How Well Minority Parliamentary Governments Govern

Abstract

To better contextualize this study, this chapter first evaluates how well minority parliamentary governments govern compared to other cabinet types within parliamentary regimes and, when appropriate, within presidential regimes. While minority parliamentary governments have often been derided as weak and ineffective, a view that Strom (1985, 1990a) began to challenge in the 1980s and early 1990s, a review of the literature on government performance offered below re-affirms that minority parliamentary governments are not as problematic as once assumed.