Platforms,media and voters

Abstract The paper presents data on party platforms, political communication and public opinion in the 1996 Italian election campaign. It is shown that the electoral platforms of the two major coalitions were largely overlapping, except for some economic and social issues. The centre–right coalition seemed more inclined to adopt pro–market policies, while the platform of the Ulivo coalition was more oriented toward a social partnership approach. In the month before the elections, policy issues were discussed on television more extensively than political issues. Public and private networks covered the 1996 election campaign at the same level as in 1994 and to some extent with the same bias. Voting intentions seem to have remained stable prior to and during the electoral campaign.     

Platforms, media and voters

The paper presents data on party platforms, political communication and public opinion in the 1996 Italian election campaign. It is shown that the electoral platforms of the two major coalitions were largely overlapping, except for some economic and social issues. The centre–right coalition seemed more inclined to adopt pro–market policies, while the platform of the Ulivo coalition was more oriented toward a social partnership approach. In the month before the elections, policy issues were discussed on television more extensively than political issues. Public and private networks covered the 1996 election campaign at the same level as in 1994 and to some extent with the same bias. Voting intentions seem to have remained stable prior to and during the electoral campaign.     

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.     

Voter perceptions of coalition policy positions in multiparty systems

A growing body of research shows how voters consider coalition formation and policy compromises at the post-electoral stage when making vote choices. Yet, we know surprisingly little about how voters perceive policy positions of coalition governments. Using new survey data from the Austrian National Election Study (AUTNES), we study voter perceptions of coalition policy platforms. We find that voters do in general have reasonable expectations of the coalitions' policy positions. However, partisan beliefs and uncertainty affect how voters perceive coalition positions: in addition to projection biases similar to those for individual party placements, partisans of coalition parties tend to align the position of the coalition with their own party's policy position, especially for those coalitions they prefer the most. In contrast, there is no consistent effect of political knowledge on the voters' uncertainty when evaluating coalition policy positions.     

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.     

Coalitions in European Union Negotiations

Coalitions will probably become an increasingly important theme in European Union (EU) politics. The spread of decision making by majority voting promotes coalition‐building behaviour. The impending enlargement is predicted to differentiate and polarize policy standpoints within the EU. Increasing levels of policy conflict imply increased propensities for coalition building. Still, the role and nature of coalitions in EU negotiations are obscure. This article raises important research questions: What characterizes coalition building in the EU? How important are coalitions? What coalition patterns are discernible?Using data from a questionnaire to Swedish participants on EU committees, it is shown that coalitions are more frequent when majority voting occurs than when unanimity rules. Coalition behaviour is, however, important also under unanimity. The existence of consensus norms diminishes the propensity to form coalitions. As regards coalition patterns, there is a prevalence of coalitions based on policy interests and/or on cultural affinity. Contrary to conventional wisdom, consistent and durable coalition patterns seem to exist. The north–south divide is one such persistent pattern. The Swedish respondents thus reveal a close cooperation between the Nordic member states and Great Britain, whereas France and Spain are seldom approached for coalition‐building purposes. As to future research, evidence from other member states and from case studies is needed in order to learn more about the bases for coalition building in EU negotiations.     

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.     

Regierungsbildung im deutschen Fünf-Parteiensystem

Since 2005 all five parliamentary parties in the German Bundestag have coalition potential in the sense that they are able to enter at least one minimal winning coalition, that is a coalition without parties which are not necessary for a majority. Given the number of each party’s members of parliament, the strategic coalition situation is fixed as the set of possible minimal winning coalitions. With certain assumptions (no party will gain an absolute majority, the party system consists of two larger and three smaller parties etc.) two strategic coalition situations are possible as a consequence of the Bundestag election in September 2009: the same as the existing one where only CDU/CSU and SPD can form a two party majority government, and an alternative, predicted currently (February/March 2009) by pollsters, where the largest party, probably the CDU/CSU, can form a two party majority coalition also with the third largest party, probably the FDP. In addition, several three party coalitions are also possible. Which of these coalitions will actually be formed will be determined by the policy distances between the parties which are identified in a two dimensional policy space (economic and social issue positions of parties). The possible minimal winning coalitions are further constrained by the majority coalitions in the so-called cycle set as defined by Schofield.     

Coalition formation and polarisation

Party ideology plays an important role in determining which government coalitions form. Research on coalition formation tends to focus on the ideological distance between coalition parties. However, the distribution of preferences within the coalition, and the legislature, also has implications for which government coalition forms – that is, a party's willingness to join a coalition depends not only on its prospective coalition partners, but also on the alternative coalitions it could form. Several hypotheses about the effects of legislative polarisation are offered and tested using data on coalition formation in 17 parliamentary democracies in the postwar period. This article also demonstrates how the traditional measure of ideological divisions within coalitions fails to capture certain aspects of ideological heterogeneity within the cabinet (and the opposition) and how Esteban and Ray's polarisation index helps in addressing these deficiencies.     

Theories of coalition formation: An empirical test using data from Danish local government

Abstract.  Theories of coalition formation represent a diverse set of arguments about why some government coalitions form while others do not. In this article, the authors present a systematic empirical test of the relative importance of the various arguments. The test is designed to avoid a circularity problem present in many coalition studies – namely that the theories are tested on data of national government coalitions in postwar Europe: the very data that gave rise to the theories in the first place. Instead, the authors focus on government coalitions at the municipal level. They base their analysis on an expert survey of almost 3,000 local councillors from all municipalities in Denmark. They use conditional logit analysis to model government formation as a discrete choice between all potential governments. The analysis confirms some, but far from all, traditional explanations such as those based on office and policy motives. At the same time, the analysis raises the question of whether actors really seek minimal coalitions.     

Advocacy Coalitions in Ontario Land Use Policy Development

In 2005, the Ontario government passed the Places to Grow Act and the Greenbelt Act, both major changes in land use policy designed to preserve greenspaces and combat urban sprawl in the Greater Golden Horseshoe, Canada's largest conurbation. This article examines the actors, actor beliefs, and inter‐actor alliances in the southern Ontario land use policy subsystem from the perspective of the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF). Specifically, this paper undertakes an empirical examination of the ACF's Belief Homophily Hypothesis, which holds that inter‐actor alliances form on the basis of shared policy‐relevant beliefs, creating advocacy coalitions. The analysis finds strong evidence of three advocacy coalitions in the policy subsystem—an agricultural coalition, an environmentalist coalition, and a developers' coalition—as predicted by the hypothesis. However, it also finds equally strong evidence of a cross‐coalition coordination network of peak organizations, something not predicted by the Belief Homophily Hypothesis, and in need of explanation within the ACF.     

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.     

Negotiating climate legislation: Policy path dependence and coalition stabilization

This article investigates the nature of policy path dependence through analysis of climate policy formation in the United States. In 2008 the US Congress attempted to pass the Lieberman–Warner bill, a comprehensive climate and energy package that would have capped greenhouse emissions and established a nationwide cap and trade program. In the same year, California successfully enacted the Global Warming Solutions Act. This article explores the circumstances of both cases and raises the question of why legislation at the state level was successful and took such a divergent form from legislation at the federal level. The divergence of these cases is used to highlight the nature of coalition formation and policy path dependence in the legislative process. Explanations of policy tend to gravitate toward either the generalizability of game theoretic approaches or the empirical depth of case studies. This article suggests a combined approach that uses case studies to analyze the positions and motivations of actors and to then model policy development over time. The approach examines policy through the formation and negotiation of policy coalitions. Drawing on the Advocacy Coalition Framework and omnibus analysis, the approach expands these coalition theories first by analysing legislative development at the interface of legislators and constituent interest groups, and second by adding temporal dimension to the analysis. The findings suggest that policy is path dependent in that it is negotiated between coalitions that in turn create stability in the policy process and insulate policy fields from external shocks. Policy path dependence suggests that theory alone is insufficient to predict policy outcomes; policy results depend strongly on prior policy efforts, historically and socially contingent coalitions, and the resulting framing of policy possibilities.     

The discourse of democracy in Canadian nuclear waste management policy

Canadian nuclear waste management policy has taken a deliberative democratic turn. What explains this turn? What is its significance? What lessons does it teach us? I trace a narrative of a powerful discursive coalition that was able to take advantage of institutional and financial opportunities to advance deliberative democratic decision making. I identify limitations in this turn by evaluating the Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s subsequent consultation process against the criteria of inclusion, equality, reciprocity, agreement, and integration. Despite impressive deliberative democratic designs, the process falls short of each criterion. This analysis clarifies the relative importance of actors to coalitions and institutions. Even with a strong coalition and favorable institutional context, realizing deliberative democracy is contingent on the will of involved actors. This conclusion has implications for the theory and practice of deliberative democracy.     

When Diversity Works: The Effects of Coalition Composition on the Success of Lobbying Coalitions

Lobbyists frequently join forces to influence policy, yet the success of active lobbying coalitions remains a blind spot in the literature. This article is the first to test how and when characteristics of active coalitions increase their lobbying success. Based on pluralist theory, one can expect diverse coalitions, uniting different societal interests, to signal broad support to policy makers. Yet, their responsiveness to this signal (i.e., signaling benefits) and contribution incentives within the coalition (i.e., cooperation costs) are likely to vary with issue salience. This theory is tested on a unique data set comprising 50 issues in five European countries. Results reveal a strong moderating effect of salience on the relationship between coalition diversity and success: On less salient issues, homogenous coalitions are more likely to succeed, whereas the effect reverses with higher salience, where diverse coalitions are more successful. These findings have implications for understanding political responsiveness and potential policy capture.     

Distant friends and nearby enemies: The politics of legislative coalition formation

It is usually thought that a coalition leader in a legislature will construct coalitions of legislators who are ‘close’ to each other in the policy space. However, if there is some ‘status quo’ or other reversion point that will hold if the coalition leader fails to construct a winning coalition, a counter-intuitive result about the nature of these coalitions emerges: the coalition leader may be forced to construct a coalition which includes legislators who are ‘distant’ from him and which excludes legislators who are ‘close’ to him.     

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.     

A Bridge in Flux: Narratives and the Policy Process in the Pacific Northwest

Policy narratives play an important role in the policy process. Often policy narratives originate from advocacy coalitions seeking increased support from the public for their policy stance. Although most Narrative Policy Framework studies have focused on national policy issues, this study examines a state and local economic development project by exploring the policy narratives from competing coalitions in favor and opposed to the project. Specifically, in the Portland–Vancouver area of Oregon and Washington, local policy discussions have been dominated by a proposal for a new mega bridge on Interstate‐5 connecting the two cities across the Columbia River. A new government agency (CRC—Columbia River Crossing) was formed for the implementation of this project. Upon approval of a proposal, CRC experienced heavy backlash from citizens, local businesses, community leaders, and other stakeholders leading to the formation of two competing coalitions in opposition and support of the bridge. This study, using content analysis of 370 public documents, finds that competing coalitions utilize policy narratives in strategic ways to characterize the opposing coalition, themselves, and other actors in the policy subsystem. This study also suggests that the strength and cohesion of a coalition's narrative contributes to its policy success and the winning/losing status of a coalition potentially determines the types of strategies they will use. Last, this study introduces and tests a new narrative strategy called the impotent shift testing a coalition's strategic use of the victim character.     

Coalition Policy-Making under Constraints: Examining the Role of Preferences and Institutions

While much has been written about the formation and termination of coalitions, comparatively little attention has been paid to the policy output of multiparty governments. The present study attempts to narrow this research gap by analysing policy-making in three Austrian coalition governments between 1999 and 2008. Drawing on the party mandate literature, a manually coded textual analysis of election manifestos is conducted that yields a dataset containing over 1,100 pledges. The fulfilment of these pledges is taken as the dependent variable in a multivariate analysis. The results indicate that institutional determinants (adoption in the coalition agreement, ministerial control, and policy status quo) significantly influence the chances of pledge fulfilment and thus present a powerful predictor of coalition policy output. By contrast, factors related to parties’ preferences (consensus between parties, policy distance, pledge saliency, and majority support in parliament) do not have an impact.