Forestiere - Party Size, Ideology, and Executive-Level Representation in Advanced Parliamentary Democracies

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Party Size, Ideology, and Executive-Level
Representation in Advanced Parliamentary
Democracies polp_183 509..528
CAROLYN FORESTIERE
University of Maryland, Baltimore Country
How do party size and ideology matter for executive-level

representation in parliamentary systems? This paper attempts to answer
this question by providing and analyzing comparative data on 105
parties across 16 advanced parliamentary democracies. The electoral
performance of each party is assessed, alongside the extent of each
party’s legislative and executive representation over time, from roughly
1945 to 1995. Two main conclusions are derived from the analysis.
First, concerning party size, larger parties tend to be overrepresented
in government-level institutions while for smaller parties the evidence
is mixed, since almost half of the smaller parties in the data set have
never achieved executive-level representation. Second, concerning party
ideology, center parties have been largely overrepresented in executive
institutions while left-wing parties have been the most systematically
underrepresented in the 16 countries.
¿Qué tanto importan el tamaño del partido y su ideología para la
representación a nivel ejecutivo en los sistemas parlamentarios? Este
articulo trata de responder esta pregunta al proveer y analizar
información comparativa de 105 partidos a través de 16 democracias
parlamentarias avanzadas. La actuación de cada partido es evaluada
junto al grado de la representación legislativa y ejecutiva a través del
tiempo, aproximadamente desde 1945 hasta 1995. Dos conclusiones
principales se derivan del análisis. Primero, en relación al tamaño del
partido, los partidos grandes tienden a ser sobre-representados en las
instituciones al nivel del gobierno mientras que para partidos más
pequeños la evidencia es mixta, ya que casi la mitad de los pequeños
partidos en el conjunto de datos nunca han logrado representación a
nivel ejecutivo. Segundo, en relación a la ideología, los partidos de
Acknowledgements: The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments
on this article in addition to UMBC undergraduate Joshua Curtis for research assistance in data
entry. Any and all errors are my own.
Politics & Policy, Volume 37, No. 3 (2009): 509-528. Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
© The Policy Studies Organization. All rights reserved.
17471346, 2009, 3, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2009.00183.x by Universidad De Murcia Biblioteca General Maria Moliner, Wiley Online Library on [09/11/2022]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
510 | POLITICS & POLICY / June 2009
centro han sido mayormente sobre-representados en las instituciones

del ejecutivo mientras que los partidos de izquierda han sido los más
sistemáticamente sub-representados en los 16 países.
The central purpose of this article is to assess how certain conditions,

specifically party size and ideology, influence the likelihood that parties will
be included in government-level institutions in parliamentary systems. The
empirical reality of the government formation process is that not all parties are
equally represented in executive institutions relative to their legislative seat
share. Some parties routinely participate in executive governments—either on
their own or as part of a coalition—while others do not. How do party size and
ideology matter for executive participation?
Representative democracies are noted by their ability to utilize popular
votes to select political leaders. Despite this basic premise, scholars are divided
in terms of exactly what elections are supposed to do. For some, elections
are important for determining the composition of the legislature, while for
others elections are more about the selection of the executive. In parliamentary
democracies this distinction takes on critical importance, because executives are
chosen by the members of a legislature once elections are complete and
representatives have taken their legislative seats. In terms of the comparative
literature, the discrepancy between electoral votes and legislative seats—in
terms of party representatives—has been well explored. However there is a very
important second step that is often overlooked in such studies: specifically, how
the composition of the legislature affects the composition of the executive.
While the process of cabinet formation has been well studied (see e.g., Laver
1998; Laver and Shepsle 1996; Strøm, Budge, and Laver 1994; Warwick 1994),
less understood is the relationship between the extent of legislative
representation and the likelihood of executive participation: in other words
“there has been little systematic and comparative work on effective
representation in policy making” (Powell 2000, 97).
This article will proceed as follows. First, a brief literature review on
“proportional tenure” in executive-level institutions is provided. Second,
comparative data on 105 parties in 16 countries is used to determine if what
trends, if any, exist concerning party size and ideology and the extent of each
party’s executive-level participation. Descriptive statistics and a regression
analysis are presented before the conclusion section
Proportional Tenure in Executive-Level Institutions
In 1985 Taylor and Lijphart published a piece in the European Journal of

Political Research to introduce a “new debate” that would concentrate on
proportional tenure in government. The notion of proportional tenure is
analogous to proportional representation in that a party’s electoral
Forestiere / PARTY SIZE, IDEOLOGY, AND REPRESENTATION | 511
performance should be evaluated not only in the proportion of the seats a party
is awarded in the national legislature, but also in the proportion of executive-
level seats a party receives over time. To supplement the literature on legislative
disproportionality and to determine which factors most likely affect the
possibilities of executive representation, Taylor and Lijphart thus report the
“bias” that results from the difference between the percentage of time a party
has served in government and the percentage of electoral votes each party
received over time. They provide this measure for 87 parties from 18 countries
between 1945 and 1980, and they find that, generally, neither single-member nor
multimember systems perform “well” in terms of providing parties proportional
tenure in government relative to their electoral vote share. Furthermore, they
find that small, centrist parties tend to be favored (which is consistent with prior
studies) and that larger parties on the “extremes” are not proportionally
represented in government.
Similarly, other scholars who have investigated the attributes of parties that
most likely affect their possibilities of executive representation often highlight
the importance of a central, dominant player in the party system that tends to be
represented in most, if not all, coalition cabinets. For example, according to van
Roosendaal (1992, 30), the “central player is, generally, a very powerful
concept.” Likewise, Schofield (1993, 8) describes a “core party” as the one party
whose position “is at the structurally stable core of the government formation
game.” In Laver and Shepsle’s (1996) formulation, these parties are “strong.”
Empirically Colomer (1996, 94) shows that the centrist party “is always
relatively advantaged in parliamentary bargaining.” Thus the dominant point of
view in the literature is that the position of the central/core/strong/centrist
parties in the legislature gives them considerable leverage in both the making
and breaking of governments.
In large part, the literature on proportional tenure has not grown as quickly
as the literature on legislative disproportionality. The attention given to
disproportionality on the legislative side greatly overshadows the few attempts
to similarly measure executive outcomes (see Farrell 2001; Gallagher 1991; Katz
1997; Lijphart 1994; Loosemore and Hanby 1971; Rae 1967, for assessments on
legislative disproportionality; and Forestiere 2007; Taylor and Lijphart 1985;
Vowles 2004, for assessments on proportional tenure). In part, the unbalanced
attention to the electoral/legislative side has to do with an inherently normative
concern; while legislative disproportionality measures how well an electoral
system will represent proportional outcomes, the attempt to measure the
proportionality of an executive outcome may imply that the proportionality of
the executive outcome is a desired result. Indeed, many critics of electoral/
legislative disproportionality indices—indices that, for example, demonstrate
the undesirability of plurality systems because of their largely disproportional
results—expressly argue that any attempt to measure the proportionality of an
electoral outcome will necessarily bias the results in favor of the proportional
systems precisely because this is what the proportional systems are designed to
do (Farrell 2001; Pinto-Duschinsky 1999). It may be unfair, then, to use any

disproportionality index in the evaluation of plurality systems. Plurality systems
are designed to produce a different type of winner.
The same could potentially be said of proportional tenure in government
office. The very notion of proportional tenure may presume proportionality as
a desired goal. But assessing proportional tenure may be important for
additional reasons. Just as Lijphart (1999) tried to assert that “consensus”
systems are more desirable than “majoritarian” ones because of their link to
desired outcomes, such as higher citizen satisfaction, greater women’s
representation, and lower crime, it is possible that the presence or absence of
proportional tenure in government office may also be linked to certain
outcomes that can be evaluated in a positive, non-normative way. A precise,
empirical understanding of which parties have been either under- or
overrepresented in executive office may inform discussions of, for example, a
country’s overall political culture, how parties interact with each other, types of
policy outcomes, and the reasons why other institutions in the overall political
system take on an increased importance.
Measuring proportional tenure is not a straightforward task and certain
decisions about executive representation must be made in order to evaluate the
extent to which executive parties have been present in executive institutions.
There are at least two important theoretical issues that require solutions. The
first includes the extent to which executive parties are represented, and
the second involves whether to compare proportional tenure to either the
percentage of electoral votes or the percentage of legislative seats each party
receives.
First, how should the extent of executive representation be measured?
Taylor and Lijphart (1985) count the number of months that each party
received at least one ministry and compute each party’s tenure as a proportion
of that sum over all possible months for each country. The authors accept that
this approach may overestimate the importance of small parties because they
simply note whether or not a party served in an executive cabinet. But they also
reason that small parties in a cabinet coalition do have some “veto power” over
the other parties in the coalition and hence they are comfortable with the
decision not to weigh the data by the number of cabinet posts that each party
receives (Taylor and Lijphart 1985, 389). Vowles (2004, 171-2) agrees: “Small
parties may not often provide a Prime Minister, but if they have the power
to bring the government down by withdrawing support, their influence in
government will be far more than the one or two cabinet posts that they
receive.” As a result, Vowles also treats each party’s tenure as simply the
number of months it held one or more cabinet posts in a government. Verdier
(1995, 38) makes a similar decision in his analysis of government subsidies, in
which a key independent variable called “political monopoly” is measured as
the number of years a party serves in government, without taking each party’s
share of cabinet posts into account.
While it is true that each party in a government does have some degree of
“veto power” over an entire government coalition, it is probably also true that
a party with a greater number of cabinet posts has disproportionately greater
veto power than a party with a smaller number of cabinet seats. In addition,
because smaller parties do not usually control cabinet formation, they are not
always in a position to choose the ministries they would most prefer and they
probably have more to lose when a coalition disintegrates. And because larger
parties tend to converge on the political center and smaller parties to congregate
on the extremes (with a few important exceptions, such as in the United
Kingdom and in Germany), the number of coalition options may be reduced
when larger parties refuse to work with their smaller counterparts. Because
smaller parties will not usually “leapfrog” to join ideologically incongruent
coalitions, the number of potential coalitions to which smaller parties can
belong is reduced, or constrained. As a result, the proportion of ministries a
party receives may be an important indicator of their overall influence. Parties
that are important for the stability of the overall cabinet will probably receive
more ministries because their legislative support is considered more necessary
for the stability of the coalition. Simply recording whether or not a party served
in a ministry might miss this important detail.
In part, this is reflected in what is referred to as “Gamson’s Law,” the
proposition that coalition governments will distribute ministries in proportion
to the electoral support each party receives in elections. Larger parties will thus
receive more ministries, smaller parties fewer ministries. Carroll and Cox
highlight this issue by evaluating pre-electoral bargaining. When pre-electoral
bargaining leads to agreements among parties to form coalitions before
elections, Gamson’s Law does hold. However, when coalitions are formed after
elections once legislative seat shares are allocated, bargaining power (in terms of
party size) seems to matter more than the proportion of seats each party holds
in the legislature (Carroll and Cox 2007). The party system may also matter for
how cabinet positions are allocated. Majoritarian systems with fewer effective
parties, for example, tend to award more cabinet positions to the larger parties
(Carroll, Cox, and Pachón 2006). Consequently the percentage of cabinet posts
a party receives while in a coalition is an important indicator of the party’s
overall impact.1
A second theoretical issue involves whether or not government tenure
should be compared to the percentage of electoral votes each party receives
at elections or the percentage of legislative seats each party is allocated once
elections are complete. Overwhelmingly the approach in the literature has been
to utilize the percentage of electoral votes (Taylor and Lijphart 1985; Verdier
1
This approach may, however, not assign a proper weight to the individual ministries themselves.
Clearly the prime minister’s position is the most important in virtually all parliamentary systems,
but because it is difficult to systematically evaluate which ministries are “more important” than
others on a country-to-country basis, in the end, each ministry has been weighed equally.
1995; Vowles 2004). But this approach may overestimate the ability of
proportional electoral systems to produce more proportional outcomes in terms
of government tenure. Single-member district systems based on plurality—as
in the United Kingdom and in Canada—tend to produce much more
disproportionate outcomes in terms of the relationship between electoral votes
and legislative seats. Smaller parties in plurality systems that win electoral votes
may win very few, if any, legislative seats, and consequently, their ability to
achieve executive-level representation is greatly reduced. On the other hand,
proportional systems that deliberately encourage proportionality tend to award
more seats to smaller parties and enhance their chances of executive
participation. Thus, the smaller parties in plurality systems are already at a
disadvantage: smaller parties that win electoral votes may never win legislative
seats and are thus unable to compete for executive cabinet posts. For example,
the Liberal Democratic Party in the United Kingdom has historically won a
significant number of electoral votes, but has not received its “fair share” in
legislative seats and has never been represented in an executive cabinet. Thus
any measure that assesses proportional tenure of government parties utilizing
electoral votes will probably overestimate the degree of disproportionality
between electoral votes and government seats, especially for the countries that
utilize single-member district electoral systems.
Because of this reasoning, comparing the difference between the proportion
of legislative seats and the proportion of cabinet-level posts awarded to parties
over time is arguably a better measure of proportional tenure of government
office. At the very least, comparing legislative seats to government seats
equalizes the difference between the plurality and the proportional electoral
systems. While both approaches (electoral votes versus legislative seats) answer
different questions about how democracies grant representation to parties in
various institutions (legislatures versus governments), the methodology in this
article will deliberately utilize comparisons with each party’s proportion of
legislative seats in order to equalize the different types of electoral system.
Data Analysis
The data analysis in this paper builds on the methodology utilized by Taylor
and Lijphart (1985) by presenting data on the average electoral performance
and extent of both legislative and executive representation for 105 parties across
16 advanced parliamentary democracies over time between roughly 1945 and
1995.2 Several refinements to the original analysis are introduced. First, rather
than simply noting whether or not a party served in government, this exercise
will determine the exact percentage of cabinet-level seats a party received as a
2
Because I wish to concentrate on pure parliamentary systems to maximize cross-case
comparability, I do not include Switzerland and the United States in this analysis, cases that were
included in Taylor and Lijphart’s (1985) original analysis.
Table 1. Size of Parties and Executive Representation
Number of Number of Parties Average Percentage

Average Percentage Parties Covered that Served in of Overall Ministry
of Legislative Seats in Data Set for National Percentage Seats for Entire
over Time Legislative Size Government of Group Group
0-9.9% 59 33 56% 2.3%

10-19.9% 17 17 100% 14%
20-29.9% 7 6 86% 22.6%
30-39.9% 10 10 100% 34.5%
40+% 12 12 100% 57.9%
total of all cabinet seats, relative to its legislative seat share. Second, the
ideological “tilt” of each party in the data set is also reported to determine if
countries have had disproportionate executive outcomes to either the political
left, political center, or the political right in the overall political spectrum.
Following Taylor and Lijphart’s analysis, Table 1 first considers the size of
legislative parties by reporting the average weighted percentage of legislative
seats that each party has received over time.3 More than half of the parties in
the analysis (59) are very small parties, having received less than 10 percent of
the average legislative seat share over time.4 Contrary to Taylor and Lijphart’s
findings that small parties tend to be overrepresented in executive institutions,
this analysis suggests that many small parties never serve in their national
governments. Only 56 percent of small parties (the ones that have been awarded
on average between 0 and 9.9 percent of the legislative seats over time) have ever
been represented in executive institutions. On the other hand, the vast majority
of the remaining, larger parties (with at least 10 percent of the legislative seats)
have enjoyed executive representation at least once during their tenure in
legislative office. All but one have been represented at least once in executive
office (the Italian Communist Party, with an average of 26.8 percent of the
electoral vote and 28.1 percent of the legislative seats, was never formally
represented in executive ministries). Furthermore, the average percentage of
ministries awarded tends to follow a linear relationship with regard to party size.
The next table considers the ideological tilt of each party in the data set.
Scores range from one to three, with one representing left-wing ideologies, two
representing the “center” party in the country’s party system, and three
representing right-wing ideologies.
3
These percentages were derived by assigning a weight to each party’s legislative seat percentage.
The weight was determined by dividing the number of days each party served in a particular
legislature (reflecting the fact that not all legislatures serve equal time) by the total number of days
in the data set for each country.
4
In general, parties with less than 1 percent of the average vote were excluded. Consequently, most
parties in the analysis did receive some legislative representation. Only the Australian Democrats
for the time period involved received an average of 2.5 percent of the electoral vote and 0 percent
of the legislative seats in the lower house.
Because the coding of each party’s ideological tilt revolves around the
identification of the center party or parties, the concept of a “center” party and
how it is distinct from a “median” or a “middle” party deserves some attention.
According to Hazan (1997, 27), a center party is
an ideologically positioned party which occupies the metrical centre of an

ideological continuum, or is near it. A centre party will thus be located at
a relatively equal geometric distance from each end of an ideologically
defined cross-national scale, and will not need to be flanked by other
parties. The center is equivalent from one country to another—centre
parties from different countries are located at congruent points along the
scale—and possesses several shared cross-national characteristics.
The particular virtue of identifying the center party is that center parties across
democratic systems are somewhat similar to each other. Because they “are
distinguishable from non-centre parties based on programmatic differences”
they can be called a famille spirituelle (Hazan 1997, 23; Keman 1994). Thus the
utilization of the center party (or parties) in comparative analysis is superior to
the median party. The median party is the one that contains the median
legislator and divides the group into two halves. In many countries, the median
party and the center party are the same. In Italy, for example, Christian
Democracy served as both the median party and the center party. Thus the
median party may be the same as the center party, but not always. An example
of this is found in Sweden. The median party is the Social Democratic Party,
because it contains the median legislator, but the center parties—the parties
marked by center ideology—are the Liberal Party and Center Party. Another
example is Norway: again, the median party is the more left-wing Labor Party,
while the center parties are the Liberal Party and Center Party. But even though
they are all median parties, it would be a mistake to compare—ideologically—
Italian Christian Democracy to the Swedish Social Democratic Party or the
Norwegian Labor Party. Because we wish to compare these parties based on
ideology, it is thus better to utilize the center party. In this context, it is more
meaningful to compare Italian Christian Democracy to the Swedish and
Norwegian Liberal and Center parties.
For this analysis, the determination of the center party came from two
primary sources. For most of the countries of Western Europe, the data were
derived from Hazan’s (1997) comprehensive identification of parties. For the
countries not included in the Hazan volume, a second source was consulted.
This was Huber and Inglehart’s (1995) reporting of expert interpretations of
party space for each party. In this analysis, each party received a score from
zero to ten, based on a number of criteria designed to the level of each party’s
left-wing or right-wing nature. The center party in these studies is usually the
party or parties within the 3.75-6.25 range.
Based on these calculations, a score of one, two, or three was assigned to
each party in the data set. A score of two represents the center party in each
Table 2. Left-wing, Center, and Right-wing Parties in Data Set

Number of Parties Number of Parties Percentage Receiving
Ideology Overall Receiving Ministries Ministries
Left-wing (1) 38 21 55.3

Center (2) 31 29 93.5
Right-wing (3) 36 27 75.0
Table 3. Party Ideology and Levels of Representation for All Parties

(Regardless of Size)
Extent of Over-
Average or Under-
Average Average Weighted representation
Weighted Weighted Percentage Comparing
Number Percentage Percentage of of Legislative Ministries to
Ideology of Parties of Ministries Electoral Votes Seats Legislative Seats
Left-wing 38 11.7 12.7 12.5 -.8

Center 31 21.3 17.9 18.7 +2.6
Right-wing 36 12.9 13.2 13.9 -1.0
country’s party system, while a score of one represents left-wing parties and
a score of three represents right-wing parties. Table 2 reports the frequency
distribution for these parties.
Most parties have received some executive-level posts over time.
Nonetheless, these data demonstrate that the center parties have almost all been
represented in executive institutions at least once during the time period covered
here. The Liberal Democratic Party in the United Kingdom and the Flemish
Ecologists in Belgium are the only center parties that did not serve in executive
office for the time period under consideration. The data also indicate that
right-wing parties have generally enjoyed more executive office time than left-
wing parties. Although the number of right-wing parties is roughly even to the
number of left-wing parties (38 versus 36), 75 percent of the right-wing parties
have served in the executive, compared to 55 percent of the left-wing parties.
This comparison also holds when we consider the size of these general
groupings of parties as well. Tables 3 and 4 present the percentage of ministries,
electoral vote, and legislative seats for each party category. Table 4 considers
larger parties only (those that have received over 10 percent of the legislative
seat share over time).
Once again, the center parties stand out because of the extent of their
overrepresentation in government institutions. Taking all parties together in
Table 3, they received an average of 21.3 percent of all ministries with an
Table 4. Party Ideology and Levels of Representation for Parties Receiving an Average
Weighted Percentage of at Least 10 Percent for Legislative Seats
Extent of Over-
Average Average or Under-
Average Weighted Weighted representation
Weighted Percentage Percentage Comparing
Number Percentage of Electoral of Legislative Ministries to
Ideology of Parties of Ministries Votes Seats Legislative Seats
Left-wing 14 30.5 28.5 29.4 +1.1

Center 17 35.5 28.5 30.9 +4.6
Right-wing 15 27.1 26.1 28.1 -1.0
average of 18.7 percent of legislative seats, resulting in an “overrepresentation

score” of +2.6. Furthermore, the extent of overrepresentation for the center
parties increases when only relatively large parties—those that receive an
average of at least 10 percent of the legislative seats over time—are considered
in Table 4. Here the extent of overrepresentation almost doubles to +4.6. The
finding that center parties generally receive more executive representation than
left-wing or right-wing parties confirms the conventional wisdom that center
parties often drive cabinet formation (Laver and Shepsle 1996; van Roosendaal
1992) and have been rewarded consistently with a greater percentage of
government ministries.
The ideological classification of the parties in this analysis also allows us to
determine if certain countries have had disproportionate executive outcomes
toward the left, the center, or the right. Table 5 lists the degree of
overrepresentation for the most overrepresented party in each party system. The
center party has been the most overrepresented party in eight of the 16
countries, with an average overrepresentation percentage of 14.4 percent (within
center group). This means that center parties have received 14.4 percent more
executive representation (as a percentage of total ministries) over time than their
legislative seat percentages would suggest. Furthermore, four countries—
Australia, Luxembourg, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom—have had
disproportionate right-wing executive outcomes, with an average of 8.9 percent
overrepresentation. Interestingly, these countries include the three of the four
single member districts electoral systems.5 Finally, Austria, Denmark, Norway,
and Sweden have had disproportionate left-wing executive outcomes with an
average of 23 percent overrepresentation.
Likewise, the most underrepresented parties in executive institutions are
presented in Table 6. Here the data indicate that left-wing parties in nine of the
5
The data set for New Zealand includes observations until 1993, before the electoral system was
changed from pure plurality to a mixed system.
Table 5. Overrepresented Executive Parties

Ideological Tilt By How Much
of Most Over- Relative to
represented Party in Legislative Seat
Country National Executive Party Share Percentage?
Australia Right Liberal 6.5

Austria Left Social democrat 11.3
Belgium Center Christian People’s Party 8.1
Canada Center Liberal 25.8
Denmark Left Social democrat 17.6
Finland Center Agrarian/center 14.5
Germany Center Free democrat 9.5
Iceland Center Social democrat 8.0
Ireland Center Soldiers of Ireland (FF) 12.6
Italy Center Christian democracy 28.6
Luxembourg Right Democratic 6.8
Netherlands Center Christian democratic appeal 8.1
New Zealand Right National 10.9
Norway Left Labor 30.5
Sweden Left Social democrat 32.7
UK Right Conservative 11.1
Table 6. Underrepresented Executive Parties

Ideological Tilt By How Much
of Most Under- Relative to
represented Party in Legislative Share?
Country National Executive Party (Percentage)
Australia Center Labor -6.9

Austria Center People’s party -7.0
Belgium Left Socialist -4.0
Canada Right New democratic -8.1
Denmark Left Socialist -5.8
Finland Left Left-wing alliance -13.4
Germany Left Social democrat -17.5
Iceland Left People’s alliance -8.2
Ireland Right Irish race (FG) -9.3
Italy Left Communist -28.1
Luxembourg Left Communist -5.7
Netherlands Left Labor -8.8
New Zealand Center Labor -10.3
Norway Right Conservative -12.8
Sweden Right Conservative -12.6
UK Left Labor -5.9
16 countries have been largely underrepresented in executive institutions, by an

average of -10.8 percent. Right-wing parties in four countries (Canada, Ireland,
Norway, and Sweden) have been the most underrepresented with an average
underrepresentation score of -10.7. Center parties in three countries (Australia,
Austria, and New Zealand) have been the most underrepresented relative to
their average legislative seat percentage, by an average of -8.1 percent.
Overall, the data confirm the conventional wisdom concerning the role of
center parties in government formation, that the center party or parties in the
party system will be in a strategic position to make and/or break governments.6
However, the data also suggest that, on the whole and in terms of their number,
left-wing parties have been somewhat underrepresented in executive institutions
across most of the world’s most advanced democracies. Left-wing parties have
been underrepresented in more than half of the countries. Probably the most
notorious example is the Italian Communist Party, which never received any
government ministries between 1948 and 1994. Although the party did agree to
collaborate with government parties—notably with Christian Democracy
during the infamous Historic Compromise of the late 1970s—it remains that
the party never formally received government positions despite its relatively
high legislative seat share over time (di Palma 1977; Hine 1993; Tarrow
1990).
Two main conclusions about the relationship between party size and party
ideology and executive representation are thus derived from the descriptive
statistics listed in the previous section. First, concerning size, larger parties do
tend to be overrepresented in executive institutions. However, contrary to other
scholars’ conclusions, this analysis found that smaller parties, on the whole, do
not enjoy the same type of executive inclusion that center parties do. Second,
concerning ideology, and consistent with the literature, center parties are more
often than not represented in executive institutions. In addition, more right-
wing parties across the countries have generally enjoyed more executive
representation than left-wing parties.
But which matters more for these executive-level outcomes, size or
ideology? The only way to adequately answer this question is through
regression analysis, presented in Table 7. Here party size and party ideology are
included as the primary independent variables, alongside a control for the
electoral system.7 The results of this analysis confirm many of the conclusions
generated above. Party size—as a function of legislative seat share—is very
much associated with the percentage of ministries each party received over
6
See Pelizzo and Cooper (2002) for an interesting analysis concerning the size of the largest party
in the legislature and the length of government tenure. In Italy, the size of the largest party “seems
to be conducive to both a higher number of governments per legislature and shorter term limits
in office for the governments themselves” (177).
7
The electoral system variable was entered as a dummy: 0 for plurality, single member district
systems, and 1 for proportional, multimember district systems. Germany and Ireland were entered
as proportional systems.
Table 7. OLS Regression of Percentage of Ministries Received by Each Party and

Independent Variables
Variable b (St. Error)
Party size (legislative seat share) 1.18*** (.054)

Party ideology -.18 (.979)
Electoral system 2.01 (2.55)
Constant -3.94 (3.47)
N 105
R2 .83
* p ⱕ .1, ** p ⱕ .5, *** p ⱕ .01.

OLS, ordinary least squares regression.
time; the variable is both positive and highly significant. However, while party
ideology did not achieve significance, it is worth mentioning that a considerable
amount of the variance in the percentage of ministries awarded to each party
over time (83 percent) is explained by the inclusion of these three variables.
What this analysis indicates, then, is that party size matters more than party
ideology, but this should not overshadow the empirical reality that among the
parliamentary systems covered here, more right-wing parties have enjoyed
more executive representation than left-wing ones and that center parties have
definitely enjoyed more than their “fair share” of executive representation. The
insignificance of the ideology variable may also be because of the fact that there
is considerable variance in the most and least successful large left-wing
parties in the data set. For example, the most successful left-wing parties in
Sweden and Norway are quite large and have enjoyed significant executive
overrepresentation while the Italian Communist Party, as mentioned earlier,
has been the least successful.
As an illustration for why ideological disproportionality matters, consider
the data listed in Table 8. Here the ideology of the most overrepresented party
in executive institutions (one for left wing, two for center, and three for right
wing) is presented alongside the percentage of public expenditure on education
(as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP)) for 1991. This year was
chosen because of its proximity to the endpoint of this analysis (1995). The
negative correlation of -.55 suggests that as the most overrepresented party
becomes more right-wing, public expenditure for education decreases. This
finding suggests that determining which ideologies have dominated executive
institutions in many of the world’s advanced democracies is not a trivial
undertaking. Countries that have experienced disproportionate executive
outcomes toward either the left or the right may have particular, and
predictable, policy trajectories that with little alternation in government may be
difficult to change or reverse. For example, left-wing parties are typically known
to advocate more redistributive socioeconomic policies, while right-wing parties
Table 8. Ideology of Most Overrepresented Party and 1991 Public Expenditure on

Education (as a Percentage of GDP)
Public Expenditure
Ideology of Most on Education as a
Country Overrepresented Party Percentage of GDP
Australia 3 4.9
Austria 1 5.3
Belgium 2 5
Canada 2 6.5
Denmark 1 6.9
Finland 2 6.5
Ireland 2 5
Italy 2 3
Luxembourg 3 3
Netherlands 2 5.6
New Zealand 3 6.1
Norway 1 7.1
Sweden 1 7.1
UK 3 4.8
Correlation: -.55.
Source: Expenditure data taken from the 2008 World Bank Development Indicators Online.
Note: Germany and Iceland excluded because of data unavailability for time period.
tend to resort more to a market-based political economy. Center parties

probably endorse a mixed approach because they occupy the center of an
ideological continuum (Hazan 1997). An important question for future
research would assess the overall effects of patterns of either over- or
underrepresentation of executive parties. For example, what effects do these
phenomena have on a country’s overall policy trajectory, or on the possibilities
of policy reversal?
The presence of significant executive disproportionality in one direction or
the other may have implications for other phenomena as well. As a particular
way of running government affairs becomes entrenched over time, it is possible
that a country’s overall political culture could be swayed to accept that outcome
paradigm. Possibilities of alternation, in such a case, could be greatly reduced as
more and more voters identify with the political winners of the executive-
formation game. Government parties become highly privileged in such cases
because they can utilize the resources of the state to solidify their positions
and enhance their possibilities of continued electoral success and executive
participation.
The way that parties interact with each other could also be predictably
affected, as one group of parties settles in the government while another settles
in the opposition. With highly disproportionate outcomes in the executive, these
roles could become institutionalized over time and even more difficult to
disrupt, even in the presence of electoral gains for opposition parties.
In addition, an informed understanding of executive disproportionality

could also influence how other institutions in the overall political system
become outlets for political participation among opposition parties
that, despite their electoral performance, cannot break into government.
These institutions could include, for example, structures within the legisla-
ture itself (committees, bicameralism, and so on) or in other institutional
arenas, such as federalist or judicial structures that give opposition parties
access to decision-making mechanisms beyond formal government
participation.
Finally, how legislative parties are either under- or overrepresented in
executive institutions might have implications for the majoritarian/consensus
divide (Lijphart 1999). It may be the case that greater alternation is associated
with majoritarian democracies: since majoritarian countries tend to utilize
single member district systems, they also tend to have fewer, but larger,
parties. In consequence, it is likely that changes on the electoral margins may
result in dramatic legislative changes that allow executive parties to alternate
more freely between elections. In such cases, we might expect the propor-
tional tenure for each party to be roughly equivalent to its legislative seat
share over time. On the other hand, consensus democracies that utilize
proportional electoral systems may have less alternation. Even though the
number of parties increases in these systems, the analysis presented here
confirmed that larger, center parties often drive the cabinet formation process.
Consequently, the extent of their executive representation relative to their
legislative seat share is higher compared to the other parties in their party
systems.
While consensus systems have been considered “kinder” or “gentler” in
terms of their ability to mitigate certain societal and political problems
(Lijphart 1999), consensus systems may not be granting their “fair share” of
executive representation to the non-center parties represented in legislatures. In
this way, majoritarian countries may “perform” better than consensus ones in
providing access to executive representation over time. But this suggestion
needs to be subject to empirical analysis; contradictory cases do exist. For
example some majoritarian countries have had highly disproportionate
outcomes (i.e., Canada’s Liberal Party has enjoyed extensive over-
representation in executive institutions relative to its legislative seat share),
while some consensus systems have alternated quite a bit and represented most
of their legislative parties relatively proportionally in the executive (i.e., since
the 1970s coalitions in the Netherlands have alternated among legislative
parties) (Forestiere 2007).
Each of these implications could become potential research programs
designed to discern the long-term effects of continued disproportionality of
executive-level outcomes. The proportional tenure of each party in the
party system could provide an important clue to many areas of political
inquiry.
Conclusion
Clearly the 16 countries covered here are all advanced democracies,

complete with free and fair elections. If executive disproportionate outcomes
are sustained over time, it is, in part, because the voting citizens of a country
desire it that way. Thus, in many ways, the nature or executive over- and
underrepresentation is not only linked to the electoral system; such phenomena
must also be linked to political culture and what citizens deem appropriate for
their political systems. Disproportionate outcomes toward the left are probably
associated with a more entrenched welfare state, while disproportionate
outcomes toward the right are probably associated with a more market-based
political economy. Disproportionate outcomes toward the center are most likely
associated with a mix of both. In turn, these ideological paradigms become part
of the political fabric of a nation. Future testing should determine the validity of
this statement.
This analysis has confirmed some of the conventional wisdom concerning
party representation in executive institutions while at the same time refuting
some of the findings of previous analyses on proportional tenure. First,
concerning party size, larger parties tend to be overrepresented in government-
level institutions. This is to be somewhat expected, because larger parties tend to
be considered electoral “winners” and as such they are in a strategic position to
control the cabinet formation process. However, and contrary to some prior
analyses, the methodology employed here suggests that smaller parties do not
universally enjoy a strategic position: almost half of the small parties in the
analysis have never achieved executive-level representation.
Second, concerning party ideology, and consistent with the literature, center
parties have been largely overrepresented in executive institutions. This is also
to be expected, since center parties are in a unique position to select coalition
partners from both the right and left. Center parties also represent moderate
ideologies that often find greater levels of support among democratic
populations. However, the analysis found that left-wing parties have been the
most systematically underrepresented in the 16 countries. This may explain the
relatively rapid pace of increasing economic globalization among democratic
countries. Because left-wing parties tend to endorse more protectionist,
redistributive policies, and because left-wing parties have been relatively
underrepresented in many democracies’ highest offices (compared to center and
right-wing parties), it becomes easier, for example, to understand why and how
the political economy of the world’s most advanced democracies has become
based more on free-market economics.
Appendix
Data
% % %
Govt Elec Leg
Country Label Name Ideology min vote seat
Australia ADM Australian Democrats 1 .0 2.5 .0

Australia LAB Australian Labor Party 2 38.6 45.2 45.5
Australia CNT National Party of Australia 3 15.6 9.5 14.7
Australia LIB Liberal Party 3 45.9 36.7 39.4
Austria GR Green Alternative 1 .0 1.2 1.0
Austria KPO Communist Party of Austria 1 .3 2.2 .7
Austria SPO Social Democratic Party of Austria 1 57.5 44.8 46.2
Austria OVP Austrian People’s Party 2 37.6 42.7 44.6
Austria FPO Freedom Party of Austria 3 1.7 8.0 7.3
Belgium SPA Socialist Party 1 .0 3.8 3.9
Belgium PC (C) Belgian Communist Party 1 .4 3.6 2.4
Belgium FDF French Speakers Democratic Front 1 .4 2.8 2.9
Belgium PS (S) Socialist Party 1 7.8 3.9 4.9
Belgium BSP Belgian Socialist Party 1 20.2 22.7 24.2
Belgium AGL Flemish Ecologists 2 .0 1.1 .6
Belgium CD&V Christian People’s Party 2 13.9 5.4 5.8
Belgium CVP Christian People’s Party (Flemish) 2 37.6 28.0 29.9
Belgium MR Liberal Reform Party 3 .0 2.6 3.1
Belgium CDH Christian People’s Party 3 .0 2.2 2.5
Belgium N-VA People’s Union 3 1.1 5.7 5.0
Belgium VLD Flemish Liberals and Democrats 3 6.1 3.4 3.5
Belgium PVV Belgian Liberal Party 3 10.7 10.1 9.7
Canada ND New Democratic Party 1 .0 14.5 8.1
Canada BLQ Bloc Quebecois 1 .0 2.1 2.7
Canada LIB Liberal 2 73.3 40.4 47.5
Canada REF Reform Party 3 .0 2.3 1.1
Canada CON Progressive Conservative 3 26.7 33.0 34.6
Denmark SF Socialist People’s Party 1 .0 5.6 5.8
Denmark DKP Communists 1 .0 2.1 1.6
Denmark SD (S) Social Democrats 1 55.0 36.6 37.4
Denmark GB (J) Justice Party 2 1.1 2.3 1.6
Denmark CD Centre Democrats 2 3.0 2.3 2.4
Denmark RV (R ) Radical Liberals 2 9.0 7.0 7.3
Denmark FRP Progress Party 3 .0 4.2 4.1
Denmark KRF (CP) Christian People’s Party 3 .6 1.1 1.1
Denmark KF (C ) Conservatives 3 14.4 16.3 16.7
Denmark V (L) Liberals 3 16.2 18.5 19.4
Finland VIHR Green League 1 .0 1.1 .8
Finland VAS/FPDU Left-wing Alliance 1 4.5 18.2 17.9
Finland SDP Social Democratic Party of Finland 1 28.7 24.5 25.9
Finland PS/FRP Finnish Rural Party 2 1.6 3.9 2.9
Finland LIB Liberal People’s Party 2 3.2 4.3 3.3
Finland KESK/CENTER/CE Agrarian Union/Center 2 35.1 20.6 22.7
Finland KD Christian League of Finland 3 .3 1.7 1.6
Finland KOK/CON Conservatives 3 7.6 17.6 17.9
Finland SFP/SW Swedish People’s Party 3 8.9 5.7 5.6
Germany GRUNE Greens 1 .0 2.1 1.8
Germany PDS Communist Party 1 .0 1.6 .9
Germany SPD Social Democrat 1 21.5 37.0 39.0
Germany FDP Free Democrat 2 20.7 9.1 11.2
Germany CSU Christian Social Union 3 15.0 9.1 9.2
Germany CDU Christian Democrat 3 39.2 35.6 37.6
Iceland SK Women’s Alliance 1 .0 2.0 2.0
Iceland USP People’s Alliance 1 8.2 17.2 16.4
Iceland SDP Social Democrats 2 21.8 14.9 13.8
Continued
Appendix Continued
% % %
Govt Elec Leg
Country Label Name Ideology min vote seat
Iceland FSF Progressive Party 2 27.0 22.9 27.2

Iceland SFF Independence Party 3 39.5 38.0 37.9
Ireland CnT Party of the Land 1 1.0 1.1 1.1
Ireland CnP Party of the Republic 1 1.1 1.6 .8
Ireland DL Democratic Left 1 12.1 12.5 12.2
Ireland FF Soldiers of Ireland 2 60.9 45.2 48.3
Ireland PD Progressive Democrats 3 1.2 1.3 1.2
Ireland FG Irish Race 3 22.4 30.4 31.7
Italy DS Democratic Left 1 .0 26.8 28.1
Italy PSI Italian Socialist Party 1 12.6 11.0 11.1
Italy PRI Italian Republican Party 2 4.2 2.6 2.0
Italy PLI Italian Liberal Party 2 2.4 3.6 3.0
Italy PSDI Italian Social Democratic Party 2 8.1 4.3 3.6
Italy DC Christian Democracy 2 71.3 39.2 42.7
Italy AN National Alliance 3 .0 5.3 4.7
Italy PNM Monarchist Party 3 .0 2.0 1.8
Luxembourg CP Communist Party of Luxembourg 1 .3 9.0 6.0
Luxembourg LSAP Luxembourg Social Worker’s Party 1 30.0 31.6 30.7
Luxembourg CSV Christian Social People’s Party 2 43.3 34.8 39.5
Luxembourg DP Democratic Party 3 25.7 16.9 18.9
Netherlands CPN Communist Party of the Netherlands 1 .0 3.3 3.1
Netherlands PSP Pacifist Socialist Party 1 .0 1.1 .9
Netherlands ARP (A) Anti-Revolutionary Party 1 7.9 6.2 6.3
Netherlands PvdA (P) Labour Party 1 21.2 28.9 30.0
Netherlands D66 (D) Liberal Democrats 2 3.2 4.1 4.2
Netherlands CDA (C) Christian Democratic Appeal 2 18.6 10.2 10.5
Netherlands KVP (K) Catholic People’s Party 2 23.7 16.7 17.4
Netherlands SGP Political Reformed Party 3 .0 2.1 1.9
Netherlands CHU (U) Christian Historical Union 3 4.7 4.7 4.7
Netherlands VVD (V) People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy 3 17.2 13.6 14.0
Norway SV Socialist Left Party 1 .0 2.7 1.8
Norway NKP Communist Party 1 .0 1.5 .2
Norway DNA Labour Party 1 76.3 41.7 45.9
Norway V Liberal Party 2 3.1 6.3 5.0
Norway SP Centre Party 2 5.0 9.5 9.9
Norway FRP Progress Party 3 .0 1.4 1.0
Norway KRF Christian People’s Party 3 5.9 9.7 9.9
Norway H Conservative Party 3 9.7 22.0 22.5
New Zealand LP Labor Party 2 37.0 44.9 47.3
New Zealand NP National Party 3 63.0 44.2 52.3
Sweden V Communist 1 .0 5.1 4.1
Sweden SAP Social Democrats 1 79.2 45.2 46.5
Sweden FP Liberal Party 2 6.1 14.7 15.1
Sweden C Center Party 2 8.3 14.1 14.9
Sweden MP Greens 3 .0 1.1 0.8
Sweden KD Christian Democrats 3 .9 1.7 0.8
Sweden M Conservative Party 3 4.7 17.3 17.3
UK LIB Liberal Democratic 2 .0 13.1 2.7
UK LAB Labour 2 42.0 40.9 47.9
UK CON Conservative Party 3 58.0 41.7 46.9
About the Author
Carolyn Forestiere is assistant professor in Political Science at the University

of Maryland, Baltimore County. Her main research programs focus on patterns
of executive representation and how political institutions structure
opportunities for political parties to influence legislative outcomes in

comparative perspective. Her recent work has been published in Representation
and Scandinavian Political Studies.
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17471346, 2009, 3, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2009.00183.x by Universidad De Murcia Biblioteca General Maria Moliner, Wiley Online Library on [09/11/2022].

How do party size and ideology matter for executive-level

centro han sido mayormente sobre-representados en las instituciones

The central purpose of this article is to assess how certain conditions,

Proportional Tenure in Executive-Level Institutions

In 1985 Taylor and Lijphart published a piece in the European Journal of

do (Farrell 2001; Pinto-Duschinsky 1999). It may be unfair, then, to use any

Table 1. Size of Parties and Executive Representation

Number of Number of Parties Average Percentage

0-9.9% 59 33 56% 2.3%

an ideologically positioned party which occupies the metrical centre of an

Table 2. Left-wing, Center, and Right-wing Parties in Data Set

Left-wing (1) 38 21 55.3

Table 3. Party Ideology and Levels of Representation for All Parties

Left-wing 38 11.7 12.7 12.5 -.8

Left-wing 14 30.5 28.5 29.4 +1.1

average of 18.7 percent of legislative seats, resulting in an “overrepresentation

Table 5. Overrepresented Executive Parties

Australia Right Liberal 6.5

Table 6. Underrepresented Executive Parties

Australia Center Labor -6.9

16 countries have been largely underrepresented in executive institutions, by an

Table 7. OLS Regression of Percentage of Ministries Received by Each Party and

Party size (legislative seat share) 1.18*** (.054)

* p ⱕ .1, ** p ⱕ .5, *** p ⱕ .01.

Table 8. Ideology of Most Overrepresented Party and 1991 Public Expenditure on

tend to resort more to a market-based political economy. Center parties

In addition, an informed understanding of executive disproportionality

Clearly the 16 countries covered here are all advanced democracies,

Australia ADM Australian Democrats 1 .0 2.5 .0

Iceland FSF Progressive Party 2 27.0 22.9 27.2

About the Author

Carolyn Forestiere is assistant professor in Political Science at the University

opportunities for political parties to influence legislative outcomes in

Lijphart, Arend. 1994. Electoral Systems and Party Systems: A Study of 27

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* p ⱕ .1, p ⱕ .5, * p ⱕ .01.