Premium
Do government formation deadlocks really damage economic growth? Evidence from history's longest period of government formation impasse
Author(s) -
Albalate Daniel,
Bel Germà
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
governance
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.46
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1468-0491
pISSN - 0952-1895
DOI - 10.1111/gove.12410
Subject(s) - deadlock , government (linguistics) , per capita , toll , economics , gross domestic product , period (music) , economic policy , economy , economic growth , sociology , demography , linguistics , philosophy , distributed computing , population , physics , biology , computer science , acoustics , genetics
Several countries have experienced lengthy periods of government formation deadlock in recent years, as they have sought to form a new government. This study examines whether government formation deadlocks damage a country's economy. To do so, we analyze the case of Belgium, which took a record 541 days to create a post‐election government, following the June 2010 federal elections. Employing the synthetic control method, our results show that the Belgium economy did not suffer an economic toll; on the contrary, gross domestic product per capita growth was higher than would have otherwise been expected. As such, our evidence contradicts frequent claims that long periods of government formation deadlock negatively affect an economy.