The Italian state: no longer Catholic,no longer Christian

The constant appearance of highly detailed studies of parties in the different West European countries creates the need for a theory which summarises their major findings and relates them to each other. Such a theory needs to be general in form, but existing formulations (for example, minimal‐winning criteria for government formation) are limited to one aspect of government and are theoretically inadequate. A general theory covering all major aspects of democratic party government (formation, distribution of ministries, reshuffles, policy formation and termination) is proposed and its fit with existing findings illustrated.