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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.

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.

"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.

The Congress Party's landslide victory at the 2009 general election should not overshadow the changes that have come about since the earlier stages of its political dominance. Its political stronghold has decreased even though it has benefited from the majority rule electoral system. The Congress Party must now enter coalitions. In a wider sense, the party system itself has evolved, as has the nature of the Indian political elite. Adapted from the source document.

What kinds of districts do Latinos and African Americans represent? Are biracial coalitions forming to elect minority candidates in state legislatures? Is it easier for minorities to get elected in lower chamber districts? This article addresses these questions to assess whether Latinos are indeed becoming more alienated from African Americans. Using data from six diverse states and Congress, this article explains the conditions under which African Americans and Latinos are elected to some of the most important legislative institutions in the United States. Among the key findings are that biracial coalitions are not electing minority legislators in all of the states studied. That is, African American majority districts elect African Americans and Latino majority districts elect Latinos. In the U.S. House, however, African American members do benefit from Latino voters. Adapted from the source document.

How are party coalitions shaped and reshaped? Elected officials choose coalitions to win elections, but they must work to maintain those coalitions. Non-elected political actors, advancing an ideology at odds with the party coalition, can undermine the party. This article explores this possibility in the case of partisan change on slavery in the Antebellum United States. Intellectuals in 1850 divided into two camps over slavery and the other major issues of the day at a time when slavery cross-cut the two parties in Congress. The ideological division matches one that develops in Congress a decade later, suggesting that the parties responded not just to electoral incentives, but also to this elite division. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright holder.]