Who Has the Mandate to Govern? Voter Perceptions of Government Mandates in Multiparty Systems

In multi-party systems, elections rarely give a single party a clear mandate to govern and various coalition options would have a majority. Which of these coalition governments is seen as having a mandate to govern? In this manuscript, we analyse whether the inclusion of the largest party, vote gains or losses compared to the last election, and the ideological cohesion of the government affect whether voters think a coalition government has a mandate to govern. Based on a pre-registered survey experiment conducted in Germany (N=1,708), we find support for our expectations. Moreover, these criteria matter irrespective of whether voters like or dislike the policy platform of the government. Our findings have wider implications for the mandate theory of elections, the winner-loser gap, political legitimacy, and government formation processes in increasingly complex and fragmented party systems.