A new Political Analysis study by Bocconi’s Lanny Martin and Duke’s Georg Vanberg challenges Gamson’s Law, the idea that coalition parties receive cabinet posts in proportion to their parliamentary seats. Using a new ILR statistical approach on 308 governments in 16 democracies, the authors find power-sharing is less proportional, more variable and context-dependent than previously thought. Small parties often gain a stronger bargaining advantage, showing that coalition politics is shaped less by fixed rules than by political negotiation.

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