INTRODUCTION

We did a number of things in the first three parts of this book. In Part I we described the context surrounding the making and breaking of governments in parliamentary democracies. In Part II we developed an explicit model of government formation, derived theoretical propositions from this model, and used simulations to explore parts of our model that these propositions could not reach. In Part III we confronted our model with the real world. We looked at two case studies of government formation, teased out empirical implications from our propositions, and brought real-world data to bear on these implications in an attempt to evaluate them. In Part IV, we apply and extend our model. We began in Chapter 10 by interrogating our model on the question of cabinet stability. In the present chapter we reexamine some of our assumptions and explore the extent to which our approach is affected by relaxing them. In the next chapter we look at some specific applications of our approach. In the final chapter of the book, we draw some lessons from our approach for the study of party competition in general and government formation in particular.

As the reader well appreciates, any theory is based on assumptions and conceptualizations. Once stated, these must be taken as fixed for the purposes both of theorizing and of exploring the empirical consequences of theory. Otherwise, we do not know where we stand. It is at this early stage that compromises must be made and restrictions imposed in order to get on with the business at hand.