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.     

Service Efforts and Accomplishments Reporting: Has Its Time Really Come?

In April 1994 GASB released Concepts Statement No. 2, Service Efforts and Accomplishments Reporting , bringing required SEA external financial reporting a very large step closer to reality. Before long, public financial officials may be required to annually report measures of performance. We are now about halfway through the experimentation phase established in Statement 2. This article summarizes the status of GASB's SEA experimentation process. It then suggests important behavioral, auditing, and other issues which GASB ought to address before proceeding with any formal pronouncements regarding SEA reporting requirements.     

Multiparty electoral competition in the Netherlands and Germany: A model based on multinomial probit

A typical assumption of electoral models of party competition is that parties adopt policy positions so as to maximize expected vote share. Here we use Euro-barometer survey data and European elite-study data from 1979 for the Netherlands and Germany to construct a stochastic model of voter response, based on multinomial probit estimation. For each of these countries, we estimate a pure spatial electoral voting model and a joint spatial model. The latter model also includes individual voter and demographic characteristics. The pure spatial models for the two countries quite accurately described the electoral response as a stochastic function of party positions. We use these models to perform a thought experiment so as to estimate the expected vote maximizing party positions. We go on to propose a model of internal party decision-making based both on pre-election electoral estimation and post-election coalition bargaining. This model suggests why the various parties in the period in question did not adopt vote maximizing positions. We argue that maximizing expected vote will not, in general, be a rational party strategy in multiparty political systems which are based on proportional representation.     

Bureaucratic choice and nonoptimal provision of public goods: Theory and evidence

Local governments' allocation decisions are modeled in the context of a slack maximizing bureaucrat who produces public goods according to a production function that includes both provision and the constituents' socio-economic characteristics. To gain a better understanding of the determinants of slack, comparative statics and an empirical study of Illinois municipalities are conducted. The indirect output distance function provides efficiency scores upon which we regress several variables, representing socio-economic characteristics, costs and competition measures. We find that slack or inefficient behavior is associated with richer communities, lower education levels and a lack of competition for residents among municipalities.     

The effect of socioeconomic factors on voter turnout in Finland: A register-based study of 2.9 million voters

Abstract.  We examine the association of four socioeconomic factors with turnout in Finland in three age groups. The analyses are based on individual-level register data from electoral wards from the parliamentary elections of 1999 linked to population registration data on personal characteristics covering the whole 25 to 69 year-old Finnish electorate. The results show that income and housing tenure are more important determinants of turnout among older voters than among younger voters, whereas education has a dominant role in determining young people's turnout. Moreover, class has maintained its discriminatory power in determining turnout in all age groups even though working-class under-representation in participation can be partly attributable to previously obtained educational attainment. Furthermore, the lower turnout of younger voters remains unexplained even if socioeconomic factors are held constant. Lower turnout among lower social classes and among the young will affect the legitimacy of the prevalent model of party democracy.     

Taking the Keys from Grandpa

Recent highly publicized traffic accidents involving older drivers have led to renewed interest in state policies and administrative practices that award and renew drivers’ licenses in the American states. Because the probability of traffic accidents is linked to the medical conditions that are more prevalent among the elderly, and because the number of older drivers is expected to rise over the next several decades, one might expect that this will be an increasingly important policy issue. This article discusses variations that are observed across states in law and administrative practice. A longitudinal analysis of data on crashes involving elderly drivers in fifteen states indicates that crash rates are directly related to the length of the renewal cycle for older drivers and inversely related to the stringency of testing at renewal. It is also likely that states requiring physicians to report conditions that would impair driving will experience lower crash rates. A secondary analysis of policy impacts on the licensing rates is not conclusive, a finding that is attributable to inaccuracies in the reported numbers of licensed drivers.     

A Question of Morality: Artists' Values and Public Funding for the Arts

In 1989, the combination of art, religion, homosexuality, ana¹ public dollars set off an explosive two-year battle and a decade of skirmishes over funding for the National Endowment for the Arts. To promote artistic freedom and to avoid political controversy, federal arts policy delegates specific funding decisions to private donors and arts professionals. In an era of morality politics—hot-button issues driven by deeply held beliefs rather than by expertise—that strategy no longer works. Artists, donors, and arts audiences diverge widely from the rest of the American public in their attitudes toward religion, sexual morality, and civil liberties, as General Social Survey data show. Delegating funding decisions to them has naturally led to some subsidies of art offensive to important segments of the population.