Why Minority Governments Work ─ Multilevel Territorial Politics in Spain

Why Minority Governments Work tackles central questions in political science: how well minority parliamentary governments govern; how they build majorities; and why some perform better than others. To account for governing capacity, it examines the design of political institutions, the reconcilability of party goals and the contingent partisan bargaining circumstances, all in multilevel, territorial perspective.

The book empirically examines Spain's minority governments in comparative perspective. Spain's heavily decentralized political system with powerful regional governments and a variety of regionally-based parties might appear to exacerbate the challenges of minority government. However, Spain's minority governments work not despite its complex territorial politics but rather in part because of them. Spain's minority governments are effective in part because the political institutions and contingent partisan bargaining circumstances tend to strengthen the government's bargaining position. Moreover, the goals of Spain's statewide governing parties and regional parties are distinct yet often reconcilable, fostering cooperation during minority governments.

Bonnie N. Field (Ph.D. Political Science) is Associate Professor in the Global Studies Department at Bentley University, USA. She has been a Visiting Scholar at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University, USA, Visiting Researcher at the University of Barcelona, Spain, Faculty Fellow at the University of California, Irvine, USA, and Fulbright Senior Researcher in Spain. Her publications focus on political parties and institutions in Europe and Latin America.