Why Minority Governments Work

Bonnie N. Field (PhD 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.

• 1 IntroductionPart I The Theoretical and Contextual Terrain2 How Well Minority Parliamentary Governments Govern3 Accounting for Governing Capacity 4 Multilevel, Multidimensional Politics in Spain Part II Why Spain's Minority Governments Work5 Governing Capacity and Partisan Bargaining Circumstances6 How Minority Governments Govern7 National Parliamentary Institutions and Government Strength8 The Reconcilability of Party Goals in the Multilevel State 9 Office for Policy in the National Arena or Peix al cove10 Multilevel Exchange of Office or Pactos de estado 11 Party Competition in the Regional Arena and National-Level AlliancesPart III Conclusions12 Minority Government Performance and Comparative Lessons

“The author makes a very significant documentation effort through personal interviews with the politicians of each period. … this book clearly advances our understanding of how well minority parliamentary governments can govern, how they build parliamentary majorities and, most importantly, why some perform better than others. … This is an important book for those interested in minority governments and coalition politics, and for readers keen on Spanish politics in particular.” (Sergi Ferrer, International Journal of Iberian Studies, Vol. 31 (2), 2018)