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Bicameralism and government formation: does bicameral incongruence affect bargaining delays?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 July 2020

Daniela Giannetti Open the ORCID record for Daniela Giannetti [Opens in a new window] ,
Andrea Pedrazzani Open the ORCID record for Andrea Pedrazzani [Opens in a new window]  and
Luca Pinto Open the ORCID record for Luca Pinto [Opens in a new window]
Daniela Giannetti
Affiliation:
Department of Political and Social Sciences, Università di Bologna, Bologna, Italy
Andrea Pedrazzani
Affiliation:
Department of Social and Political Sciences, Università degli Studi di Milano, Milano, Italy
Luca Pinto*
Affiliation:
Department of Political and Social Sciences, Università di Bologna, Bologna, Italy
*
*E-mail: luca.pinto@unibo.it
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Abstract

The effects of bicameral legislatures on government formation have attracted scholarly attention since Lijphart’s (1984) seminal contribution. Previous research found support for the ‘veto control hypothesis,’ showing that bicameralism affects coalition governments’ composition and duration. However, the effects of bicameralism on the duration of the bargaining process over government formation have yet to be explored. Our work contributes to this area of research by focusing on the impact of bicameralism on bargaining delays. We show that the duration of the bargaining process over government formation decreases at increasing levels of partisan incongruence of the two chambers, especially in those legislative assemblies in which the upper chamber plays a relevant role in the policy-making process. Such empirical evidence is in contrast with the conventional expectation according to which bicameralism should delay the government formation process, as it introduces an additional element of complexity in the bargaining environment. We test our hypothesis by using a novel data set about the partisan composition of upper and lower chambers in 12 Western and Eastern European democracies over the postwar period.

Keywords

bicameralismbicameral incongruencegovernment formationbargaining delaysbargaining durationcoalition politics
Type
Research Article
Information
European Political Science Review , Volume 12 , Issue 4 , November 2020 , pp. 469 - 484
Copyright
© European Consortium for Political Research 2020

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