Minority Governments and Legislative Voting in Parliament

Abstract

In this paper, we analyze voting coalitions under the minority governments in the 38th and 39th Canadian Parliaments. We demonstrate that minority government support is driven by electoral incentives and policy issues. The main contention of this project is that voting coalitions are more likely to form along ideological lines—the Axelrod (1970)’s thesis. However, the analysis also demonstrates that voting coalitions form along a second dimension in the Canadian Parliament; mainly on issues related to federalism and the province of Quebec. We also provide some evidence to show that expected electoral gains can help explain why certain parties choose to support the government more. This study ultimately validates different theories of coalition voting under minority governments.