This dissertation describes and explains the development of parliamentarism in Western Europe. Defining parliamentarism as an institutional solution in which the government is politically responsible to parliament only, I use country historiography to map out a tug-of-war between parliament and the head of state over the ability to make governments resign or maintain them in office in 11 West European countries since the establishment of national parliaments. To describe the development of parliamentarism, I use a Bayesian learning model that estimates how expectations of who might make the government in office resign are updated, based on information on previous government-termination attempts at each point in time. I argue that parliamentarism is institutionalized when past experience suggests that there is good reason to believe that no actor other than parliament can make the government resign. In addition, I theorize that the emergence of party systems, and the development of party-system fragmentation and polarization, affect the ability and willingness of parliamentary party leaders and heads of state to enforce parliamentarism or its counter-factual, power sharing, in practice. Having described the development of parliamentarism in the countries included in this dissertation, I show that parliamentarism never developed before the emergence of party systems, and I find support for my theory in time-series cross-sectional regression. Party-system fragmentation affects parliamentarism negatively, and some party-system polarization affects parliamentarism positively while much party-system polarization affects parliamentarism negatively. I complement the regression analyses by analyzing the behavior of the relevant actors in four case studies: Denmark from the 1850s to the 1920s, Belgium from the 1830s to the 1950s, France from the 1940s to the 1960s, and Finland from the 1920s to the 1990s. These case studies substantiate my argument about the effect of party systems further. Thus, the dissertation illustrates how a Bayesian learning model can be used to estimate institutional change and contributes with substantive knowledge about the development of a very important political institution in Western Europe. The results have implications for knowledge about West European democratization, the role of parties to enforce political institutions, and understandings of how political conflict can have both positive and negative effects on politics.

Many scholars have regarded China's emergence as an economic force as a threat to democracy in Africa, presenting China as the exporter of an authoritarian model through its rising economic influence. This article investigates how well founded the contended Chinese economic threat to Africa is by both analyzing the data at a very fundamental level and applying time-series, cross-sectional analysis to economic and political data. In particular, the relationship between Chinese economic interactions with African states and democracy is explored. The analysis considers different aspects of an economic interaction with China measured both as share of GDP and of country totals. I do not find a relationship between Chinese economic interaction with African states and democracy in these states. The article thus contributes much important groundwork concerning the existence of patterns in Chinese economic relations and democracy, as well as some specific links between these economic relations and political change

Parliamentarianism is an important political institution that determines how executive power is controlled, and a key part of many representative democracies. In this paper, I explicitly define parliamentarianism as a system where the government is dependent on the tolerance of the parliament for its survival, but not on the tolerance of any body other than parliament. I argue that these are the necessary and sufficient conditions to consider a regime parliamentary. This definition opens up for an investigation of parliamentary systems in time and space, and I test its usefulness on the case of Belgium 1830-2014. I show that the Belgian parliamentary regime has been characterized by breaks, where the monarch has neutralized the parliamentary principle and at some points in time undermined the relationship between parliament and government.In contrast to prior politico-historical comparative research, I further show that, although parliamentarianism was inscribed in the Belgian constitution in 1831, the current uninterrupted Belgian parliamentary regime does not go further back in time than the 1950s. The investigation shows that my definition yields new insights and a viable empirical strategy. I include a suggestion for why Belgian parliamentarianism only existed for short periods before the second World War, and why Belgium is now experiencing its longest parliamentary spell.

Sweden is a country where left‐right orientation structures the political landscape, homeownership is increasingly important, and the importance of class for political preferences and behavior is changing or even weakening. This article explores the significance of homeownership for left‐right orientation in Sweden, and extends the relationship to include class position. By combining detailed cross‐sectional survey data with data on regional house price variations it suggests that homes function as an economic asset that affects individual political preferences. Furthermore, the relationship between homeownership and left‐right orientation is expected to be driven by particular class groups, whose labor market position imply a more leftist orientation, while their status as homeowners imply a more rightist one. The expectation is borne out, which indicates that the asset function of homes help accounting for changing class patterns of left‐right orientation in Sweden