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In parliamentary democracies, participating in government provides access to office perks and policy influence. Because of this, as Riker (1962) demonstrated, there is a powerful logic behind the formation of minimum winning coalitions. Thus, an important question is why we regularly observe oversized coalitions. While several theories of coalition formation have been proposed, few have been tested in competition with one another. This article offers a simultaneous test of five main theories of coalition formation using data from 24 countries over the period from 1955 to 1998. The weight of the evidence suggests that oversized governments form when maintaining coalition bargains is harder (Carrubba and Volden 2000). Also, there is mixed support for oversized governments forming when the largest party is smaller and more extreme (Crombez 1996), but not when the status quo policy is more extreme (Baron and Diermeier 2001) and not to secure upper‐house majorities (Lijphart 1984; Sjölin 1993). Finally, while we descriptively observe oversized connected coalitions (Axelrod 1970), the logic behind their formation appears to differ from what Axelrod proposes.

Why do individuals support the public policies they do? We argue that individuals can have quite sophisticated policy preferences and that not correctly modeling those preferences can lead to critically misspecified empirical models. To substantiate this position we derive and test a decision‐theoretic model that relies upon three critical assumptions: (1) policies affect the provision of multiple goods about which individuals care; (2) individuals have diminishing returns to scale in those goods; and (3) preferences over at least some subset of those goods are correlated. Using this model, we demonstrate that arbitrarily small secondary policy effects can confound predictions over primary policy effects. Thus, not considering even arbitrarily small policy effects can cause one to conclude that evidence is consistent with one's theory when in fact it is inconsistent or vice versa. Testing this theory on support for forming a European common defense, we find evidence consistent with our model.

Numerous studies have explored how the European Union's institutions shape political behavior and legislative outcomes in the EU. Far fewer examine in detail how individual institutional changes have come about. This paper presents a formal model that allows us to analyze under what conditions institutional change should be expected, with a focus on the Council of Ministers' voting rule in particular. Changes in the number of member states in the EU, changes in the legislative procedures and changes in the policy areas under consideration are found to affect the ability to pass legislation, and thereby provide the impetus for adjustments in equilibrium coalition sizes and chamber voting rules.

Nations often turn to international courts to help with overcoming collective-action problems associated with international relations. However, these courts generally cannot enforce their rulings, which begs the question: how effective are international courts? This book proposes a general theory of international courts that assumes a court has no direct power over national governments. Member states are free to ignore both the international agreement and the rulings by the court created to enforce that agreement. The theory demonstrates that such a court can, in fact, facilitate cooperation with international law, but only within important political constraints. The authors examine the theoretical argument in the context of the European Union. Using an original data set of rulings by the European Court of Justice, they find that the disposition of court rulings and government compliance with those rulings comport with the theory's predictions--

States often violate international agreements, both accidentally and intentionally. To process complaints efficiently, states can create formal, pretrial procedures in which governments can negotiate with litigants before a case ever goes to court. If disputes are resolved during pretrial negotiations, it can be very difficult to tell what has happened. Are governments coming into compliance? If so, are they only doing so when they have accidentally committed a violation or even when they are intentionally resisting? Or are challenges simply being dropped? This paper presents a formal model to address these questions. We develop our theory in the context of the European Union (EU). To test our model, we collect a new dataset of over 13,000 Commission infringement cases against EU member states (2003–2013). Our results suggest that accidental and intentional noncompliance both occur, but that intentional noncompliance is more common in the EU. We find that the Commission is an effective, if imperfect, monitor and enforcer of international law. The Commission can correct intentional noncompliance, but not always. It strategically drops cases that it believes it is unlikely to win.

Principal-agent relations are replete in politics; politicians are agents of electorates, bureaucrats are agents of executives, lower courts are agents of upper courts, and much more. Commonly, principals are modeled as the rule-making body and agents as the rule-implementing body. However, principals often delegate the authority to make the rules themselves to their agents. The relationship between the lower federal courts and the Supreme Court is one such example; a considerable portion of the law (rules) is made in the lower federal courts with the Supreme Court serving primarily as the overseer of those lower courts' decisions. In this article, we develop and test a principal-agent model of law (rule) creation in a judicial hierarchy. The model yields new insights about the relationship among various features of the judicial hierarchy that run against many existing perceptions. For example, we find a non-monotonic relationship between the divergence in upper and lower court preferences over rules and the likelihood of review and reversal by the Supreme Court. The empirical evidence supports these derived relationships. Wider implications for the principal-agent literature are also discussed.

The authors analyze a bargaining model of war that incorporates both commitment problems due to shifting power and asymmetric information. Four results emerge when both bargaining problems are present. First, in contrast to asymmetric information models, the resolution of uncertainty through fighting can lead to the continuation of war rather than its termination. Second, wars can be less—not more—likely to end in settlement the longer they last. Third, war aims increase over time as a belligerent becomes more confident that its opponent will grow unacceptably strong in the future. Finally, the dynamics that characterize wars in purely asymmetric information or commitment models should exist only when the other factor is absent.