Coalition Agreements As Control Devices

Many coalition cabinets negotiate lengthy coalition contracts outlining the agenda for the time in office. Not only does negotiating these agreements take up time and resources, but compromises have to be made, which may result in cabinet conflicts and electoral costs. This book explores why political parties negotiate such agreements, and argues that coalition agreements are important control devices that allow coalition parties to keep their partners in line. The authors show that their use varies with the preference configuration in cabinet and the allocation of ministerial portfolios. First, they posit that parties will only negotiate policy issues in a coalition agreement when they disagree on these issues and when they are important to all partners. Second, since controlling a ministry provides parties with important information and policy-making advantages, parties use agreements to constrain their partners particularly when they control the ministry in charge of a policy area. Finally, they argue that coalition agreements only work as effective control devices if coalition parties settle controversial issues in these contracts. The COALITIONAGREE Dataset is used to evaluate the expectations set out in the book; the dataset maps the content of 229 coalition agreements that were negotiated by 189 parties between 1945 and 2015 in 24 Western and Eastern European countries. The results show that coalition parties systematically use agreements to control their partners when policy issues are divisive and salient and when they are confronted with a hostile minister. These agreements only effectively contain conflicts, however, when parties negotiate a compromise on precisely the issues that divide them. Comparative Politics is a series for researchers, teachers, and students of political science that deals with contemporary government and politics. Global in scope, books in the series are characterized by a stress on comparative analysis and strong methodological rigour. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research. For more information visit: www.ecprnet.eu. The series is edited by Nicole Bolleyer, Chair of Comparative Political Science, Geschwister Scholl Institut, LMU Munich and Jonathan Slapin, Professor of Political Institutions and European Politics, Department of Political Science, University of Zurich.

Many coalition cabinets negotiate lengthy coalition contracts outlining the agenda for the time in office. Not only does negotiating these agreements take up time and resources, but compromises have to be made, which may result in cabinet conflicts and electoral costs. This book explores why political parties negotiate such agreements, and argues that coalition agreements are important control devices that allow coalition parties to keep their partners in line. The authors show that their use varies with the preference configuration in cabinet and the allocation of ministerial portfolios. First, they posit that parties will only negotiate policy issues in a coalition agreement when they disagree on these issues and when they are important to all partners. Second, since controlling a ministry provides parties with important information and policy-making advantages, parties use agreements to constrain their partners particularly when they control the ministry in charge of a policy area. Finally, they argue that coalition agreements only work as effective control devices if coalition parties settle controversial issues in these contracts. The COALITIONAGREE Dataset is used to evaluate the expectations set out in the book; the dataset maps the content of 229 coalition agreements that were negotiated by 189 parties between 1945 and 2015 in 24 Western and Eastern European countries. The results show that coalition parties systematically use agreements to control their partners when policy issues are divisive and salient and when they are confronted with a hostile minister. These agreements only effectively contain conflicts, however, when parties negotiate a compromise on precisely the issues that divide them. Comparative Politics is a series for researchers, teachers, and students of political science that deals with contemporary government and politics. Global in scope, books in the series are characterized by a stress on comparative analysis and strong methodological rigour. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research. For more information visit: www.ecprnet.eu. The series is edited by Nicole Bolleyer, Chair of Comparative Political Science, Geschwister Scholl Institut, LMU Munich and Jonathan Slapin, Professor of Political Institutions and European Politics, Department of Political Science, University of Zurich.

This book studies such governments, covering the full life-cycle of coalitions from the formation of party alliances before elections to coalition formation after elections.

George Tsebelis’ veto players approach has become a prominent theory to analyze various research questions in political science. Studies that apply veto player theory deal with the impact of institutions and partisan preferences of legislative activity and policy outcomes. It is used to measure the degree of policy change and, thus, reform capacity in national and international political systems. This volume contains the analysis of leading scholars in the field on these topics and more recent developments regarding theoretical and empirical progress in the area of political reform-making. The contributions come from research areas of political science where veto player theory plays a significant role, including, positive political theory, legislative behavior and legislative decision-making in national and supra-national political systems, policy making and government formation. The contributors to this book add to the current scholarly and public debate on the role of veto players, making it of interest to scholars in political science and policy studies as well as policymakers worldwide.

In recent years there has been a considerable effort in some transnational organizations and institutions to confront a crisis of legitimacy by promising more accountability and openness. This volume takes as its central focus the role of accountability in democratic governance, and attempts to position a broad understanding of the notion of accountability within the overall context of the evolving political system of governance in Europe and in particular of the European Union. Bringing together new work by some of the leading scholars in the field, this volume considers the relationship between accountability and a wide range of other themes in European governance such as problems of representation, transparency, bureaucracy, and transnational relations. The volume also deals with the role of accountability in multi-level governance, and its relationship to both direct democracy and civil society. This book was published as a special issue of West European Politics.

What drives government popularity? For decades, scholars, journalists, and political pundits alike have converged on a single answer: the economy. A rising economy lifts the popularity of the government, and if the economy's fortunes turn south, so too does that of the government. This conventional wisdom informs politicians' decisions as well as the scholarly commentary on parties and elections. Yet the conditions that underlie this model have changed in manycountries as globalization has shifted control away from national policymakers, as non-economic cultural issues have risen in importance, and as our politics have become more polarized. At the same time, since the Great Recession in 2008 persistent economic volatility has kept the economy on the agenda.What, then, fuels government popularity in our current volatile environment? Are political fortunes tied to economic stability, as in the past? Or has the economy-popularity link-the popularity function-been severed by a host of new and less predictable factors in post-industrial societies?To answer these questions, Economics and Politics Revisited uses data from the Executive Approval Project (EAP), a cross-nationally comparable data on leader popularity, to model the fundamental dynamics of government support in advanced industrial democracies. Eleven country-specific chapters, each written by experts in the politics of the country, examine the role of economic performance in generating leader support in each country. In all cases, chapter authors show that theeconomy matters for popularity. However, the economy-popularity link is stronger in some countries than others. Further, chapters leverage EAP series to highlight change over time. Pooled analyses extend these findings, highlighting how the public's responses to the economy are reduced when political campaignsshift to non-economic issues and when parties are polarization on non-economic issues. Collectively, the volume highlights how evolving issue agendas are changing the nature of political accountability in advanced industrialized democracies. While the economy remains important, the book calls on students of political accountability to give greater attention to the role of non-economic issues.Comparative Politics is a series for researchers, teachers, and students of political science that deals with contemporary government and politics. Global in scope, books in the series are characterized by a stress on comparative analysis and strong methodological rigour. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research. For more information visit: www.ecprnet.eu .The series is edited by Nicole Bolleyer, Chair of Comparative Political Science, Geschwister Scholl Institut, LMU Munich and Jonathan Slapin, Professor of Political Institutions and European Politics, Department of Political Science, University of Zurich.

Political parties are nothing without their people and candidates are essential to parties' core functions - contesting elections, filling political offices, and shaping policy. Candidates are the literal 'face' of parties, yet they are not wedded to them permanently: candidates can enter or leave politics, switch parties, move along or stay behind when parties split or merge. Even in parties that look stable, candidate change happens below the surface, ultimately altering what the parties stand for. Inspired by evolutionary theories, Party People: Candidates and Party Evolution conceptualizes candidates as 'party genes' and develops a candidate-based approach to party evolution. Tracking candidates between elections and parties opens up new perspectives on party development in complex and dynamic settings in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and beyond. Based on a new database of 200,000 electoral candidates from over 60 elections across nine CEE democracies, this book presents a groundbreaking study of party evolution using candidate change as an indicator of party change. Allan Sikk and Philipp Köker offer a series of methodological and conceptual advances for the measurement of candidate turnover, party fission and fusion, programmatic change, and party leadership change; the resulting analyses make a significant contribution to the study of CEE party politics as well as to the general scholarship on elections, parties, and political change. Comparative Politics is a series for researchers, teachers, and students of political science that deals with contemporary government and politics. Global in scope, books in the series are characterized by a stress on comparative analysis and strong methodological rigour. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research. For more information visit: www.ecprnet.eu. The series is edited by Nicole Bolleyer, Chair of Comparative Political Science, Geschwister Scholl Institut, LMU Munich and Jonathan Slapin, Professor of Political Institutions and European Politics, Department of Political Science, University of Zurich.

How do parties survive when newness is their only selling point? This scholarly volume explores the most successful group of new political parties in Central and Eastern Europe: centrist anti-establishment parties (CAPs). These parties often claim to be neither 'left nor right', strongly criticize the political establishment, and instead promise 'corruption-free' politics. Initially extremely successful, many CAPs do not survive more than a few consecutive elections while others do endure. As the first book-length study on this type of party, Sarah Engler explores this question and focuses on CAPs' electoral strategies after their first elections. It derives three strategies of survival that lead to more sustainable electoral support: a reframed protest strategy, an anti-corruption strategy, and a mainstream strategy. Combining quantitative data from an original expert survey with qualitative evidence from elite interviews with MPs, party officials and anti-corruption experts, the author demonstrates that CAPs only survive when they abandon their initial strategy of pure protest. While strategic change is necessary for party survival, several failed attempts at transformation show that it is not sufficient. Ideology, seemingly irrelevant to CAPs' initial successes, eventually determines CAPs' fates. Engler also examines how these findings have implications for other European countries. Comparative Politics is a series for researchers, teachers, and students of political science that deals with contemporary government and politics. Global in scope, books in the series are characterized by a stress on comparative analysis and strong methodological rigour. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research. For more information visit: www.ecprnet.eu . The series is edited by Nicole Bolleyer, Chair of Comparative Political Science, Geschwister Scholl Institut, LMU Munich and Jonathan Slapin, Professor of Political Institutions and European Politics, Department of Political Science, University of Zurich.