Top

Public Choice

Published in:

18-11-2017

Gaining new insights by going local: determinants of coalition formation in mixed democratic polities

Authors: Martin Gross, Marc Debus

Published in: Public Choice | Issue 1-2/2018

Activate our intelligent search to find suitable subject content or patents.

search-config

AI-assisted search

Off

Abstract

We develop a simple spatial model suggesting that Members of Parliament strive for the inclusion of the head of state’s party in coalitions formed in mixed democratic polities, and that parliamentary parties try to assemble coalitions that minimize the ideological distance to the head of state. We identify the German local level of government as functionally equivalent to a parliamentary setting, such that the directly elected mayor has competencies similar to a president in a mixed national polity. Our findings show that the party affiliation of the head of state is a key factor considered by party members in the legislature when forming coalitions: coalitions in the legislature are more likely to form if they include the party of the head of the executive branch. Furthermore, the policy preferences of the head of the executive branch matter for the legislators’ behavior in the coalition formation process: the smaller the ideological distance between the position of a coalition and the position of the head of state, the more likely a coalition is to be formed.

previous article These rules are made for spending: testing and extending the law of 1/n

next article The politics of beer: analysis of the congressional votes on the beer bill of 1933

Dont have a licence yet? Then find out more about our products and how to get one now:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 102.000 Bücher
über 537 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Automobil + Motoren
Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 67.000 Bücher
über 340 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Available only for authorised users

For instance, French presidential candidates formulate their policy positions in a separate platform in which they deviate from the position their parties adopted in their election manifestos (e.g., Laver et al. 2006).

Because of the preference order of the three legislative parties, a coalition between A and C would always include B.

In most cases, mayoral elections do not take place on the same day as local council elections.

Since one advantage of ‘scaling down’ (Snyder 2001) to the local level is fixing contextual features, we are not expecting unobserved heterogeneity in the estimated effects (see Glasgow et al. 2012) owing to our case selection. Nevertheless, we also applied mixed logit models to estimate the empirical models. The results substantially remain the same and likelihood ratio tests confirm that CL models are a better fit to our data than mixed logit models.

The size of the choice set is determined by the number of political groups that are elected to a local council. According to the literature on coalition formation, the number of potential coalitions within a parliament is calculated by 2ⁿ − 1, with n as the number of parliamentary represented parties. We exclude those potential outcomes of the coalition formation process in the local councils that include only one party because our definition of a coalition states that at least two parties have to sign a coalition agreement.

Note that our cases share a common feature with mixed regimes (Cheibub and Chernykh 2008, p. 277): the average seat share of the largest party is 0.40, i.e., most of the time no party controls a majority of seats in the local parliament.

This result does not change with variations in the size of local councils, i.e., the number of parliamentary parties. With the exception of the situations wherein 10 parties are represented in parliament and the head of executive branch’s party is included in two out of four formation opportunities, the head of the executive branch’s party is overwhelmingly more likely to be included in local government coalitions. For example, the predicted probabilities range from 81.3% in councils with six parties, over 94.1% in councils with 8 parties, to 100% in councils with 11 or 13 parties, respectively.

We followed Martin and Stevenson (2001) to evaluate whether or not the independence of irrelevant alternatives (IIA) assumption is violated by dropping a random set of alternatives from each coalition formation opportunity and applying a Hausman test. We used 50 replications, dropping a random set of 10% of the choices. The average p value is shown in Table 2. It is far greater than 0.05, so we conclude that the IIA assumption is not violated here (see also Chiba et al. 2015).

Ade, F. (2014). Do constitutions matter? Evidence from a natural experiment at the municipality level. Public Choice, 160(3), 367–389.CrossRef

Alemán, E., & Tsebelis, G. (2011). Political parties and government coalitions in the Americas. Journal of Politics in Latin America, 3(1), 3–28.

Altman, D. (2000). The politics of coalition formation and survival in multiparty presidential democracies: The case of Uruguay, 1989–1999. Party Politics, 6(3), 259–283.CrossRef

Amorim Neto, O. (2006). The presidential calculus: Executive policy making and cabinet formation in the Americas. Comparative Political Studies, 39(4), 415–440.CrossRef

Amorim Neto, O., & Strøm, K. (2006). Breaking the parliamentary chain of delegation: presidents and non-partisan cabinet members in European democracies. British Journal of Political Science, 36(4), 619–643.CrossRef

Bäck, H. (2003). Explaining and predicting coalition outcomes: Conclusions from studying data on local coalitions. European Journal of Political Research, 42(4), 441–472.CrossRef

Bäck, H. (2005). The institutional setting of local political leadership and community involvement. In M. Haus, H. Heinelt, & M. Stewart (Eds.), Urban governance and democracy. Leadership and community involvement (pp. 65–101). New York: Routledge.

Bäck, H., & Dumont, P. (2008). Making the first move. A two-stage analysis of the role of formateurs in parliamentary government formation. Public Choice, 135(3–4), 353–373.CrossRef

Baylis, T. A. (1996). Presidents versus Prime Ministers: Shaping executive authority in Eastern Europe. World Politics, 48(3), 297–323.CrossRef

Benz, A., & Zimmer, C. (2011). Germany: Varieties of democracy in a federal system. In J. Loughlin & A. Lidström (Eds.), The oxford handbook of local and regional democracy in Europe (pp. 146–172). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bergman, T. (1993). Formation rules and minority governments. European Journal of Political Research, 23(1), 55–66.CrossRef

Beuman, L. M. (2015). Cohabitation in new post-conflict democracies: The case of Timor-Leste. Parliamentary Affairs, 68(3), 453–475.CrossRef

Bogumil, J., & Holtkamp, L. (2013). Kommunalpolitik und Kommunalverwaltung: Eine praxisorientierte Einführung. Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung.

Bräuninger, T., & Debus, M. (2012). Parteienwettbewerb in den deutschen Bundesländern. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.CrossRef

Bräuninger, T., & König, T. (1999). The checks and balances of party federalism: German federal government in a divided legislature. European Journal of Political Research, 36(2), 207–234.

Bucur, C., & Cheibub, J. A. (2017). Presidential partisanship in government formation: Do Presidents favor their parties when they appoint the Prime Minister? Political Research Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912917716334.

Chang, C. H. (2014). Cohabitation in semi-presidential countries. Social Sciences, 3(2), 31–43.

Cheibub, J. A. (2007). Presidentialism, parliamentarism, and democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cheibub, J. A., & Chernykh, S. (2008). Constitutions and democratic performance in semi-presidential democracies. Japanese Journal of Political Science, 9(2), 269–303.CrossRef

Cheibub, J. A., & Chernykh, S. (2009). Are semi-presidential constitutions bad for democratic performance? Constitutional Political Economy, 20(3–4), 202–229.CrossRef

Cheibub, J. A., Elkins, Z., & Ginsburg, T. (2014). Beyond presidentialism and parliamentarism. British Journal of Political Science, 44(3), 515–544.CrossRef

Cheibub, J. A., Gandhi, J., & Vreeland, J. R. (2010). Democracy and dictatorship revisited. Public Choice, 143(1–2), 67–101.CrossRef

Cheibub, J. A., & Limongi, F. (2002). Democratic institutions and regime survival: parliamentary and presidential democracies reconsidered. Annual Review of Political Science, 5(1), 151–179.CrossRef

Cheibub, J. A., & Limongi, F. (2010). From conflict to coordination: Perspectives on the study of executive-legislative relations. Revista Ibero-Americana de Estudos Legislativos, 1(1), 38–53.CrossRef

Cheibub, J. A., Przeworski, A., & Saiegh, S. M. (2004). Government coalitions and legislative success under presidentialism and parliamentarism. British Journal of Political Science, 34(4), 565–587.CrossRef

Chiba, D., Martin, L. W., & Stevenson, R. T. (2015). A copula approach to the problem of selection bias in models of government survival. Political Analysis, 23(1), 42–58.CrossRef

Chiou, F. Y., & Rothenberg, L. S. (2003). When pivotal politics meets partisan politics. American Journal of Political Science, 47(3), 503–522.CrossRef

Clark, W., Golder, M., & Golder, S. N. (2013). Principles of comparative politics. Washington: CQ Press.

Crombez, C., & Hix, S. (2015). Legislative activity and gridlock in the European Union. British Journal of Political Science, 45(3), 477–499.CrossRef

Dassonneville, R., & Lewis-Beck, M. S. (2013). Economic policy voting and incumbency: Unemployment in Western Europe. Political Science Research and Methods, 1(1), 53–66.CrossRef

Däubler, T., & Debus, M. (2009). Government formation and policy formulation in the German States. Regional and Federal Studies, 19(1), 73–95.CrossRef

Debus, M. (2009). Pre-electoral commitments and government formation. Public Choice, 138(1), 45–64.CrossRef

Debus, M., & Gross, M. (2016). Coalition formation at the local level: Institutional constraints, party policy conflict, and office-seeking political parties. Party Politics, 22(6), 835–846.CrossRef

Duverger, M. (1980). A new political system model: Semi-presidential government. European Journal of Political Research, 8(2), 165–187.CrossRef

Egner, B. (2015). Parliaments in disguise? How German councillors perceive local councils. Local Government Studies, 41(2), 183–201.CrossRef

Elgie, R. (1999). The politics of semi-presidentialism. In R. Elgie (Ed.), Semi-presidentialism in Europe (pp. 1–21). Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRef

Elgie, R. (2011). Semi-presidentialism in Western Europe. In R. Elgie, S. Moestrup, & Y. S. Wu (Eds.), Semi-Presidentialism and democracy (pp. 81–97). Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRef

Elgie, R., & McMenamin, I. (2011). Explaining the onset of cohabitation under semi-presidentialism. Political Studies, 59(3), 616–635.CrossRef

Ennser-Jedenastik, L. (2014). The politics of patronage and coalition: How parties allocate managerial positions in state-owned enterprises. Political Studies, 62(2), 398–417.CrossRef

Fernandes, J. M., & Magalhães, P. C. (2016). Government survival in semi-presidential regimes. European Journal of Political Research, 55(1), 61–80.CrossRef

Glasgow, G., & Golder, S. N. (2015). A new approach to the study of parties entering government. British Journal of Political Science, 45(4), 739–754.CrossRef

Glasgow, G., Golder, M., & Golder, S. N. (2012). New empirical strategies for the study of parliamentary government formation. Political Analysis, 20(2), 248–270.CrossRef

Gross, D. A., & Sigelman, L. (1984). Comparing party systems: A multidimensional approach. Comparative Politics, 16(4), 463–479.CrossRef

Kang, S. G. (2009). The influence of presidential heads of state on government formation in European democracies: Empirical evidence. European Journal of Political Research, 48(4), 543–572.CrossRef

Kirschke, L. (2007). Semipresidentialism and the perils of power-sharing in neopatrimonial states. Comparative Political Studies, 40(11), 1372–1394.CrossRef

Krehbiel, K. (1996). Institutional and partisan sources of gridlock. A theory of divided and unified government. Journal of Theoretical Politics, 8(1), 7–40.CrossRef

Krehbiel, K. (1998). Pivotal politics. A theory of U.S. law making. Chicago: Chicago University Press.CrossRef

Laver, M., Benoit, K., & Garry, J. (2003). Extracting policy positions from political texts using words as data. American Political Science Review, 92(2), 311–331.

Laver, M., Benoit, K., & Sauger, N. (2006). Policy competition in the 2002 French legislative and presidential elections. European Journal of Political Research, 45(4), 667–697.CrossRef

Laver, M., & Schofield, N. (1998). Multiparty government: The politics of coalition in Europe. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRef

Lewis-Beck, M., & Stegmaier, M. (2000). Economic determinants of electoral outcomes. Annual Review of Political Science, 3, 183–219.CrossRef

Linz, J. J. (1990). The perils of presidentialism. Journal of Democracy, 1(1), 51–69.

Linz, J. J. (1994). Presidential or parliamentary democracy: Does it make a difference? In J. J. Linz & A. Valenzuela (Eds.), The failure of presidential democracy: Comparative perspectives (pp. 3–87). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Martin, L. W., & Stevenson, R. T. (2001). Government formation in parliamentary democracies. American Journal of Political Science, 45(1), 33–50.CrossRef

Martin, L. W., & Stevenson, R. T. (2010). The conditional impact of incumbency on government formation. American Political Science Review, 104(3), 503–518.CrossRef

Martin, L. W., & Vanberg, G. (2011). Parliaments and coalitions: The role of legislative institutions in multiparty governance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRef

Martínez-Gallardo, C. (2012). Out of the cabinet: What drives defections from the government in presidential systems? Comparative Political Studies, 45(1), 62–90.CrossRef

Martínez-Gallardo, C. (2014). Designing cabinets: presidential politics and ministerial instability. Journal of Politics in Latin America, 6(2), 3–38.

Martínez-Gallardo, C., & Schleiter, P. (2015). Choosing whom to trust: Agency risks and cabinet partisanship in presidential democracies. Comparative Political Studies, 48(2), 231–264.CrossRef

McFadden, D. (1974). Conditional logit analysis of qualitative choice behavior. In P. Zarembka (Ed.), Frontiers in econometrics (pp. 105–142). New York: Academic Press.

Mellors, C., & Brearey, P. (1986). Multi-dimensional approaches to the study of local coalitions: some cross-national comparisons. In G. Pridham (Ed.), Coalitional behaviour in theory and practice: an inductive model for Western Europe (pp. 278–295). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRef

Nikolova, P. (2011). Bulgaria: The dawn of a new era of inclusive subnational democracy? In J. Loughlin, F. Hendriks, & A. Lidström (Eds.), The oxford handbook of local and regional democracy in Europe (pp. 665–684). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Olislagers, E., & Steyvers, K. (2015). Choosing coalition partners in Belgian local government. Local Government Studies, 41(2), 202–219.CrossRef

Pasquino, G. (1997). Semi-presidentialism: A political model at work. European Journal of Political Research, 31(1–2), 128–137.

Protsyk, O. (2005). Politics of intraexecutive conflict in semipresidential regimes in Eastern Europe. East European Politics and Societies, 19(2), 135–160.CrossRef

Protsyk, O. (2006). Intra-executive competition between President and Prime Minister: Patterns of institutional conflict and cooperation under semi-presidentialism. Political Studies, 54(2), 219–244.CrossRef

Roper, S. D. (2002). Are all semipresidential regimes the same? A comparison of premier-presidential regimes. Comparative Politics, 34(3), 253–272.CrossRef

Samuels, D. J., & Shugart, M. S. (2010). Presidents, parties, and prime ministers. How the separation of powers affects party organization and behavior. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRef

Schleiter, P., & Morgan-Jones, E. (2009a). Party government in Europe? Parliamentary and semi-presidential democracies compared. European Journal of Political Research, 48(5), 665–693.CrossRef

Schleiter, P., & Morgan-Jones, E. (2009b). Review article: Citizens, presidents and assemblies: The study of semi-presidentialism beyond Duverger and Linz. British Journal of Political Science, 39(4), 871–892.CrossRef

Schleiter, P., & Morgan-Jones, E. (2010). Who’s in charge? Presidents, assemblies, and the political control of semipresidential cabinets. Comparative Political Studies, 43(11), 1415–1441.CrossRef

Sedelius, T., & Mashtaler, O. (2013). Two decades of semi-presidentialism: issues of intra-executive conflict in Central and Eastern Europe 1991–2011. East European Politics, 29(2), 109–134.CrossRef

Shugart, M. S. (2005). Semi-presidential systems: Dual executive and mixed authority patterns. French Politics, 3(3), 323–351.CrossRef

Shugart, M. S., & Carey, J. M. (1992). Presidents and assemblies. Constitutional design and electoral dynamics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRef

Siaroff, A. (2003). Comparative presidencies: The inadequacy of the presidential, semi-presidential and parliamentary distinction. European Journal of Political Research, 42(3), 287–312.CrossRef

Skjæveland, A., Serritzlew, S., & Blom-Hansen, J. (2007). Theories of coalition formation: An empirical test using data from Denmark. European Journal of Political Research, 46(5), 721–745.CrossRef

Snyder, R. (2001). Scaling down: The subnational comparative method. Studies in Comparative International Development, 36(1), 93–110.CrossRef

Ştefuriuc, I. (2013). Government formation in multi-level settings. Party strategy and institutional constraints. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRef

Strøm, K., Müller, W. C., & Bergman, T. (Eds.). (2010). Cabinets and coalition bargaining: The democratic life cycle in Western Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Swianiewicz, P. (2011). Poland: Europeanization of Subnational Governments. In J. Loughlin, F. Hendriks, & A. Lidström (Eds.), The oxford handbook of local and regional democracy in Europe (pp. 480–504). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Tavits, M. (2008). Presidents with Prime Ministers: Do direct elections matter?. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRef

Thomson, R. (2011). Citizens’ evaluations of the fulfillment of election pledges: Evidence from Ireland. The Journal of Politics, 73(1), 187–201.CrossRef

Tsai, J. H. (2008). Sub-types of semi-presidentialism and political deadlock. French Politics, 6(1), 63–84.CrossRef

Tsebelis, G. (2002). Veto players: How political institutions work. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRef

Turgeon, M., & Bélanger, É. (2017). Institutions and attribution of responsibility outside the electoral context: a look at French semi-presidentialism. European Political Science Review, 9(2), 209–231.CrossRef

Wu, Y. S. (2011). Clustering of semi-presidentialism: A first cut. In R. Elgie, S. Moestrup, & Y. S. Wu (Eds.), Semi-presidentialism and democracy (pp. 21–41). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Title: Gaining new insights by going local: determinants of coalition formation in mixed democratic polities
Authors: Martin Gross
Marc Debus
Publication date: 18-11-2017
Publisher: Springer US
Published in: Public Choice / Issue 1-2/2018
Print ISSN: 0048-5829
Electronic ISSN: 1573-7101
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-017-0489-x

Springer Professional

Abstract

Please log in to get access to your license.

Dont have a licence yet? Then find out more about our products and how to get one now:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Other articles of this Issue 1-2/2018

Can behavioral economists improve economic rationality?

Government ideology and economic policy-making in the United States—a survey

The politics of beer: analysis of the congressional votes on the beer bill of 1933

Editorial announcement

Public policy and the initiative and referendum: a survey with some new evidence

These rules are made for spending: testing and extending the law of 1/n