Government formation in parliamentary democracies

Research on government formation in parliamentary democracies is replete wi th theoretical arguments about why some coalitions form while others do not . Unfortunately, this theoretical richness has not led to the development o f an empirical tradition that allows scholars to evaluate the relative impo rtance of competing theories. We resolve this problem by applying an empiri cal framework that is appropriate for modeling coalition choice to evaluate several leading explanations of government formation. Our approach allows us to make conclusions about the relative importance of traditional variabl es relating to size and ideology and to assess the impact of recent new-ins titutionalist theories on our ability to explain and predict government for mation.