A Strategic Model of Coalition Governance in Parliamentary Democracies
37 Pages Posted: 14 Jul 2012 Last revised: 12 Sep 2012
Date Written: 2012
Abstract
We introduce a new model of coalition policy-making that explains why ministers may strategically refrain from initiating policy. Political parties disagree over policy, but such disagreement is dependent on their knowledge about the true state of the world. While ministers learn the true state from bureaucratic expertise, coalition partners can only do so by relying on a ministerial proposal or by scrutinizing in parliament. Whether the coalition partner can scrutinize or amend proposals depends on his budget which we model to be dependent on the strength of parliamentary institutions and the size of the parliamentary party. The model generates a range of new empirical implications, while subsuming existing predictions of coalition theories. We investigate the novel insights of the model using a comparative dataset covering government legislation in Belgium, France, and Germany. Our results show that ministers are more likely to be challenged when coalition conflict increases, and refrain from initiating policies when the conflict is large and when they face a powerful coalition partner willing and able to invest in scrutiny and amendment.
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