The Scottish Liberal Democrats

As the junior members of the two Scottish coalition or partnership governments (1999–2003 and 2003–7), the Liberal Democrats have had a major impact on post-devolution public policy in Scotland. Contrary to expectations, their participation as junior partners in a coalition government has enhanced rather than damaged their electoral prospects. The party's success in coalition reflects the electoral and policy compatibilities between them and Labour, the availability of increased public spending to fund their demands, their use of specific policy agreements and effective election campaign tactics. Under their new leader, Nicol Stephen, they have sought greater distance from Labour and located themselves between Labour and the Scottish Nationalist Party. Looking forward to the 2007 election, the declining Labour vote and probable SNP gains mean that the Liberal Democrats are likely this time to have a choice between joining a Labour-led or forming a non-Labour coalition.     

When,How and Why Are Junior Coalition Parties Able to Affect a Government's Foreign Policy? A Study of Swedish Coalition Governments 2006–2014

Junior partners in a coalition government are torn between an eagerness to profile themselves, and to show loyalty to the coalition. We investigate when, how and why junior coalition parties affect foreign policy and profile themselves despite demands for national unity. We study two Swedish centre‐right governments in 2006–2010 and 2010–2014. The parties' foreign policy positions in election manifestos are compared to the foreign policy positions presented in the joint Alliance manifesto and yearly government declarations. An explorative analysis of possible explanations for junior parties' influence is based on elite interviews. The results indicate that junior coalition parties might influence the foreign policy in symbolic value related issues, but less so in issues with real policy implications. Our analysis reveals the importance of the leading member of the coalition and how junior parties converge over time towards the position of the senior coalition member.     

The Coalition and the Decline of Majoritarianism in the UK

The United Kingdom has traditionally featured many aspects of the majoritarian model of democracy: its first‐past‐the‐post electoral system tends towards producing single‐party majorities, while its legislative decision rules concentrate policy‐making power in the hands of the resulting single‐party governments. However, in an unprecedented break with the UK's postwar conventions, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats formed a coalition following the general election of 2010. In this article, we examine some of the Coalition's impacts on governing and constitutional conventions, placing them in a comparative European context. We conclude that the Coalition reflects a shift towards the less majoritarian forms of politics prevalent in continental Europe, and that some of these changes are likely to persist even after the end of the current government.     

Junior coalition parties in the British context: Explaining the Liberal Democrat collapse at the 2015 general election

The Liberal Democrats’ performance in the 2015 general election provides an opportunity to examine the only case in the post-war period of a national junior coalition partner in British politics. Comparative research highlights competence, trust and leadership as three key challenges facing junior coalition parties. This article uses British Election Study data to show that the Liberal Democrats failed to convince the electorate on all three counts. The article also uses constituency-level data to examine the continued benefits of incumbency to the party and the impact of constituency campaigning. It finds that while the incumbency advantage remained for the Liberal Democrats, it was ultimately unable to mitigate the much larger national collapse.     

The Liberal Democrats and the Coalition: Driven to the Edge of Europe

When the Liberal Democrats joined the Coalition government in May 2010, there was an expectation that they would have a restraining effect on the Conservatives, particularly in the area of European politics. But after almost five years as the junior party in the Coalition, the Liberal Democrats struggle to demonstrate their influence over the government's approach to Europe. Not only did they let the Conservatives lead the Coalition's European agenda, but they will be forever associated with the government that brought the UK closer to the exit door of the European Union. The article argues that this outcome is the result of a series of avoidable if surprising mistakes, such as the choice of ministerial portfolios and the party's attitude to the Coalition's monitoring mechanisms, as well as some unavoidable mistakes that could have not been foreseen when the Coalition was formed.     

Making words count: Coalition agreements and cabinet management

The cabinet is a central actor in policy making in parliamentary systems. Yet, relatively little is known about how coalition cabinets operate. The delegation of decision‐making authority to ministers invites policy drift, which threatens the cohesiveness of the cabinet's policy programme. Cabinets employ a variety of methods to contain policy drift. The writing of coalition agreements is among the major tools, but there are others, including limiting ministerial autonomy and the use of junior ministers to shadow ministers. The present study demonstrates that coalition agreements are written to contain policy drift and that it is directly related to the degree of hierarchy in the cabinet. It studies the factors that affect the likelihood of a coalition agreement being written and how extensive they are, if written. Among these are the ideological diversity found in the cabinet, the use of alternative methods for controlling ministers and the complexity of the bargaining situation.     

Representing the compromise: How institutions serve government support coalitions in European Union policy making

This article presents an original model of policy making by multiparty coalitions at the international level. Specifically, it analyses how domestic institutions serve parties in enforcing policy compromises onto national ministers negotiating legislation in the European Union (EU). In contrast to existing research on coalition politics, the model accounts for the benefits of not only legislative but also executive institutions and incorporates opposition parties as pivotal actors under minority governments. Ministers propose policy positions at the EU level that represent domestic coalition compromises when cabinet participation, executive coordination and parliamentary oversight of EU affairs make it cheap for coalition partners to challenge the minister's position and when ideological divisiveness increases the incentive to do so. Statistical analyses of 1,694 policy positions taken by ministers from 22 member states in the Council of the EU provide strong empirical evidence for the model. The results support the claim of executive dominance in EU policy making but also highlight that, where institutions are strong, ministers represent domestic coalition compromises rather than their own positions.     

Reluctant Coalitionists: The Conservative Party and the Establishment of the Coalition Government in May 2010

The Conservative party has been the real awkward partner in the Conservative‐Liberal Democrat coalition government because its backbench MPs have rebelled more frequently than their Liberal Democrat counterparts since May 2010. This reflected the fact that the Conservatives were reluctant coalitionists to begin with: they would have preferred to see a minority Conservative government, they had made far too many concessions to the Liberal Democrats, they had been bounced into accepting a coalition deal by a controlling party leadership, and they had lost out on those ministerial positions now held by Liberal Democrats. There was thus no great enthusiasm for the establishment of a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats in the parliamentary Conservative party in May 2010. Conservatives merely resigned themselves to an outcome which they had been given little opportunity to influence and which David Cameron had made it very difficult for them to reject.     

Policing the Bargain: Coalition Government and Parliamentary Scrutiny

Policymaking by coalition governments creates a classic principal‐agent problem. Coalitions are comprised of parties with divergent preferences who are forced to delegate important policymaking powers to individual cabinet ministers, thus raising the possibility that ministers will attempt to pursue policies favored by their own party at the expense of their coalition partners. What is going to keep ministers from attempting to move policy in directions they favor rather than sticking to the “coalition deal”? We argue that parties will make use of parliamentary scrutiny of “hostile” ministerial proposals to overcome the potential problems of delegation and enforce the coalition bargain. Statistical analysis of original data on government bills in Germany and the Netherlands supports this argument. Our findings suggest that parliaments play a central role in allowing multiparty governments to solve intracoalition conflicts.     

How voters' perceptions of junior coalition partners depend on the prime minister's position

Recent studies document that voters infer parties' left‐right policy agreement based on governing coalition arrangements. This article extends this research to present theoretical and empirical evidence that European citizens update their perceptions of junior coalition partners' left‐right policies to reflect the policies of the prime minister's party, but that citizens do not reciprocally project junior coalition partners' policies onto the prime minister's party. These findings illuminate the simple rules that citizens employ to infer parties' policy positions, broaden understanding of how citizens perceive coalition governance and imply that ‘niche’ parties, whose electoral appeal depends upon maintaining a distinctive policy profile, assume electoral risks when they enter government.     

Keeping the rascals in: Anti‐political‐establishment parties and their cost of governing in established democracies

Coalition governments in established democracies incur, on average, an electoral ‘cost of governing’. This cost varies across coalition partners, and is higher for anti‐political‐establishment parties. This is because, if such a party participates in a coalition, it loses the purity of its message by being seen to cooperate with the political establishment. In order to demonstrate that anti‐political‐establishment parties suffer an additional cost of governing, this article builds on the work by Van der Brug et al. and refines the standard cost of governing theory by ‘bringing the party back in’. The results of the analyses, based on 594 observations concerning 51 parties in seven Western European countries, cast doubt on the conventional concept of a cost of governing that pertains to all parties equally. The findings call for a major revision of the standard cost of governing literature, while adding a significant contribution to the debate on strategies against parties that may constitute a danger to democracy.     

Does anybody notice? How policy positions of coalition parties are perceived by voters

Does governing in coalitions affect how coalition parties’ policy positions are perceived by voters? In this article, the authors seek to understand the relationship between parties’ participation in coalition governments and their perception by voters. Policy positions are an important instrument through which parties compete for the support of voters. However, it is unclear to what extent voters can correctly perceive the positions of parties when they govern together with other coalition partners. It is argued here that because of the blurred lines of responsibility in multiparty cabinets, it is difficult for voters to correctly perceive the positions of coalition parties. What is more, it is expected that the internal functioning of coalition cabinets affects the extent to which coalition parties struggle to get their message out to voters. It is hypothesized in the article that intra‐cabinet conflict is negatively related to misperception. To test their theoretical expectations, the authors combine data on the left‐right policy positions of political parties from the Comparative Manifestos Project with data on how these positions are perceived by voters gathered from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems from 1996 to 2011. The findings shed light on the relationship between party competition and coalition governments, and its implications for political representation.     

Interventionism by Design or Failure: The Coalition and Humanitarian Intervention

The Coalition took office in 2010 in what seemed to be a relatively benign foreign policy environment. Since then, the international environment has become far more treacherous and the government has considered war on humanitarian grounds on three occasions. In light of the silence of early Coalition documents on humanitarian intervention, together with the two parties’ different positions on the issue, this article assesses the extent to which the Coalition has adopted a distinctive approach to humanitarian intervention. In so doing, it evaluates the relative importance of Conservative and Liberal Democrat traditions in determining the direction of Coalition foreign policy. The article also considers whether there are other, more pertinent factors driving foreign policy, and offers an explanation for its relative isolation from coalition tensions. It concludes by reflecting on the likely future of humanitarian intervention after the May 2015 general election.     

A Miserable Little Compromise? Exploring Liberal Democrat Fortunes in the UK Coalition

At the half way point of the UK coalition government attention is turning towards the general election, with both parties beginning to contemplate their electoral strategies. This article explores the predicament faced by the Liberal Democrats who, unlike their coalition partners the Conservatives, saw a dramatic decline in support soon after entering government. By exploring a collapse in trust, an apparent identity crisis, and the party's questionable influence, this article seeks to explain the Liberal Democrats' current polling situation and highlight the serious barriers to retaining, yet alone extending their constituency of voters at the 2015 general election.     

Coalition type and voter support for parties: Grand coalitions in German elections

While scholars have generally acknowledged that coalition governments are less accountable to voters than single party majorities, surprisingly little differentiation is made among different types of coalition governments. In this paper, we examine voter support for two very different types of coalition governments: those with a single large party and a junior partner and grand coalitions—governing coalitions between two large but ideologically dissimilar parties. We argue that grand coalitions differ from the more typical senior–junior partners in terms of the ability of individual parties to respond to their constituencies. We test this argument using survey data from four German Election Studies (GES), before and after each of the two German grand coalitions (1965, 1969, 2005, and 2009), which provide a unique opportunity to compare voter support for grand coalitions to those of the more typical senior–junior party model. We find evidence that voters responded to grand coalitions by moving away from their traditional voting patterns, and increasing their support for parties outside of the grand coalition, although this effect varies by the number of alternative parties.     

I don't Agree with Nick: Retrodicting the Conservative–Liberal Democrat Coalition

Insider and journalistic accounts of the formation in May 2010 of the Conservative‐Liberal Democrat coalition actually, although not explicitly, rely on types of explanation familiar to those who study politics. They tell us that structure (or at least the economy) was important. So too, they suggest, were institutions (timing and the rules of the game). They also stress the importance of contingency (‘events, dear boy, events’) and agency (who did and said what to whom). While none of these things were unimportant, they only served to make certain an outcome that anyone with a passing acquaintance with the theory and the practice of coalition formation would have predicted—namely a ‘minimum winning coalition’. The only thing that could have made that outcome uncertain was a fundamental ideological difference between the two parties involved; however, it quickly became apparent—to the surprise of those of us who failed to appreciate how much the Liberal Democrats had changed—that no such difference existed. Indeed, it is possible to argue that the coalition formed was not merely minimum winning but ‘minimum connected winning’. As such, its formation was not so much breathtakingly bold and exciting as pretty much inevitable. In the end, the maths and the physics mattered more than the chemistry. Fortunately for the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats seriously underplayed their hand in the negotiations, with possibly disastrous consequences for them in the long term.     

Portfolio Allocation and Policy Compromises: How and Why the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats Formed a Coalition Government

The question of ‘who gets what?’ is one of the most interesting issues in coalition politics. Research on portfolio allocation has thus far produced some clear‐cut empirical findings: coalition parties receive ministerial posts in close proportion to the number of parliamentary seats they win. This article poses two simple questions: Why did the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats agree to form a coalition government and, secondly, did the process of portfolio allocation in the United Kingdom in 2010 reflect standard patterns of cabinet composition in modern democracies? In order to answer these questions, a content analysis of election manifestos is applied in this article in order to estimate the policy positions of the parties represented in the House of Commons. The results show that a coalition between the Tories and Lib Dems was indeed the optimal solution in the British coalition game in 2010. When applying the portfolio allocation model, it turns out that the Conservatives fulfilled the criteria of a ‘strong party’, implying that the Tories occupied the key position in the coalition game. On account of this pivotal role, they were ultimately able to capture the most important ministries in the new coalition government.     

Squeezed Out? The Liberal Democrats and the 2019 General Election

The 2019 general election was a crushing disappointment for the Liberal Democrats, as Jo Swinson lost her East Dunbartonshire seat to the SNP and the party’s anti-Brexit stance failed to deliver gains from the Conservatives. Although the Liberal Democrats’ poor performance can partly be blamed on a misfiring campaign strategy, it also reflected the structural difficulties which the party faces in an increasingly polarised political environment. The polarisation of public opinion along multiple axes over the last decade—over austerity, Brexit, and attitudes to Jeremy Corbyn—has fractured the broad coalition of support which the Liberal Democrats assembled during the 1990s and 2000s. Analysis of the 2019 results suggest that the party has made some progress towards developing a new core vote, particularly among suburban Remainers in south east England, but it is not clear whether this will be large or robust enough to have a significant impact on the future of British politics.     

'Between a Rock and a Hard Place': The Coalition,the Davies Commission and the Wicked Issue of Airport Expansion

In 2010, the Conservative‐Liberal Democrat Coalition placed a moratorium on airport expansion in the south‐east of England. In office, however, it has faced a sustained political campaign from supporters of the aviation industry and expansion, leading to the appointment in September 2012 of the Davies Commission on airport capacity. This paper critically evaluates this nascent policy reversal in aviation policy, analysing the political backlash in favour of expansion and the political mediation of such demands by the Coalition. It argues that while the shifting political context has placed new pressures on the coalition, its current difficulties cannot be divorced from the continued resonance of the logic of aviation expansion embedded in British institutions at the end of the Second World War. The paper concludes with an assessment of the challenges facing the Davies Commission, the coalition and campaigners, when set against the continued ‘grip’ of aviation on our collective consciousness.     

Government Formation in the Nordic Countries: The Electoral Connection

Government formation is guided by several principles, such as majority, plurality and electoral principles. According to the electoral principle, parties that increase their share of seats in the elections should form the government, parties that lose seats joining the opposition. We analyse the fulfilment of this principle in the five Nordic countries. In Denmark, Finland and Iceland the majority of governments contained parties that both won and lost in elections, whereas in Sweden nearly half of the governments included only parties that lost seats. Only in Iceland and Denmark does election success translate to an increased probability of a government place in an increasing way. In Norway and particularly in Sweden big losers have better chances of being in government than big winners. Party system attributes are not related to the fulfilment of the electoral principle. To shift our analysis to individual parties, prime ministers come more likely from parties that are big winners. Winning does not explain the probability of becoming a coalition partner. If a party wants to be in government it is more important to avoid losing seats than to be an actual winner. Coalition partners are more likely to be mid–sized parties, a finding probably explained by the desire of the formateur party to maximise its policy influence in the government.