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.     

Coalition from the Inside Out: Women of Color Feminism and Politico-Ethical Coalition Politics

This article turns to 1980s US women of color feminism to develop a notion of politico-ethical coalition politics as an alternative to contemporary articulations of activist coalition politics that obscure the high-stakes politics of coalescing across hostile race, class, gender, sex, and sexuality divides. Rethinking political joining outside of notions of ontological spectacle and ethical community, women of color feminists such as Bernice Reagon, Audre Lorde, and Gloria Anzaldúa encourage a uniquely political conception of coalition that resists appeals to political indeterminacy while still anticipating the power struggles and danger inherent to working in coalition. This understanding of coalition, I argue, is best thought of as politico-ethical insofar as the political commitment to undermining interlocking oppressive forces grounding such efforts is overtly self-reflexive, thereby encouraging an ethical sensibility characterized by love, existential transformation, and a reconceptualization of identity and consciousness in coalitional terms.     

The Comparative Historical Analysis of Public Management Policy Cycles in France,Italy, and Spain: Symposium Conclusion

This concluding article in the symposium develops generalizing arguments about the politics of public management reform in France, Italy, and Spain, by drawing out implications of the case studies presented in the three preceding articles. Some of these implications hold that established research arguments about politics of public management reform in the same cultural and geographical area require considerable qualification and reexamination. Some other implications of these case studies take the form of generalizing arguments about the process dynamics of public management policymaking. More specifically, an existing body of generalizing arguments is assessed and modified in the light of the research arguments crafted through the three case studies' dialogues between conceptual approaches and historical evidence. Together, these two discussions offer a contribution to the political science research literature on the politics of public management reform.     

Governing insecurity: contingency planning,protection, resilience

Abstract

How should we understand the politics of security today? This article addresses this question from one particular perspective, that of ‘biosecurity’. It examines contemporary strategies for managing biorisks in three European states: France, Germany and the United Kingdom. We suggest that the framing of threat and response differs, even within Europe, and that one can identify three different configurations: contingency planning, protection and resilience. Each of these embodies a significantly different way of reconciling fundamental imperatives for those who would govern a liberal society today – the imperative of freedom and the imperative of security.     

Coalitions of Contention: The Case of the WTO Protests in Seattle

Coalitions of organizations are cooperative arrangements that require ongoing management of conflicts among members and potential members. Using data on both successful and unsuccessful attempts at coalition building during the 1999 protests against the WTO in Seattle, we explain the variation in the formation of one type of coalition of organizations, the 'event coalition', in which social movement organizations coalesce around a specific protest event. We find that objectively common organizational interests and framing are necessary but not sufficient for explaining coalition partnering. Organizational representatives must also calculate a benefit from pooled resources and be able to commit credibly to delivering promised resources and to resolving the inevitable tensions that arise among coalition partners.     

Branding and Franchising a Public Policy: The Case of the Gateway Review Process 2001–2010

One of the more interesting features of contemporary policy‐making is the way in which certain policies and administrative processes have been branded. While this is not yet a common feature, it does appear to be one that is increasing in importance. This article looks at the phenomenon through a consideration of one particularly interesting case; the Gateway Review Process (subsequently Gateway), a policy with a related set of administrative processes which is both branded and franchised. Gateway also seems a successful example of a much more common feature of contemporary policy making: policy transfer. It has been transferred from the UK to five Australian jurisdictions, New Zealand and Holland. This article examines the extent to which the branding, and indeed the franchising, of Gateway is responsible for the putative success of that transfer. We begin with a very brief consideration of the literature on branding and franchising to situate our discussion, before outlining the ways in which branding and politics intersect. In the main part of the article we focus on the branding of public policy and on the Gateway case.     

Symposium on “The nationalization of electoral politics: Frontiers of research”

This editorial introduces the theme of the symposium which addresses the most recent advances in the field of the nationalization of electoral politics. After a decade of an increasing number of contribution in this field, the symposium takes stock of the diversity of applications of nationalization studies, the progress in data collection, and its innovative methods in designs including it as both a dependent and independent variable and analyzing it both for legislative and presidential elections. The editorial reviews the growth and diversification of the literature over time and illustrates in what directions it has evolved mapping out an increasingly rich and complex theory. It links the articles of the symposium to this evolution of the literature and discusses their innovative character.     

Still men’s parties? Gender and the radical right in comparative perspective

This framing paper introduces the symposium on gender and the radical right. With the exception of a few recent studies, gender issues have received little attention in research on the European radical right. The purpose of this symposium is to address that and examine (1) whether radical right parties are still ‘men’s parties’ – parties led and supported primarily by men and (2) to what extent and how women and women’s concerns have been included by these parties. It argues that radical right parties have changed their appeal since their origins in the 1980s. There is now evidence of the fact that radical right parties, at least in some countries, exhibit an active political involvement of women and engage in some representation of women’s concerns. This puts them in a more ‘standardised’ political position vis-à-vis other parties. Given the current lack of focus on this topic, and given the recent gendered changes in radical right parties, this symposium stresses the academic and political importance of studying gender relations in radical right politics.     

Framing Contests and Policy Conflicts over Gas Pipelines

This paper compares and contrasts high‐conflict policy debates over the siting of three natural gas pipeline projects at different decision stages of the siting process. This paper draws on over 600 newspaper articles spanning 3 years, analyzed through Discourse Network Analysis. Drawing from the Advocacy Coalition Framework and Policy Conflict framework, this paper finds that actor framing of opposing policy beliefs involves more indirect than direct confrontations, with statements in the media waxing and waning over time. Opponents of the pipelines more often explicitly argue against pipelines, while also using a broad range of conceptual arguments, whereas proponents more often couch their arguments around the economic benefits of pipelines and use fewer conceptual frames overall. We also find evidence that opposing coalitions use similar framing across different decision contexts. This paper concludes with a commentary on the status and contributions of this paper to the study of policy conflicts and next steps in advancing similar research agendas.     

Explaining and predicting coalition outcomes: Conclusions from studying data on local coalitions

Abstract. Because the importance of coalition formation has been long established, there is no shortage of ideas explaining and predicting coalition outcomes. However, one of the problems for contemporary coalition research is that most coalition theories have been thoroughly tested on the same data on national governments that have formed in the West European postwar democracies. This stresses the need for finding new data that can increase our ability to test and refine coalition theories. This article uses unique elite survey data from an investigation conducted among councilors in a large sample of local authorities in Sweden to test hypotheses on coalition formation.
Another problem in coalition research is that the large number of coalition hypotheses have not been tested extensively using multivariate models that provide sufficient controls. By using a methodological approach that models government formation as a discrete choice between potential governments, we can draw conclusions about the relative importance of different types of variables. The results found in this analysis indicate that we have to pay attention to both traditional variables, such as size and policy, and institutional variables if our aim is to explain and predict coalition formation.     

Internationalism Under Platform Capitalism: Brexit and the Organisation of UK Fast Food Workers

In October 2018, a coalition of UK trade unions and civil society organisations called a strike across the UK’s fast food sector in support of a living wage, union recognition and the end to zero‐hour contracts in the sector. This paper takes the day of action—labelled the McStrike—as a starting point for an account of the place of the EU and Brexit in the campaign for fast food rights, as well as the contrasting political standpoints adopted by the different trade unions involved in the action. Brexit is used as a prism through which to analyse aspects of Britain’s contemporary food politics, especially those pertaining to freedom of movement, workplace organisation, and the role of EU legislation in protecting workers’ rights. In exploring the international dimensions of union organisation among the UK’s fast food workers, other, more conceptual considerations regarding the changing nature of public and private food consumption and the incorporation of food‐to‐go into the gig economy are also broached.     

The Dynamics of Change: Class, Politics and Civil Society—From Marx to post-Marxism

This paper discusses how Marxist understandings of politics and civil society, particularly Marx's own work, can contribute to understanding the dynamics of political change in contemporary capitalist democracies. While briefly exploring the conceptual problems contained in the political-philosophical agenda set out in Marx's earliest works, the paper argues that his subsequent examinations of civil society and class relations are grounded in a political economy of capitalist development which retains considerable salience. The possibilities of a post-Marxist politics of civil society are assessed in this light, using the example of recent neo-liberal and neo-conservative assaults on the welfare state to indicate the ways in which membership of civil society is itself a critical focus of political contestation. A politics of civil society (for example, contemporary 'third way' strategies) lacks any substantive democratic potential, without the type of radical political economy developed by Marx.     

Accounting for coalition‐building in the European Union: Budget negotiations and the south

Which parameters affect coalition building in budgetary negotiations? In this article, three distinct levels of analysis are identified to account for coalition building patterns, associated with domestic politics, domestic socioeconomic structures and EU politics. At the level of domestic politics, ideology points to cross‐governmental affinity of a partisan nature; at the level of socioeconomic structures, similarity of policy interests, generated by cross‐national socioeconomic convergence with EU policy standards, informs coalition formation patterns; at the EU politics level, the intergovernmental power balance influences the political aspirations of each Member State in the integration process and coalition‐building decisions. Two sets of parameters affect the evolution of EU coalition patterns, corresponding to the integration impact on the EU (new cleavages) and on the Member States (the impact of Europeanisation). This analytical framework is used to examine the southern coalition (Spain, Greece, Portugal) in the four multi‐annual financial frameworks (1988, 1992, 1999 and 2005).     

Introduction: Second-Generation Security Sector Reform

Security sector reform (SSR) has become a commonly used tool for international approaches to insecure countries. Despite its frequent deployment as a key element of statebuilding, SSR suffers from both a lack of a conceptual hinterland and also lack of strong evidence of success. This special collection of papers explores these ideas, starting from an assumption that there are serious issues with SSR in practice. SSR, alongside many other facets of international aid programming, has suffered from an excess of technocentric and managerial approaches, with politics relegated to the sidelines. These articles outline what this means in practice and what a second generation of SSR could look like: an approach based on process and politics rather than linear managerialism.     

Institutions and coalition formation: The German election of 2005

The German election of 2005 creates three puzzles for the literature on coalition formation. First, the election led to a rare event in German politics and in parliamentary systems more generally, a ‘grand coalition’ between the two largest parties. Second, a minority government, something which has never occurred in postwar Germany (except briefly as the result of the breakdown of a government coalition), was in fact one of the two most likely governments to form. Third, the parties of the left retained a comfortable majority in the Bundestag; however they did not form a coalition. The election of 2005 appears unique in German politics, but we argue that its outcome is easily understood using existing institutional theories of coalition formation. We examine party positions in two dimensions (economic and social) using computer-based word scoring of party manifestos. We demonstrate that the conditions for a SPD minority government were present in Germany due to its central location in the policy space. While the configuration of policy positions would thus have allowed the SPD to form a minority government, the role of the Federal President as a veto player could have prevented it from forming, and the presence of an opposition-controlled upper house would have decreased its effectiveness. The mere possibility of forming a minority government gave the SPD a bargaining advantage in the coalition negotiations with the CDU/CSU. We show that in the final portfolio allocation, the SPD received ministries which control approximately two-thirds of the federal budget.     

Unnatural partners: coalescence in Israeli local government

ABSTRACT

A prominent finding in coalition formation literature is that the underlying political rationale at the subnational level largely follows that of the one revealed by the classic literature on national coalitions. The Israeli political system is extremely centralized, with a local government that is highly dependent on its national counterpart. One could expect such a setting to result in local party behaviour that closely resembles the national one. However, as we show, this is far from being the case. We analyze 34 municipal coalitions in the 17 largest Israeli cities. After establishing that Israeli municipal politics fly in the face of classical coalition formation theories, we turn to explain this discrepancy with a qualitative analysis of interviews with 5 formatuers and 8 councillors. We conclude that mayors face low costs of adding surplus coalition partners, while standing to gain from wider legitimacy, weaker opposition, and constrained future competition. At the same time, municipal lists have strong resource- and policy-related incentives to join the coalition while compromise is met with low political costs. The result is an overwhelming predominance of oversized coalitions and partnerships which would be highly improbable at the national arena.     

Book reviews

Previous studies suggest, and common wisdom holds, that government participation is detrimental for new parties. This paper argues that the opposite is true. Drawing on a large-N analysis (111 parties in 16 countries) in combination with two case studies, it demonstrates that new parties generally benefit organisationally from supporting or entering a government coalition. Compared to established parties, new parties have the advantage that their leadership is more able to allocate effectively the spoils of office, and can change still malleable rudimentary party structures so as to respond to intra-organisational demands, as well as the functional demands of holding office. The authors conclude by setting their finding in wider perspective and elaborate on its implications for contemporary West European politics.     

Thinking citizenship and its constitutive subject: interrogating the 2004 Irish citizenship referendum debate

This article considers a referendum which was held in the Republic of Ireland in 2004 involving a proposal to qualify the existing universal constitutional entitlement to birthright citizenship. Existing analysis of this referendum reflects dominant trends in citizenship scholarship. It does so by framing the issue in terms of two opposing perspectives – one particularistic (exclusive) and one universalistic (inclusive) – and positing the question of the ‘politics’ of citizenship as a trade-off between these diverging models. This article argues, however, that Rob (R.B.J.) Walker's notion of the constituent subject of (sovereign) politics challenges this dualistic framework as the necessary starting point for discussions about citizenship. It does so by problematizing the premise upon which it is based which is the taken-for-granted autonomous existence of persons (individuals) who are understood to be connected to, but ultimately separate from, ‘the state.’ This article concludes with reflections on what an alternative framework for exploring citizenship (based specifically on a historicization of subjectivity in relation to sovereignty) might look like. It suggests that this provides us with a different starting point to the prevalent form of a timeless dialectic of inclusion and exclusion, particularism and universalism, polis and cosmopolis currently determined by the boundaries of the Irish state.     

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.