Coalitional Stability of Multi-Party Systems: Evidence from Poland

In: American journal of political science: AJPS, Band 45, Heft 2, S. 294-312

Abstract

The electoral law & voter preferences are modeled as a partition function form game that represents payoffs of electoral coalitions in a multiparty system. Three empirical hypotheses are formulated under the assumption that seat-maximizing parties modify coalitional structures to extract gains from coalescing. The hypotheses say that party systems under stable voter preferences & electoral law tend to stability with respect to splits & coalescing. The partition function is estimated for various coalitional structures for the Polish party system with simulation based on district-level election results & survey data. The estimates show that the Polish party system is split stable. While the opportunities for gains from coalitions on the Right were exhausted between the years of 1993 & 1997, some opportunities for such gains emerged on the Left. 5 Tables, 2 Figures, 1 Appendix, 55 References. Adapted from the source document.