting rule stemmed from a combination of goaloriented behaviour and a process of socialization. In a cross national comparison, it is also shown that there exists an empirical correlation between the Swedish type of rule and (1) a high frequency of minority governments, (2) a high frequency of small minority governments and (3) a short government formation process. From the perspective of coalition formation theory, this is a challenging finding.

Die theoretische und empirische Forschung zu Koalitionsbildungsprozessen in parlamentarischen Demokratien hat nach Auffassung des Autors die jeweiligen parlamentarischen Regeln zur Regierungs- und Koalitonsbildung vernachlässigt und die Tatsache, daß seit 1945 ca. ein Drittel der Koalitionsregierungen in westeuropäischen Demokratien Minderheitskabinette waren, bisher nur unzureichend erklärt. In einem ersten Schritt werden die unterschiedlichen parlamentarischen Regeln von 15 Demokratien herausgearbeitet. Auf dieser Grundlage wird in einem zweiten Schritt die Häufigkeit von Minderheitsregierungen für den Zeitraum von 1945-1957 analysiert. (AuD-Pls)