Existence of Dominant Players and their Role in the Formation of a Cabinet Coalition

A party is dominant if there is a majority coalition to which that party belongs such that it affords this party more possibilities to form an alternative winning coalition than any of the other members of the coalition (see Peleg [1980, 1981]). In this article I present empirical evidence showing that an allocation of seats in a parliament is biased toward the high frequency occurrence of a dominant party and the low frequency occurrence of a dictator (one party that holds a majority). If a dominant party forms a cabinet coalition, and if that cabinet coalition has a majority in parliament, then with a significantly high frequency the dominant party tends to form a coalition which it dominates. Evidence indicates that the occurrence of a dominant party increases as the number of parties in parliament increases.