Suchergebnisse

When governments are in a parliamentary minority they have to negotiate with opposition parties over the annual budget. We argue that, as a consequence, the preferences of the opposition concerning fiscal outcomes should be reflected in the yearly budget balances. We present a theoretical argument in which the opposition faces a trade-off. It has a short-term interest in deficits since they can signal a weak government, but a long-term aversion to them because, if they reach office, they will have to deal with the burden of increased debt. Empirically, we find that opposition parties affect deficit outcomes depending on their probability of governing in the next term and the weakness of the incumbent government. When the opposition is mainly concentrated in one party, it is likely that it will take over the government and this will make the opposition deficit-averse in the current period. However, if the minority government is a coalition, then a concentrated opposition might see deficits as an opportunity to reach office earlier and might be willing to pass budgets with deficit. [Copyright Elsevier B.V.]

When governments are in a parliamentary minority they have to negotiate with opposition parties over the annual budget. We argue that, as a consequence, the preferences of the opposition concerning fiscal outcomes should be reflected in the yearly budget balances. We present a theoretical argument in which the opposition faces a trade-off. It has a short-term interest in deficits since they can signal a weak government, but a long-term aversion to them because, if they reach office, they will have to deal with the burden of increased debt. Empirically, we find that opposition parties affect deficit outcomes depending on their probability of governing in the next term and the weakness of the incumbent government. When the opposition is mainly concentrated in one party, it is likely that it will take over the government and this will make the opposition deficit-averse in the current period. However, if the minority government is a coalition, then a concentrated opposition might see deficits as an opportunity to reach office earlier and might be willing to pass budgets with deficit.

AbstractRecent literature argues that with ever‐increasing levels of supranational constraints governments have less 'room to manoeuvre'; therefore, voters will place less weight on policy outcomes in their voting decisions. The question that remains less explored is how voters fill this accountability gap. We argue that, in this context, voters may move away from outcome‐ to input‐oriented voting. Fulfilling their promises becomes less vital for incumbents as long as they exhibit effort to overturn an unpopular policy framework. We test this argument against a survey experiment conducted in the run‐up to the September 2015 election in Greece, where we find a positive impact of the incumbent's exerted effort to challenge the status quo of austerity on vote intention for SYRIZA – the senior coalition government partner at the time – despite the failed outcome of the government's bailout negotiations.

AbstractHow do voters want their governments to respond when another country unilaterally withdraws from an international institution? We distinguish between negotiation approaches that vary in the degree to which they accommodate the withdrawing state's demands and argue that negotiation preferences are shaped by two issues. The first is voters' exposure to the costs and benefits of accommodation. This exposure varies across issues, and we argue that citizens will generally prefer non-accommodation on zero-sum issues, but support more accommodation on cooperation issues, where non-accommodation puts existing cooperation gains at risk. Second, withdrawal negotiations create precedents, and citizens should therefore be less willing to accommodate the more they are concerned about the ripple effects of accommodation on the institution's stability. These concerns also confront citizens with two types of dilemmas depending on how favorably they view the institution themselves. To test our argument, we use survey evidence and a conjoint experiment conducted in Germany and Spain during the Brexit negotiations. We find that respondents overall are more willing to accommodate the UK on cooperation issues than on zero-sum issues, but also find evidence that Euroskeptics and Europhiles confront different issue-specific dilemmas. Our paper contributes to a better understanding of the dynamics surrounding the challenges to multilateralism that have proliferated in recent years.

This collection of papers is an outgrowth of the `Game Practice I' conference. The overall content of this book is firmly rooted in existing game theory. Much experimental and observational evidence demonstrates that there is a large gap between theory and `practice'. There is no doubt that theory is nonetheless needed, and that it has to be developed. At the same time there is a risk of sterile developments if theory is not fed by challenges coming from confronting the real world. In this respect, the editors' feelings are that there is now a need for a better balance between theory and applications. The kind of considerations sketched above gave birth to the idea of organizing a series of meetings to stimulate research in game theory which seeks a more direct connection with real world problems. Most of the contributions can be roughly classified into four groups: political applications, problems of cost/reward sharing, economic applications, and experiments. The collection is relevant to academics working in game theory and related topics such as management, decision theory and industrial organization

This paper analyses which districts are targeted by Spanish political parties in their electoral campaigns. We find that the major Spanish parties - PP and PSOE - mobilise districts where they are more likely to win a new seat or are in danger of losing one they already hold. The predicted closeness of the district race is more relevant in the smallest districts. We also find that Spanish parties mobilise their strongholds. We suggest that, apart from the pure office-seeking strategies, political finance motivations might also play a role in the mobilisation choices made by Spanish party elites.

The literature on strategic voting has provided evidence that some electors support large parties at the voting booth to avoid wasting their vote on a preferred but uncompetitive smaller party. In this paper we argue that district conditions also elicit reactions from abstainers and other party voters. We find that, when ballot gains and losses from different types of responses to the constituency conditions are taken into account, large parties still benefit moderately from strategic behaviour, while small parties obtain substantial net ballot losses. This result stems from a model that allows for abstention in the choice set of voters, and uses counterfactual simulation to estimate the incidence of district conditions in the Spanish general elections of 2000 and 2008.