Small parties in European Governments

This paper seeks to identify the determinants of the successes (government entry) of small political parties in 21 European states. Although the term small party is used quite regularly the borders between small, medium or large parties are not precisely delineated. To overcome this problem, I propose an original mathematical formula to select the group of 26 small parties based on the same criteria in 21 European states. Having this sample, I analyse all coalition cabinets to which these parties were invited as the junior partners. The main goal in this paper is to explain the causes of these parties' presence in the governments and explore the determinants of the portfolio allocations by combining quantitative (i.e. Banzhaf Power Index) and qualitative (ideological distance) measures. Some of the conclusions confirm previous findings (disproportional portfolio allocation which favours small parties) and some only partially overlap with the conclusions drawn in the previous studies (the relation between the number of potential/ alternative collaborators and the likelihood that the small party becomes the coalition member). This study deals with the cases from Central and East European States, and Western Europe.本文旨在探究21个欧洲国家中小政党成功入阁（government entry）的决定因素。尽管“小政党”这一表述被频繁使用，但小、中、大型政党之间的划分边界并未被精准界定。为解决这一问题，本文提出一项原创数学公式，用于在21个欧洲国家中基于统一标准筛选出26个小政党样本。基于该样本，本文对所有邀请这些政党作为次要执政伙伴的联合内阁展开分析。本文的核心目标在于阐释这些政党得以进入政府的成因，并结合定量方法（即班扎夫权力指数（Banzhaf Power Index））与定性方法（意识形态距离（ideological distance））探究内阁职位分配的决定因素。部分研究结论印证了既往发现（即有利于小政党的非比例性内阁职位分配），另有部分结论仅与既往研究结论存在部分重合（即潜在/备选合作伙伴数量与小政党成为联合内阁成员的可能性之间的关联）。本研究涵盖中东欧国家与西欧国家的相关案例。