The Game of Ministerial Chairs
The number of portfolios allocated to each party in the new government has been the object of some interest in Swedish media. Just for the fun of it, I did some calculations of the logic behind the distribution.
A rule of thumb says that each party should get a share of the portfolios that is roughly equivalent to that party’s share of the votes in the coalition.
With 22 portfolios to distribute, we get the following result:
- Conservatives: 26,23% of the total vote = 54,37% of the coalition vote = 11,96 ministers
- Centre Party: 7,88% total = 16,33% coalition = 3,59 ministers
- Liberal Party: 7,54% total = 15,63% coalition = 3,44 ministers
- Christian Democrats: 6,59% total = 13,66% coalition = 3,01 ministers
As cutting up actual ministers in order to make them fit a strictly mathematical distribution would be highly unethical, we need to find another key to use when we distribute the remainders. Using the principle of the largest remainder, we get: Conservatives – 12 ministers, Centre Party – 4 ministers, Liberal Party – 3 ministers and Christian Democrats – 3 ministers.
What actually happened was that the Conservatives renounced on their “last” minister which was then transferred to the Liberals who were next in line. This is not surprising – junior partners are often overrepresented in coalitions – but what would be interesting to know is whether the Liberals’ bonus portfolio was Integration or Europe.
If you are curious about what a distribution with 20 ministers would have looked like, the answer is: Conservatives – 10,87 (i.e. 11), Centre Party – 3,27 (3), Liberals – 3,13 (3) and Christian Democrats – 2,73 (3). If the Conservatives renounced on their last minister, the Centre Party would have had 4 portfolios.
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