‘When I find myself in times of trouble …’ : The conditional effect of international organisations on policy convergence

Most quantitative analyses of policy convergence treat transnational communication in international organisations and domestic economic problems as additive factors. By contrast, this article argues that domestic economic problems motivate governments to search for successful policies, while international organisations offer channels for policy learning. Thus, both factors interact, magnifying each other's effects. The argument is corroborated by a quantitative analysis of the privatisation of telecommunications providers in the Western OECD world. A dyadic logit model shows that joint membership in international organisations increases the likelihood of policy convergence if governments face budget deficits. The argument of the article builds a bridge between theories of international organisations and domestic theories of policy making. Theories of the former gain an important scope condition specifying the conditions under which transnational communication works, while exploring the latter gains a theory specifying where new policy ideas come from.     

Economic performance of 'weak' governments and their interaction with central banks and labour: Deficits, economic growth, unemployment and inflation, 1961–1998

Abstract.   Comparative political economists have conventionally claimed that the strength and stability of governments affect policy making and performance, and that what they call 'weak governments'– multiparty, minority and short-lived governments – show poorer economic performance. This article tests this and related hypotheses on deficits, economic growth, unemployment and inflation by examining data from 17 OECD countries. I find that there is generally little evidence to indicate that so-called 'weak governments', when considered independently, produce poorer performance than strong ones. However, the effects of different government types are partly contingent on central bank independence and labour organization. When central banks are independent, coalition governments exhibit better inflation and economic growth performance than one-party governments, but the opposite happens when central banks are dependent. I attempt an explanation for these relationships. I also find that independent central banks, under certain conditions, lead to lower growth and higher inflation. Thus, some of the benefits of central bank independence are context-specific, depending on other political-economic factors.     

Polls,coalition signals and strategic voting: An experimental investigation of perceptions and effects

Polls and coalition signals can help strategic voters in multiparty systems with proportional representation and coalition governments to optimise their vote decision. Using a laboratory experiment embedded in two real election campaigns, this study focuses on voters' attention to and perception of polls and coalition signals. The manipulation of polls and coalition signals allows a causal test of their influence on strategic voting in a realistic environment. The findings suggest that active information acquisition to form fairly accurate perceptions of election outcomes can compensate for the advantage of high political sophistication. The theory of strategic voting is supported by the evidence, but only for a small number of voters. Most insincere vote decisions are explained by other factors. Thus, the common practice to consider all insincere voters as strategic is misleading.     

Does Financial Slack Reduce Municipal Short‐Term Borrowing?

Many municipal governments face the challenge of temporary cash deficits due to the mismatched schedules of cash flow‐ins and flow‐outs. To smooth the temporary deficits, they can use either internal financial resources such as financial slack or external financial resources such as short‐term borrowing. This paper applies the pecking order theory to examine municipal governments' financial preference when they experience cash flow problems. Results show that municipal governments prefer accumulated financial slack to short‐term borrowing when both options are available. This finding demonstrates financial slack's role as a convenient cash management tool in municipal financial management. It also suggests the applicability of the pecking order theory in future public financial management research.     

Fairness and qualitative portfolio allocation in multiparty governments

How do political parties divide coalition payoffs in multiparty governments? Perhaps the most striking answer to this question is Gamson’s Law, which suggests a strong fairness norm in the allocation of office payoffs among coalition partners. Building upon recent advancements in portfolio allocation research, we extend this approach in three important ways. First, we study fairness with regard to the allocation of policy (rather than office) payoffs. Second, we introduce measures to assess the fairness of the division of policy payoffs following two norms: envy-freeness and equitability. Third, we explore why some allocations of ministerial portfolios deviate from fairness norms. Based on an original data set of party preferences for individual portfolios in Western and Central Eastern Europe, we find substantial variation in the fairness of policy payoffs across cabinets. Moreover, coalitions are more likely to arrive at envy-free and equitable bargaining outcomes if (1) these fair allocations are based on an allocation of cabinet positions that is proportional to party size and if (2) the bargaining power is distributed evenly among government parties. The results suggest that fairness is not a universal norm for portfolio allocation in multiparty governments, but in fact depends on the cabinet parties’ bargaining positions.

     

The Political Economy of Fiscal Policy: An Experimental Study on the Strategic Use of Deficits

Field data on the strategic use of deficits to limit thebudgetary scope of future governments are inconclusive aboutthe effects of political polarization or a government'sre-election probability on fiscal policy. Therefore, wedesigned a controlled experiment to examine the strategic useof deficits. Using a within-subjects design, we find thatdeficits rise with a higher degree of polarization and a lowerreelection probability. However, in a between-subjects designneither polarization nor reelection probabilities have asystematic effect. We discuss the implications of ourexperimental results for empirical tests of the strategic useof deficits with field data.     

The Iraq Coalition of the Willing and (Politically) Able: Party Systems,the Press,and Public Influence on Foreign Policy

Media outlets in multiparty electoral systems tend to report on a wider range of policy issues than media in two‐party systems. They thus make more competing policy frames available to citizens. This suggests that a “free press” is insufficient to hold governments accountable. Rather, we should observe more challenges to the governments’ preferred frames and more politically aware citizens in multiparty democracies. Such citizens should thus be better equipped to hold their leaders accountable, relative to their counterparts in two‐party democracies. I propose a mechanism through which democratic publics can sometimes constrain their leaders in foreign policy. I test hypotheses derived from my theory with cross‐national data on the content of news coverage of Iraq, on public support for the war, and on decisions to contribute troops to the Iraq “Coalition of the Willing.” I find that citizens in countries with larger numbers of parties confronted more critical and diverse coverage of Iraq, while those with more widespread access to mass media were more likely to oppose the war and their nations likely to contribute fewer troops to the Coalition.     

Mass Media and Party Divergence in Multiparty Systems

Does the mass media affect the dispersion of the policy positions of political parties? In this article it is argued that the mass media polarize parties' policy positions because vote‐seeking strategies are more viable if party policy positions are clearly communicated to the electorate and because a vote‐seeking strategy corresponds with parties taking a distinct policy position away from the median. Hence, the main hypothesis is that party policy position dispersion is larger with more mass media penetration. In order to test this argument, a novel dataset on party positions and mass media penetration in 267 Danish municipalities in 2004 is utilized and a new measure of the dispersion of policy positions in multiparty systems is constructed. The analysis corroborates the article's main hypothesis.     

Politischer Opportunismus und Haushaltsdefizite in den westdeutschen Bundesländern

This article analyzes fiscal political business cycles in the West-German Länder. By linking the theory of political business cycles with the insights of the theory of economic voting, I argue that the German Länder governments do not have an incentive to raise the budget deficit in order to signal economic competence to the electorate. Despite having an incentive to spend more before an election in order to provide public goods to the voters, governments cannot finance the supply of public goods with higher deficits because voters prefer healthy fiscal policies. An empirical analysis of the West-German Länder between 1970 and 2003 bolsters the theoretical claims. A government that expands the deficit before an election thus experiences a loss in voter support. Consequently, governments tend to reduce the budget deficit in pre-election years.     

Governments and unpopular social policy reform: Biting the bullet or steering clear?

Abstract. Under which conditions and to what extent do governments pursue unpopular social policy reforms for which they might be punished in the next election? This article shows that there exists substantial cross‐cabinet variation in the degree to which governments take unpopular measures and argues that current studies cannot adequately explain this variation. Using insights from prospect theory, a psychological theory of choice under risk, this study hypothesises that governments only engage in unpopular reform if they face a deteriorating socio‐economic situation, a falling political position, or both. If not, they shy away from the risk of reform. A fuzzy‐set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fs/QCA) of the social policy reform activities pursued by German, Dutch, Danish and British cabinets between 1979 and 2005 identifies a deteriorating socio‐economic situation as necessary for unpopular reform. It is only sufficient for triggering reform, however, if the political position is also deteriorating and/or the cabinet is of rightist composition. This study's findings further the scholarly debate on the politics of welfare state reform by offering a micro‐foundation that helps one to understand what induces political actors aspiring to be re‐elected to engage in electorally risky unpopular reform.     

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.     

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.     

Government survival in Western multi–party democracies: The effect of credible exit threats via dominance

Based upon findings in other fields in the social sciences, it is proposed in this article that cooperation between government parties can be induced when parties in governments are able to exercise credible exit threats. As stability is more likely to be induced by cooperation than by defection, more durable governments can be expected. The possibility for credible exit threats in a government is operationalized via the presence of a dominant party in the government. The corresponding prediction is tested against a data set that contains 261 postwar governments in twelve western multiparty democracies. In the event history analyses of government survival, I control for variables pertaining to the bargaining environment, bargaining complexity, and the ideological diversity of the governments. It is found that the presence of dominant parties in governments does indeed enhance the survival time of governments.     

Government survival in Western multi-party democracies

Abstract Based upon findings in other fields in the social sciences, it is proposed in this article that cooperation between government parties can be induced when parties in governments are able to exercise credible exit threats. As stability is more likely to be induced by cooperation than by defection, more durable governments can be expected. The possibility for credible exit threats in a government is operationalized via the presence of a dominant party in the government. The corresponding prediction is tested against a data set that contains 261 postwar governments in twelve western multiparty democracies. In the event history analyses of government survival, I control for variables pertaining to the bargaining environment, bargaining complexity, and the ideological diversity of the governments. It is found that the presence of dominant parties in governments does indeed enhance the survival time of governments.     

Fragmented Government Effects on Fiscal Policy: New Evidence

Using a panel of 22 OECD countries over the 1971–1996period, this paper extends previous literature on the effectsof fragmented government on fiscal policy outcomes in variousdirections. First, we focus on data relating to centralgovernment as alltheories refer to central government. Second, we also examinegovernment's position vis-à-vis parliament andgovernment's political fragmentation. We find evidence thatmore fragmented governmentshave higher deficits, while governments that have a largemajority in parliament have lower deficits. Right-winggovernments appear to have been fiscally more responsible inthe seventies. Political fragmentation does not affect agovernment's budget deficit.     

Fragmented foes: Affective polarization in the multiparty context of the Netherlands

Affective polarization, or antipathy between the supporters of opposing political camps, is documented to be on the rise in the United States and elsewhere. At the same time, there are limits to our understanding of this phenomenon in multiparty contexts. How do citizens draw the line between 'ingroups' and 'outgroups' in fragmented contexts with multiple parties? Answering this question has been hampered by a relative lack of data on citizens' views towards compatriots with opposing political views outside the US. This study is based on original data collection, measuring citizens’ evaluations of various political and non-political outgroups among a population-representative sample of 1071 Dutch citizens. These data allow to study the extent and configuration of affective polarization in the highly fragmented context of the Netherlands. The analysis shows that respondents do distinguish between parties and partisans. They report more dislike towards political outgroups than towards almost all non-political outgroups. Rather than disliking all out-partisans equally, evaluations grow gradually colder as ideological distance towards a group increases. Affective polarization is especially strong between those who disagree on cultural issues, and between those who support and oppose the populist radical right. The article discusses how these findings enhance our understanding of affective polarization in multiparty systems.     

On the nature of voters’ coalition preferences

An expanding literature indicates that in multiparty systems with coalition governments, citizens consider the post-electoral bargaining process among parties when casting their vote. Yet, we know surprisingly little about the nature of voters’ coalition preferences. This paper uses data from the Austrian National Election Study to examine the determinants as well as the independence of preferences for coalitions as political object. We find that coalition preferences are strongly informed by spatial considerations; but additional non-ideological factors, such as party and leader preferences, also play a fundamental role. We also find that coalitions enjoy a certain degree of independence from other objects of vote choice and they do not always represent a simple average score on the feeling thermometer of the constituent parties. There are, however, substantial differences among voters, with party identifiers and those with extreme ideology being less likely to consider coalitions as separate entities from their component parties.     

By-elections,changing fortunes,uncertainty and the mid-term blues

If voters care about the size of the government's majority, then by-election votes should exaggerate national swings. Moreover, if there is uncertainty about the outcome of the general election and if voters” preferences are skewed in such a way as to give more weight to the “downside” outcome (least favourite party wins) than the “upside” (favoured party wins with a larger than preferred majority), then there will be a systematic tendency for governments to lose by-elections, regardless of any changes in national support. These predictions go beyond those generated by conventional explanations. The theory is successfully tested against data from 383 post-War elections.     

Coalition Government,Legislative Institutions,and Public Policy in Parliamentary Democracies

Most democracies are governed by coalitions, comprising multiple political parties with conflicting policy positions. The prevalence of these governments poses a significant question: Which parties' electoral commitments are ultimately reflected in government policy? Recent theories have challenged our understanding of multiparty government, arguing that the relative influence of coalition parties depends crucially on institutional context. Specifically, where institutions allow credible enforcement of bargains, policy should reflect a compromise among all governing parties; where such institutions are absent, the preferences of parties controlling the relevant ministries should prevail. Critically, empirical work has thus far failed to provide direct evidence for this conditional relationship. Analyzing changes in social protection policies in 15 parliamentary democracies, we provide the first systematic evidence that the strength of legislative institutions significantly shapes the relative policy influence of coalition parties. Our findings have implications for our understanding of coalition government, policymaking, and electoral responsiveness.     

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.