Coalition politics and accountability

The paper introduces the possibility of coalition government into the theoretical study of political accountability and analyzes the accountability of coalitions as a problem of team production. It is shown that coalition governments can be held accountable in the presence of an electoral alternative. Accountability becomes problematic if it is certain that at least one of the coalition parties stays in power after the elections. Such a coalition (sometimes called a ‘unity government’) can not be given appropriate collective incentives. To incentivate government performance, voters make one coalition party responsible for the outcome. This, however, makes the other coalition party interested in sabotage. The paper analyzes the resulting conflict and characterizes optimal voter strategy.     

Small parties: From party pledges to government policy

When estimating a party's capacity for goal co-ordination, scholars need not only consider contextual constraints but also the party's properties, since these directly affect its strategic choices. For small parties which are crucial in virtually all multi-party systems the co-ordination of votes, office and policy is much more difficult than for numerically strong actors. Since the conceptual tools to assess the weight of small coalition partners – weight defined as the capacity to defend and realise core policy commitments – and to systematise intra-coalitional processes in general are absent, this article proposes a typology to account for small parties' weight. This typology is defined by the two criteria of ‘qualified pivotality’ and ‘centrality’, each of which is assumed to create a particular set of strategic advantages. Based on the latter, the approach allows small parties' impact to be compared, first, with reference to their positions within the respective parliamentary party system, and, second, with reference to the type of coalition that is likely to be formed. Based on the separate but parallel assessment of ‘formation weight’ and ‘coalition weight’, the typology reveals under which conditions the same properties of a small party may be advantageous during the coalition formation process, but disadvantageous during the subsequent period of coalition government.     

The limits of market power in shaping international regulatory cooperation: path dependence and loss avoidance in the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations

What factors shape the ability of the United States to negotiate international regulatory cooperation? This paper discusses three theoretical approaches that help to explain the potential for regulatory change – market power, historical institutionalism, and loss avoidance – and applies them to the negotiation of regulatory issues in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). It seeks to understand why the regulatory disciplines in some TPP chapters were more rigorous than those in other chapters. Focusing on case-studies of the chapters on state-owned enterprises and regulatory coherence, the paper argues that the market power of the United States is more likely to secure stronger regulatory disciplines when there is: (1) a strong loss avoidance coalition in the USA pushing for change, and (2) a weakly institutionalized regulatory framework among parties in a given issue area that makes path dependence less important.     

Coalition government and electoral accountability

Single-party governments are commonly thought to be more clearly responsible for government policy than coalition governments. One particular problem for voters evaluating coalition governments is how to assess whether all parties within a coalition should be held equally responsible for past performance. As a result, it is generally argued that voters are less likely to hold coalition governments to account for past performance. This article uses data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems project to assess whether and how the composition of coalition governments affects the way in which people use their votes to hold governments to account, and which parties within coalitions are more likely to be held to account for the government’s past performance.     

利益多元抑或利益联盟——政策网络研究的核心辩解

政策网络的研究,缘起于"多元主义是否适用于现实中的美国政策过程"的质疑与追问,兴起了一场反多元主义与多元主义之间的争论与辩解,搅动了人们对于政策过程中利益多元还是利益联盟的本质探究,同时催生出诸如亚政府、铁三角、政策共同体、议题网络、倡导联盟等新术语.其中,亚政府、铁三角、政策共同体等术语,表明政府在与利益集团的利益联盟中实现对政策过程的操纵,公共政策只是一部分政府部门与利益集团狭隘利益的体现;而议题网络、倡导联盟等术语则表明公共政策并不只是政府与利益集团的互动结果,包括传媒、公众等在内的广泛主体都可以而且事实上也参与其中.在广泛阅读西方文献的基础上,疏理政策网络各种称谓和概念之间的前后传承关系,使充斥各种概念的政策网络研究清晰化和明朗化,同时运用利益分析的方法,揭示这些概念所隐含的内在意涵,理清政策网络研究的基本研究脉向,说明政策网络研究本质上是对"政策过程是利益多元还是利益联盟"这一问题的求解,表明政策网络研究旨在对政策过程作出最贴近现实的描述和理解.     

The political-economy of conflicts over wealth: why don’t the rabble expropriate the rich?

The most striking feature of liberal democracies is the coexistence of large inequalities of wealth with a roughly egalitarian distribution of voting power. So far most attempts to explain this have asked ‘why don’t the poor form a coalition to expropriate the rich?’ This paper argues that this is not necessarily the best way to interpret the problem and attempts to provide an alternative unified political-economic model that is more consistent with standard assumptions about voting. This is done by studying what would happen if every possible coalition could form in a wealth distribution game. Among the main findings is that, if the marginal contribution of every individual to production is increasing sufficiently, there is a stable distribution of the product. This may include the egalitarian distribution. If individuals are not so valuable there is no stable distribution.     

Pre-electoral coalitions in comparative perspective: A test of existing hypotheses

Despite the vast coalition literature, pre-electoral coalitions have never been at the center of any systematic, cross-national research. Given their prevalence and potential impact on government composition and policies, this represents a serious omission in our knowledge of coalitions. I begin to remedy this situation by testing two hypotheses found in the literature on party coalitions. The first is that pre-electoral coalitions are more likely to form in disproportional systems if there are a sufficiently large number of parties. The second is that pre-electoral coalitions are more likely to form if voters face high uncertainty about the identity of future governments. These hypotheses are tested using a new dataset comprising legislative elections in 22 advanced industrialized countries between 1946 and 1998. The results of the statistical analysis support the first hypothesis, but not the second.     

Building Social Capital in City Politics: Scope and Limitations at the Inter-organisational Level

This article explores the relations between voluntary organisations and the city administration in two British cities through an analysis of the impact of social capital. It provides a corrective to the dominant individual-level approach by offering an organisational-level analysis of social capital. The evidence suggests that inter-organisational social capital is not distributed equitably within cities. Voluntary organisations that regularly engage with a city administration can build networks of trust and information flows that outstrip those available to other voluntary organisations. Although it is easier to build social capital within a sector, such as the voluntary sector, building it in tight networks with voluntary organisations would appear to be an achievable goal for a city administration – but such networks do not guarantee an enhanced overall confidence in the local political system.     

The Lega Nord in the second Berlusconi government: In a league of its own

For regionalist populists like the Lega Nord, participation in coalition at national level requires striking a delicate balance between being a party of government and a movement of opposition. The key to this is choosing the right ‘friends’ and ‘enemies’ within government. In contrast to its previous time in power in 1994, in the second Berlusconi government (2001–05) the Lega cast itself as the Forza Italia leader's most faithful ally, while being seen to be in almost constant conflict with its fellow junior coalition partners: Alleanza Nazionale (AN) and the UDC. Indeed, as AN repositions itself within a respectable governmental ‘European’ Right, so the Lega appears ever more in a league of its own within the Italian centre-right. Based on exclusive recent interviews, this article examines the Lega's relationship to its heartland and its positions on issues such as immigration, Europe, globalisation and constitutional reform. We argue that the party has transformed itself into an ‘institutionalised’ populist movement that has successfully walked the tightrope of being seen to have ‘one foot in and one foot out’ of government.     

What can a government do? Government issue ownership and real‐world problems

Despite major interest in issue ownership, what shapes it remains a puzzle. In his pioneering work on issue ownership, John Petrocik emphasises the importance of a party's performance. Recent research acknowledges this by pointing to the role of real‐world problems and incumbency for issue ownership. However, if performance truly matters, it should be difficult to understand the impact of such problems without taking into account the government's response to it. Based on novel data on issue ownership, policy development and government attention across five issues in nine countries over time, the analysis shows that the government's issue‐handling reputation is associated with the policy development, and the government's attention to the problem is important for this association. This is especially true for parties with no history of issue ownership on the issue and if the government is a coalition or in minority.     

Conforming to the Dominant Discourse: Framing Distance and Multiparty Competition

This study introduces a measure of framing distance, capturing the degree of frame overlap among parties. Additionally, it provides a causal mechanism explaining differences between parties in framing distance. Parties within PR systems have to take coalition considerations in their stride, and therefore mainstream opposition parties, which have previously governed, are unlikely to adopt large framing distances. Alternatively, challenger parties, those that have never governed, are likely to frame important issues differently. Nonetheless, challengers are expected to reduce their framing distance when performing well in election polls. Electoral success acts as a trigger for these parties to reconsider their goals (policy, office, or votes) and to become more office-seeking. These theoretical propositions are confirmed on the basis of the European integration issue, using a mixed methods approach. Pooled time-series regressions on party manifestos issued by 21 parties between 1987 and 2006 in three political systems (Germany, Netherlands, and UK) are complemented with case study analysis.     

Voters and coalition governments

Coalition governments are the norm in parliamentary democracies. Yet, despite the predominance of this type of government, political scientists have only recently started to investigate how voters approach elections when a coalition government is the likely outcome. Such elections present additional uncertainty and complexity for voters compared with elections in plurality systems, where party choice translates more directly into a choice of government. These factors have lead to the assumption that strategic voting is unlikely to occur in systems that produce coalition governments. In this introductory article to the special issue on Voters and Coalition Governments, we consider whether voters have the capacity to anticipate specific coalition outcomes and propose a framework for understanding the conditions that lead to strategic voting in both plurality and proportional systems.     

The Company You Keep: How Voters Infer Party Positions on European Integration from Governing Coalition Arrangements

Recent studies document that voters infer parties’ left‐right positions from governing coalition arrangements. We show that citizens extend this coalition‐based heuristic to the European integration dimension and, furthermore, that citizens’ coalition‐based inferences on this issue conflict with alternative measures of party positions derived from election manifestos and expert placements. We also show that citizens’ perceptions of party positions on Europe matter, in that they drive substantial partisan sorting in the electorate. Our findings have implications for parties’ election strategies and for mass‐elite policy linkages.     

Voting for government coalitions in Ireland under single transferable vote

This paper addresses the issue of whether voters indicate a preference for a government rather than, or in addition to a preference for a party, when they cast a ballot under the system of the single transferable vote (STV). It thus contributes to the existing literature on strategic coalition voting by examining whether coalition preferences matter where electors are given the option to rank the parties in order of preference. The question then becomes: does this ranking reflect or signal a coalition preference? Using survey data from two Irish elections, this paper finds that whereas first preferences are closely aligned with coalition choices, Irish voters do not systematically use second preferences to express a view on their preferred coalition formation.     

The Government Agenda in Parliamentary Democracies

Lawmaking is a challenge for coalition governments because it inherently demands cooperation and compromise by parties with divergent policy goals. The jurisdictional system of cabinet government exacerbates the problem by providing parties the means to undermine the coalition bargain in the pursuit of their own policy interests. In this article, I explore whether arrangements that allow partners to police one another induce compromise on one of the most important decisions taken by a government—the organization of the policy agenda. In an analysis of original data on the timing and policy content of over 800 government bills from four European democracies, I show that coalition governments pursue a largely "accommodative" agenda. Policy initiatives dealing with issues that are more attractive to all partners in the coalition are likely to be given priority on the agenda, while those dealing with relatively unattractive issues are likely to be postponed .     

Do Voters’ Coalition Preferences Affect Government Formation?

Studies on coalition formation assume that political parties have two major goals: they aim to maximise office and policy payoffs. This paper shows that decision-making in the government formation game is also determined by the voters’ coalition preferences. Since the coalition formation process is not a one-shot game, parties have to take the coalition preferences of the electorate into account when they evaluate the utility of potential coalitions. If parties fail to comply with the coalition preferences of voters, they are likely to be penalised in future elections. The argument is tested by an analysis of government formation in the 16 German states between 1990 and 2009. The results support the argument: the formation of coalitions – at least in the German states – is not only determined by office- and policy-seeking behaviour of political parties, but also by the preferences of voters regarding their preferred outcome of the coalition game.     

Gaining new insights by going local: determinants of coalition formation in mixed democratic polities

We develop a simple spatial model suggesting that Members of Parliament strive for the inclusion of the head of state’s party in coalitions formed in mixed democratic polities, and that parliamentary parties try to assemble coalitions that minimize the ideological distance to the head of state. We identify the German local level of government as functionally equivalent to a parliamentary setting, such that the directly elected mayor has competencies similar to a president in a mixed national polity. Our findings show that the party affiliation of the head of state is a key factor considered by party members in the legislature when forming coalitions: coalitions in the legislature are more likely to form if they include the party of the head of the executive branch. Furthermore, the policy preferences of the head of the executive branch matter for the legislators’ behavior in the coalition formation process: the smaller the ideological distance between the position of a coalition and the position of the head of state, the more likely a coalition is to be formed.     

The Defining Elements of Advocacy Coalitions: Continuing the Search for Explanations for Coordination and Coalition Structures

As the theoretical and practical interest in policy networks increases, so does the need for further research into how, and based on what rationales, actors within a policy subsystem engage in interorganizational collective action and form political coalitions. The aim of this paper is to continue the search for explanations for coordination and coalition structures in the setting of Swedish carnivore policy. Based on the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) and a previous case study within the same policy subsystem, the study investigates a set of hypotheses regarding actors' coordinating behavior and the defining elements of coalitions. The empirical analysis indicates, in support of the ACF, that perceived belief correspondence is a better predictor of coordination than perceived influence. Moreover, the explanatory power of empirical policy core beliefs in general, and normative policy core beliefs in particular, is further reinforced, while deep core beliefs seemingly do not influence coalition structure. The relevance of more shallow beliefs for coalition formation cannot be dismissed and therefore calls for additional research.     

How Unusual is the United Kingdom Coalition (and What are the Chances of It Happening Again)?

This article draws upon insights from theoretical and empirical studies of coalition behaviour in multiparty politics to examine the formation of the United Kingdom coalition following the general election of 6 May 2010. It argues that the formation of the Conservative‐Liberal Democrat coalition is not unusual in historical terms or in the context of contemporary European politics; and that although it is a break from the more recent pattern of postwar British politics it nevertheless does conform to expectations in the light of the coalition literature. The article also provides a comparative analysis of the impact of Britain's ‘First‐Past‐The‐Post’ (FPTP) electoral system on party competition and an examination of the performance of the Alternative Vote (AV) system and argues that if the United Kingdom retains FPTP then a return to single‐party government in 2015 is highly likely; and it is not inevitable that the introduction of AV would significantly advantage the Liberal Democrats.