Word.ws English Dictionary

negative parliamentarism

negative parliamentarism noun: a type of parliamentary government in which an incoming government may take office unless a parliamentary majority votes against it, rather than needing affirmative majority support at investiture.

Noun

negative parliamentarism (uncountable)

  1. A type of parliamentary government in which an incoming government may take office unless a parliamentary majority votes against it, rather than needing affirmative majority support at investiture.
    • More precisely, the principle of “negative parliamentarism” whereby a government cannot be formed or remain in power if a majority of Folketinget is against it.2023, Mikkel Flohr, “The Populist Foundations of Democracy: A Conceptual History of “the People” [Folket] in the Constitutional Struggles in Denmark, 1830–1920”, in European Journal of Sociology /...
    • That is, while in some parliamentary systems governments may form without the active support of parliament – this is known as negative parliamentarism – no parliamentary system exists where the government can survive against the will of parliament.2023, Or Tuttnauer and Reuven Y. Hazan, “Government–Opposition Relations and the Vote of No-Confidence”, in Political Studies, volume 72, number 3, →DOI, pages 984–1004

Forms of negative parliamentarism

alternative formnegative parliamentarianism

Origin of negative parliamentarism

From negative + parliamentarism, in contrast with positive parliamentarism.

Questions about negative parliamentarism

What does negative parliamentarism mean?
Negative parliamentarism means a type of parliamentary government in which an incoming government may take office unless a parliamentary majority votes against it, rather than needing affirmative majority support at investiture.
What part of speech is negative parliamentarism?
Negative parliamentarism is a noun.

Words near negative parliamentarism in the dictionary

  1. negative Nelly
  2. negative numbers
  3. negative option
  4. negative painting
  5. negative paintings
  6. negative parliamentarism
  7. negative pickup
  8. negative pickups
  9. negative pion
  10. negative pledge
  11. negative pledges

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: negative parliamentarism (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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