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New Empirical Strategies for the Study of Parliamentary Government Formation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2017

Garrett Glasgow ,
Matt Golder  and
Sona N. Golder
Garrett Glasgow*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of California, Santa Barbara, 3719 Ellison Hall, Santa Barbara, CA 93106
Matt Golder
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Pennsylvania State University, 306 Pond Laboratory, University Park, PA 16801. e-mail: mgolder@psu.edu
Sona N. Golder
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Pennsylvania State University, 305 Pond Laboratory, University Park, PA 16801. e-mail: sgolder@psu.edu
*
e-mail: glasgow@polsci.ucsb.edu (corresponding author)
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Abstract

In recent years, a consensus has developed that the conditional logit (CL) model is the most appropriate strategy for modeling government choice. In this paper, we reconsider this approach and make three methodological contributions. First, we employ a mixed logit with random coefficients that allows us to take account of unobserved heterogeneity in the government formation process and relax the independence of irrelevant alternatives (IIA) assumption. Second, we demonstrate that the procedure used in the literature to test the IIA assumption is biased against finding IIA violations. An improved testing procedure reveals clear evidence of IIA violations, indicating that the CL model is inappropriate. Third, we move beyond simply presenting the sign and significance of model coefficients, suggesting various strategies for interpreting the substantive influence of variables in models of government choice.

Type
Regular Articles
Information
Political Analysis , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , Spring 2012 , pp. 248 - 270
Copyright
Copyright © The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Political Methodology 

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Footnotes

Edited by Vera Troeger

Authors' note: We thank Jim Adams, Lanny Martin, Randy Stevenson, Greg Wawro, two anonymous reviewers, and audiences at the 2010 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, the 2010 Summer Political Methodology Meeting, the 2011 Southern California Comparative Political Science conference, and the 2011 European Consortium for Political Research General Conference for helpful comments on this paper. The data and all computer code necessary to replicate the results and figures in this analysis are available at the Political Analysis dataverse.

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