MIND THE GAP A Quantitative Study of Parliamentary Mandate Gaps and Executive Aggrandizement in Europe

Sammanfattning

This study examines how parliamentary power concentration affects democratic quality inEurope. I argue that existing explanations that focus on economic factors, democraticconsolidation and ideological preferences do not fully capture the reasons behind the ongoingtrend of democratic backsliding in Europe. Instead, this study suggests that incumbents needthe opportunity to engage in executive aggrandizement and that mandate gaps, defined as thedifference in seat share between the incumbent and largest opposition party, have potential tocreate such opportunity structures by weakening legislative oversight. Using panel data from41 European countries from 2008 to 2022, this study shows that mandate gaps are associatedwith a decline in V-Dem’s Liberal Democracy Index (LDI). Furthermore, analyses of LDI’ssub-indices show that mandate gaps negatively affect both electoral and liberal dimensions ofdemocracy. Additionally, the results show a negative effect of large mandate gaps on the indexmeasuring legislative constraints on the executive, which aligns with this study’s theoreticalmechanisms.