View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Queen Mary Research Online Captives No Longer, But Servants Still? Contract Parliamentarism and the New Minority Governance in Sweden and New Zealand Bale, T; Bergman, T For additional information about this publication click this link. http://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/jspui/handle/123456789/3059 Information about this research object was correct at the time of download; we occasionally make corrections to records, please therefore check the published record when citing. For more information contact
[email protected] Tim Bale and Torbjörn Bergman Captives no longer, but servants still? Contract Parliamentarism and the new minority governance in Sweden and New Zealand1 Recent years have seen the institutionalisation of minority governance in Sweden and New Zealand. Large, historic social democratic labour parties enjoy comparative security of tenure thanks to smaller, newer parties with whom they have signed long term, detailed support agreements covering both policy and process. This trend toward ‘contract parliamentarism’ owes much to party system dynamics, but also to the accretion of experience, to cultural norms and to institutional constraints – all of which, along with electoral contingency, explain why the trend has gone slightly further in one polity than in the other. While the trend seems to favour the left in general, its implications for the support or ‘servant’ parties, and – more normatively – for democracy itself, may be less favourable. Cabinets and governments come in all shapes and sizes but are traditionally sorted by political scientists interested in government formation into four types, depending on party composition (single party or coalition) and whether the government commands a majority or minority of seats in the legislature.