Hostname: page-component-6dbcb7884d-2bcm2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-14T00:25:48.783Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

What You See Is Not Always What You Get: Bargaining before an Audience under Multiparty Government

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 July 2020

LANNY W. MARTIN Open the ORCID record for LANNY W. MARTIN [Opens in a new window]  and
GEORG VANBERG Open the ORCID record for GEORG VANBERG [Opens in a new window]
LANNY W. MARTIN*
Affiliation:
Bocconi University
GEORG VANBERG*
Affiliation:
Duke University
*
Lanny W. Martin Professor, Department of Social and Political Sciences, Dondena Centre for Research on Social Dynamics and Public Policy, Bocconi University, lanny.martin@unibocconi.it.
Georg Vanberg Professor, Department of Political Science, Duke University, georg.vanberg@duke.edu.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Party elites in coalition governments are acutely aware that the deals they strike will be critically evaluated by their supporters, and that they risk losing support if they are perceived as ineffective negotiators. This has a powerful influence on the bargains parties strike. Because most supporters are unaware of the complex aspects of bargains and instead rely on simple heuristics to evaluate their most visible features, parties have incentives to meet supporter expectations primarily on easily observable outcomes. To do so, they make trade-offs on less observable outcomes. This implies that the more visible features of a bargain typically do not accurately reflect the relative success of parties in coalition negotiations. We evaluate our argument using original data on the office rewards and policy risks of portfolio allocation in 16 parliamentary democracies. Our findings support our argument, and they have important implications for the nature of representation under multiparty government.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 114 , Issue 4 , November 2020 , pp. 1138 - 1154
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

We wish to thank Christoph Vanberg as well as seminar participants at Aarhus University, Emory University, Humboldt University, King’s College London, the University of Bologna, the University of Essex, the University of Kentucky, the University of Mannheim, the University of Milan, and the University of Zurich for helpful comments on previous versions of this article. Replication files are available at the American Political Science Review Dataverse: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/2CITBJ.

References

Bäck, Hanna, Meier, Henk Erik, and Persson, Thomas. 2009. “Party Size and Portfolio Payoffs: The Proportional Allocation of Ministerial Posts in Coalition Governments.” Journal of Legislative Studies 15 (1): 10–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bäck, Hanna, Debus, Marc, and Dumont, Patrick. 2011. “Who Gets What in Coalition Governments? Predictors of Portfolio Allocation in Parliamentary Democracies.” European Journal of Political Research 50 (4): 441–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bassi, Anna. 2013. “A Model of Endogenous Government Formation.” American Journal of Political Science 57 (4): 777–93.Google Scholar
Benoit, Kenneth, and Laver, Michael. 2006. Party Policy in Modern Democracies. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowler, Shaun, Gschwend, Thomas, and Indridason, Indridi H.. Forthcoming. “Coalition Policy Perceptions.” Journal of Politics. https://doi.org/10.1086/708629.Google Scholar
Browne, Eric C. , and , Mark N. Franklin. 1973. “Aspects of Coalition Payoffs in European Parliamentary Democracies.” American Political Science Review 67 (2): 453–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carroll, Royce, and Cox, Gary W.. 2007. “The Logic of Gamson’s Law: Pre-election Coalitions and Portfolio Allocations.” American Journal of Political Science 51 (2): 300–313.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Downs, Anthony. 1957. An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.Google Scholar
Duch, Raymond M., and Stevenson, Randolph T.. 2013. “Voter Perceptions of Agenda Power and Attribution of Responsibility for Economic Performance.” Electoral Studies 32 (3): 512–516.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Falcó-Gimeno, Albert, and Indridason, Indridi H.. 2013. “Uncertainty, Complexity, and Gamson’s Law: Comparing Coalition Formation in Western Europe.” West European Politics 36 (1): 221–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fortunato, David. 2019. “Legislative Review and Party Differentiation in Coalition Governments.” American Political Science Review 113 (1): 242–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fortunato, David, and Stevenson, Randolph T.. 2019. “Heuristics in Context.” Political Science Research and Methods 7 (2): 311–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fortunato, David, Stevenson, Randolph T., and Vonnahme, Greg. 2016. “Context and Political Knowledge: Explaining Cross-National Variation in Partisan Left-Right Knowledge.” Journal of Politics 78 (4): 1211–1228.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gamson, William A. 1961. “A Theory of Coalition Formation.” American Sociological Review 26 (3): 373–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldstein, Daniel G., and Gigerenzer, Gerd. 2012. “Models of Ecological Rationality: The Recognition Heuristic.” Psychological Review 109 (1): 75–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Healy, Andrew, and Malhotra, Neil. 2013. “Retrospective Voting Reconsidered.” Annual Review of Political Science 16 (1): 285–306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahneman, Daniel, and Tversky, Amos. 1979. “Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk.” Econometrica 47 (2): 263–291.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kayser, Mark A., Orlowski, Matthias, and Rehmert, Jochen. n.d. “Coalition Inclusion Probabilities: A Dynamic Measure of Party Competitiveness and Cabinet Leverage.” Unpublished Manuscript, Hertie School of Governance. http://mark-kayser.com/papers/KOR_CoalProbs_190125.pdf.Google Scholar
Klüver, Heike, and Bäck, Hanna. 2019. “Coalition Agreements, Issue Attention, and Cabinet Governance.” Comparative Political Studies 52 (13–14): 1995–2031.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laver, Michael, and Shepsle, Kenneth A.. 1996. Making and Breaking Governments: Cabinets and Legislatures in Parliamentary Democracies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laver, Michael, and Schofield, Norman. 1998. Multiparty Government: The Politics of Coalition in Europe. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laver, Michael, de Marchi, Scott, and Mutlu, Hande. 2011. “Negotiation in Legislatures over Government Formation.” Public Choice 147 (3–4): 285–304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lin, Nick, Stevenson, Randolph T., , Mathias Wessel Tromborg, and Fortunato, David. 2017. “Gamson’s Law and Voters’ Perceptions of Portfolio Allocation.” European Journal of Political Research 56 (4): 912–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lodge, Milton, McGraw, Kathleen M., and Stroh, Patrick. 1989. “An Impression-Driven Model of Candidate Evaluation.” American Journal of Political Science 83 (2): 399–419.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lodge, Milton, Steenbergen, Marco, and Brau, Shawn. 1995. “The Responsive Voter: Campaign Information and the Dynamics of Candidate Evaluation.” American Political Science Review 89 (2): 309–326.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lowe, Will, Benoit, Kenneth, Mikhaylov, Slava, and Laver, Michael. 2011. “Scaling Policy Preferences from Coded Political Texts.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 36 (1): 123–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, Lanny W, and Vanberg, Georg. 2011. Parliaments and Coalitions: The Role of Legislative Institutions in Multiparty Governance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, Lanny W., and Vanberg, Georg. 2015. Coalition Formation and Policymaking in Parliamentary Democracies. In Handbook of Comparative Political Institutions, eds. Gandhi, Jennifer and Ruiz-Ruffino, Rubén, 181–194. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Martin, Lanny W., and Stevenson, Randolph T.. 2001. “Government Formation in Parliamentary Democracies.” American Journal of Political Science 45 (1): 33–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, Lanny W., and Stevenson, Randolph T.. 2010. “The Conditional Impact of Incumbency on Government Formation.” American Political Science Review 104 (3): 503–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Montero, Maria, and Vidal-Puga, Juan. 2011. “Demand Bargaining and Proportional Payoffs in Majority Games.” Games and Economic Behavior 71 (2): 395–408.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morelli, Massimo. 1999. “Demand Competition and Policy Compromise in Legislative Bargaining.” American Political Science Review 93 (4): 809–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Müller, Wolfgang C., and Strøm, Kaare. 2008. Coalition Agreements and Cabinet Governance. In Cabinets and Coalition Bargaining: The Democratic Life Cycle in Western Europe, eds. Strøm, Kaare, Müller, Wolfgang C., and Bergman, Torbjörn, 159–200. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Norton, E. C., Bieler, G. S., Ennett, S.T., and Zarkin, G. A.. 1996. “Analysis of Prevention Program Effectiveness with Clustered Data Using Generalized Estimating Equations.” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 64 (5): 919–26.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schelling, Thomas. 1960. The Strategy of Conflict. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Strøm, Kaare. 1990. “A Behavioral Theory of Competitive Political Parties.” American Journal of Political Science 34 (2): 565–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tullock, Gordon. 1967. Towards a Mathematics of Politics. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Verzichelli, Luca. 2008. Portfolio Allocation. In Cabinets and Coalition Bargaining: The Democratic Life Cycle in Western Europe, eds. Strøm, Kaare, Müller, Wolfgang C., and Bergman, Torbjörn, 237–68. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Warwick, Paul V., and Druckman, James N.. 2006. “The Portfolio Allocation Paradox: An Investigation into the Nature of a Very Strong but Puzzling Relationship.” European Journal of Political Research 45 (4): 635–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Martin and Vanberg Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/2CITBJ
Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Martin and Vanberg supplementary material

Online Appendix

Download Martin and Vanberg supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 1.1 MB
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.