Suchergebnisse

The game theoretic study of coalitions focuses on settings in which commitment technologies are available to allow groups to coordinate their actions. Analyses of such settings focus on two questions. First, what are the implications of the ability to make commitments and form coalitions for how games are played? Second given that coalitions can form, which coalitions should we expect to see forming? I examine classic cooperative and new noncooperative game theoretic approaches to answering these questions. Classic approaches have focused especially on the first question and have produced powerful results. However, these approaches suffer from a number of weaknesses. New work attempts to address these shortcomings by modeling coalition formation as an explicitly noncooperative process. This new research reintroduces the problem of coalitional instability characteristic of cooperative approaches, but in a dynamic setting. Although in some settings, classic solutions are recovered, in others this new work shows that outcomes are highly sensitive not only to bargaining protocols, but also to the forms of commitment that can be externally enforced. This point of variation is largely ignored in empirical research on coalition formation. I close by describing new agendas in coalitional analysis that are being opened up by this new approach. Adapted from the source document.

In this chapter we outline the Danish and Scandinavian experiences with coalition governments and coalition governance. We do so by first briefly describing the historical path that has led to the political system we see working today in these countries. Then we tell about the political culture and institutional factors that lead to coalition governments. In the third section, we look at the nature of political agreements. We discuss the preconditions for coalition governments or coalition governance and its pros and cons. We focus on the trade-offs between including different interests into legislative coalitions and the possible lack of clarity of responsibility or of party identity that this inclusion entails. ; In this chapter we outline the Danish and Scandinavian experiences with coalition governments and coalition governance. We do so by first briefly describing the historical path that has led to the political system we see working today in these countries. Then we tell about the political culture and institutional factors that lead to coalition governments. In the third section, we look at the nature of political agreements. We discuss the preconditions for coalition governments or coalition governance and its pros and cons. We focus on the trade-offs between including different interests into legislative coalitions and the possible lack of clarity of responsibility or of party identity that this inclusion entails.

This chapter surveys the sizable and growing literature on coalition formation. We refer to theories in which one or more groups of agents ("coalitions") deliberately get together to jointly determine their actions. The defining idea of a coalition, in this chapter, is that of a group which can coordinate agreements among its members, while it interacts noncooperatively with other non-member individuals and the outside world in general. It is hard to overstate the importance of coalition formation in economic, political and social analysis. Ray (2007) gives several examples in which such a framework comes to life: cartel formation, lobbies, customs unions, conflict, public goods provision, political party formation, and so on. Yet as one surveys the landscape of this area of research, the first feature that attracts attention is the fragmented nature of the literature. The theories that bear on our questions range from collusive behavior in repeated games, to models of bargaining, to cooperative game-theoretic notions of the core, or notions of coalition-proofness in noncooperative games. To unravel the many intricacies of this literature would take far more than a survey. To prevent our terms of inquiry from becoming unmanageably large, we impose a basic restriction.

The author compares the trajectories of three U.S. policies from 1935 to 1952: the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA), the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), and the Social Security Act (SSA). Agricultural policy expanded beyond the New Deal, labor policy was severely weakened, and social security saw only minor changes. Why? Class coalitions strongly influenced the trajectories of these policies. The coalition supporting the AAA largely maintained, but the coalition supporting the NLRA collapsed. Support from southern planters was particularly important for each policy. Focusing on trajectories rather than merely policy formation more clearly demonstrates the influence of class coalitions over state policy.

AbstractFrom 1987 to 1998, the Basque government was made up of a coalition between Basque nationalists and unionists. However, there are doubts about whether this experience has a consociational character. In order to clarify this, the article analyses the four characteristics of Lijphart's scheme, focussing on the degree of power‐sharing of the Basque governments using the qualitative distinction of McGarry and O'Leary and the centripetal approach, creating the power‐sharing in government index and studying the degree of ideological proximity of the parties making up the coalition. The conclusions are that in the Basque case, there were no complete or concurrent consociational governments, but instead, there were centripetal coalitions. Furthermore, it makes clear that an electoral system with high proportionality is an obstacle when it comes to maintaining cross‐segment governments in societies that lack stability in the correlation of forces among segments and use centripetal power‐sharing coalitions or weak or concurrent consotiational coalitions. The most realistic choice in order to preserve the power‐sharing government would be adopting a proportional sequential coalition and a proportional electoral system with significative electoral threshold to avoid the emergence of anti‐consociational parties.

The Shapley value for an n-person game is decomposed into a 2n × 2n value matrix giving the value of every coalition to every other coalition. The cell ϕIJ(v, N) in the symmetric matrix is positive, zero, or negative, dependent on whether row coalition I is beneficial, neutral, or unbeneficial to column coalition J. This enables viewing the values of coalitions from multiple perspectives. The n × 1 Shapley vector, replicated in the bottom row and right column of the 2n × 2n matrix, follows from summing the elements in all columns or all rows in the n × n player value matrix replicated in the upper left part of the 2n × 2n matrix. A proposition is developed, illustrated with an example, revealing desirable matrix properties, and applicable for weighted Shapley values. For example, the Shapley value of a coalition to another coalition equals the sum of the Shapley values of each player in the first coalition to each player in the second coalition. ; publishedVersion

"Coalition signals can offer crucial information to voters during political campaigns. In
multiparty systems, they reduce the number of theoretically possible coalitions to a
much smaller set of plausible and likely coalitions. Strategic voters who care more
about the formation of the next coalition government than supporting the preferred
party might, for example, defect from the preferred party in favor of another party that
might produce a more desirable coalition government. For other voters, coalition
signals might merely elicit affective responses which can shift the vote. In this study,
we investigate whether and how different coalition signals affect vote intentions and
activate different party and coalition preferences. We report the results of a nationally
representative survey experiment conducted before the 2006 Austrian General
Election. Respondents encountered four vignettes with hypothetical coalitions, each
followed by the standard vote intention question. The results indicate that voters are
responsive to coalition signals, and especially voters with two preferred parties tend to
change their vote intentions. Finally, a more detailed look at Green Party voters
suggests that individual party and coalition preferences help to explain the direction of
these changes." (authors abstract)

Most theoretical studies of coalition politics have focused on, selection, rather than accountability: Coalition partners are selected according to the proximity of their positions in a Euclidean policy space. This proximity, together with institutional attributes of the party systems or the coalitions, serves also to explain, the duration of the coalition. Empirical studies of retrospective voting, often with little connection to accountability theory, have generally concluded that the political survival of coalitions is, considerably independent from elections. Such results, however, refer to governments as a whole. In this work, voters allocate rewards and punishments for past outcomes focusing on the prime ministers and their parties. If differences in clarity of responsibility exist, they do not seem to produce greater economic accountability of single-party governments-it is similarly limited under both coalition and single-party governments. Coalitions, however, increase the risks of losing office due to political crises, rather than elections. Prime ministers can respond to challenges by reshuffling the government or the coalition. Because such crises are launched under economic conditions that improve the welfare of citizens, coalitions may undermine democratic accountability. Adapted from the source document.