Prime Ministers, Early Elections, and Legislative Bargaining in Parliamentary Governments: Evidence From Denmark

The power to dissolve the legislature and call a new election is a central institutional prerogative of prime ministers in many parliamentary democracies.  In this paper, we examine the use and consequences of dissolution threats by prime ministers in legislative bargaining in a non-majoritarian context. While there are several theoretical models of dissolution and confidence institutions in the context of coalition and minority government (e.g., Lupia and Strøm, 1995; Huber 1996; Baron, 1998; Huber and McCarty, 2001; Strøm and Swindle, 2002), there is little systematic evidence on the use and impact of dissolution power on legislative bargaining. As there is not readily available data, we collect a new data set on dissolution threats in Denmark to shed light on the explanatory power of existing models. With a prime minister that is endowed with unilateral dissolution power and a multi-party legislature, Denmark provides a suitable testing ground. Primarily based on newspaper sources, we identify situations since 1973 in which the prime minister has threatened to call an early election. The data allow us to study when prime ministers use the dissolution threat and how it affects the passage of legislation.