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The Spanish case is particularly interesting as it provides for a vote of investiture requiring an absolute majority in the first round, but relaxes the decision rule to a simple majority requirement if a second round is required. This sequence of procedures arguably empowers the larger parties during government formation negotiations with the consequence that they have been able to form minority governments and behave as majority governments, particularly in agenda-setting and lawmaking. At the same time, smaller regional parties also have incentives to be cooperative in the first round of investiture insofar as they extract policy benefits from governments. In addition, whereas the vote of confidence works under simple majority rule, the vote of no confidence is constructive and requires absolute majority support. Clearly, the rules of government formation were designed as a package with those for government termination.

The chapter examines the crucial strikes in the National Health Service (NHS) during the Winter of Discontent and contextualizes them within historic currents in the health service since its foundation. The chapter describes how acute staff shortages, combined with the Government’s need for cheap labour created low-paid, working-class vocations within the NHS and how three major groups were recruited: men left redundant from de-industrialization; white working- class women who were primary and/or essential breadwinners, and overseas workers, particularly from the West Indies, restricted to such work partly by racism. The chapter details how the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE) harnessed workers’ dissatisfaction with low pay and the political energy of a new generation of local male and female activists like Celia Newman, Lorraine Donovan, and Robert Gregory during the disputes of 1978-1979. The chapter ends with the Prime Minister James Callaghan’s dramatic defeat in March 1979 with the Conservative Party’s call for a vote of no confidence in the Labour Government and the commencement of the General Election of 1979.

This chapter analyses the decision of Prime Minister H. D. Deve Gowda to become leader of the Rajya Sabha after he failed to secure a vote of confidence in the Lok Sabha. It argues that Deve Gowda's action damaged not only his own credibility and prestige but also the prestige and authority of the office of the nation's chief executive. The chapter also examines B. R. Ambedkar's statement on a similar issue in December 1948 and explains Richard Crossman's theory of prime ministerial government.