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Traditional theories about government formation in parliamentary democracies are based on the assumption that parties can be characterized as unitary actors. Many authors have questioned the soundness of this assumption. The problem with keeping it is that we may miss important factors explaining why certain coalitions form if we do not consider the role of intra-party politics. In this article, I evaluate two hypotheses drawn from a discussion about intra-party politics and coalition formation, hypotheses stating that, internally democratic parties and factionalized parties are less likely to get into government. Using different methods of evaluating coalition theories on data from Swedish local government, I find support for both hypotheses. It is concluded that we should consider the internal workings of parties when explaining and predicting coalition formation. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright 2008.]

Because the importance of coalition formation has been long established, there is no shortage of ideas explaining & predicting coalition outcomes. However, one of the problems for contemporary coalition research is that most coalition theories have been thoroughly tested on the same data on national governments that have formed in the West European postwar democracies. This stresses the need for finding new data that can increase our ability to test & refine coalition theories. This article uses unique elite survey data from an investigation conducted among councilors in a large sample of local authorities in Sweden to test hypotheses on coalition formation. 5 Tables, 44 References. Adapted from the source document.

Many political scientists and economists have argued that coalition governments tend to accumulate more debt than single-party governments do, but the evidence for this proposition is mixed. This article argues that only some coalition governments are more likely to increase public debt than single-party governments: those in which parties are unable to make credible promises to their partners about future policy. It introduces the concept of 'commitment potential' within coalitions and proposes a way of measuring it. The study evaluates its theoretical claims using data on 20 advanced democracies observed over a period of almost 50 years. It finds that multiparty governments with high commitment potential do not, on average, accumulate more debt than single-party governments, but that governments with low commitment potential do. Adapted from the source document.

ZusammenfassungDas Halten von Reden in Parlamenten ist eine zentrale Möglichkeit für gewählte Repräsentanten, ihre inhaltlichen Standpunkte den Medien und damit einer breiten Öffentlichkeit zu vermitteln. Dies kann insbesondere hilfreich sein, um Signale an die eigene Partei oder auch die Wählerschaft im Wahlkreis zu senden, so dass ein Abgeordneter schlussendlich die Chancen erhöht, die Mehrheit der Stimmen im Wahlkreis (erneut) zu erzielen. In diesem Beitrag wird auf der Grundlage des Modells responsiven Handelns einerseits sowie des Prinzipal‐Agenten‐Ansatzes andererseits der Frage nachgegangen, inwiefern die in den Reden eingenommenen inhaltlichen Standpunkte von den Wahlergebnissen und den sozioökonomischen Charakteristika in den Wahlkreisen, in denen die Abgeordneten kandidierten, sowie von den innerparteilichen Konfliktmustern und den persönlichen Merkmalen der Abgeordneten beeinflusst werden. Die Ergebnisse, die auf einem alle in wirtschafts‐, finanz‐ und sozialpolitischen Debatten im Deutschen Bundestag zwischen 1998 und 2002 gehaltenen Reden, den strukturellen Merkmalen der Wahlkreise sowie den parteipolitischen und persönlichen Eigenschaften der Abgeordneten umfassenden Datensatz beruhen, zeigen, dass Abgeordnete in ihren Reden programmatisch auf die Eigenschaften ihres Wahlkreises reagieren. Zudem spielen parteipolitische als auch institutionelle Faktoren wie die Mitgliedschaften in Ausschüssen oder in (früheren) Bundesregierungen eine ausschlaggebende Rolle.

In this paper we distinguish two rival theories on the relationship between European citizenship in the sense of a legal construct on the one hand and a European collective identity on the other hand. According to the first theory a collective identity is a necessary condition for the development of a legitimate European political community. The second theory claims that there is indeed an empirical relationship between these two concepts, but the causal sequence is not necessarily unidirectional. Once a political community is established it can breed a sense of community. In this paper we test the hypothesis that formal citizenship breeds both a sense of European citizenship and a sense of European community. Our analyses do not offer firm evidence in support of the hypothesis in either case. The time of entry of the Union rather than the length of membership as such explains differences in the sense of European citizenship. A similar conclusion applies to the development of a sense of European community. Trust in the people from the new member states in Central and Eastern Europe among the citizens of the older member states is very low. The 2004 enlargement therefore meant a serious blow to the development of a European community.

In this article we probe the effect of democratization on the state's administrative capacity. Using time-series cross-section data, we find a curvilinear (J-shaped) relationship between the two traits. The effect of democracy on state capacity is negative at low values of democracy, nonexistent at median values, and strongly positive at high democracy levels. This is confirmed under demanding statistical tests. The curvilinear relationship is due, we argue, to the combined effect of two forms of steering and control; one exercised from above, the other from below. In strongly authoritarian states, a satisfactory measure of control from above can at times be accomplished. Control from below is best achieved when democratic institutions are fully installed and are accompanied by a broad array of societal resources. Looking at two resource measures, press circulation and electoral participation, we find that these, combined with democracy, enhance state administrative capacity. Adapted from the source document.

A standard conclusion of theorists who model bargaining as a non-cooperative game is that the party designated to make the first move-the formateur party-will determine the bargaining outcome. Most empirical studies of parliamentary coalition formation have paid surprisingly little attention to the formation process. In this paper we model government formation as a two-stage unordered discrete choice problem that better reflects this process. The first step involves the selection of a formateur party, and the second involves the choice of partners by the predicted formateur. We evaluate several hypotheses for the two stages, using a data set of all cabinets formed in the Western European countries from 1970 to 2006. In our analyses of formateur selection, we find that party size is clearly the dominant feature. In the second stage, we show that when predicting government composition it is fruitful to add information drawn from a first stage analysis. Adapted from the source document.

Current research on coalition formation is plagued by two serious problems. First, we cannot predict more than about one-third of the Western European governments, &, second, we do not have a good understanding of the causal mechanisms that explain the effects found in large-n coalition studies. This article illustrates that by combining statistical & case study analyses we can solve these problems. Since statistical analyses are well equipped for measuring & isolating effects, we argue that a coalition study should start with such an analysis. Predictions made in this analysis are then used to select cases. In order to study the mechanisms underlying effects found in large-n coalition studies, we argue for selecting cases that are predicted, & then applying the method of process verification. In order to find new explanatory variables, we argue for selecting cases that are deviant, & then applying the method of process induction. Substantive results of our analysis for coalition theory point to the importance of party strategies based on parties' past experiences, which aim at curtailing present & future costs of competing & governing with other parties.

Abstract.  Green parties have been represented in the parliaments of European Union countries since 1981, but it was not until recently that a few have entered national governments. Using a data set comprised of 51 government formation opportunities (where the Greens were represented in parliament), the authors of this article show that the parties involved in these bargaining situations are more office‐oriented than earlier studies had found. As Green parties are seen to be less office‐seeking than other parties, this general tendency for office‐seeking behaviour in government formation may partly account for the scarcity of Greens in government. Furthermore, a number of hypotheses derived from theories that account for the specific nature of Green parties in terms of their office‐, policy‐ and vote‐seeking orientations are tested. It is found that Greens participate in government when they have lost votes in at least one election, when the main party of the left identifies them as a clear electoral threat and when the policy distance between the Greens and either the formateur party or the main left party is small (the latter condition must be accompanied by a substantial proportion of seats for the Green party in parliament). As most of these simultaneous conditions only materialized recently, and in a few countries, it is argued that this analysis, which is the first comparative and multivariate test focused on this question, explains the scarcity and the delay of Green governmental participation.

As institutional forms of political engagement continue to decline, participation in protests steadily become more common. These trends are particularly strong among younger citizens. Previous research indicates that social factors can explain participation in political protests, and that younger citizens participation in protests is more affected by social ties than older peoples participation. Even though the desire for social affiliation is a fundamental human need, there are individual differences in the need for belongingness. The aim of the current study is to investigate if part of younger peoples higher level of participation in protests can be explained by individual-level differences in belongingness needs. More specifically, the study investigates whether a larger part of younger peoples participation is explained by need to belong (NTB), as compared to older peoples participation. In line with the hypothesis, results from a survey study of a representative sample of the Swedish population (N = 2034), show that only younger peoples participation is predicted by individual-level belongingness needs; the higher the NTB among young people, the higher the tendency to protest, while this effect is absent among older people. These results have important implications for our understanding of participation in protest activities and youth mobilization. ; Funding Agencies|Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation [MMW 2014.0024]

Legislative speeches are an important instrument for parties and members of parliament (MPs) to signal their positions and priorities. This raises the question of who speaks when. We evaluate whether a MP's presence on the floor depends on his or her gender. We hypothesize that female MPs give in general less speeches in parliament and that this pattern results from debates dealing with 'harder' policy issues. Our expectations are supported when analyzing a new data set containing information on the number and content of speeches given in the Swedish Riksdag between 2002 and 2010. Adapted from the source document.

Ministerial portfolios are the most obvious payoffs for parties entering a governing coalition in parliamentary democracies. This renders the bargaining over portfolios an important phase of the government formation process. The question of 'who gets what, and why?' in terms of ministerial remits has not yet received much attention by coalition or party scholars. This article focuses on this qualitative aspect of portfolio allocation and uses a new comparative dataset to evaluate a number of hypotheses that can be drawn from the literature. The main hypothesis is that parties which, in their election manifestos, emphasise themes corresponding to the policy remit of specific cabinet portfolios are more likely to obtain control over these portfolios. The results show that policy saliency is indeed an important predictor of portfolio allocation in postwar Western European parliamentary democracies. Adapted from the source document.

Over 30 years ago, Eric Browne and Mark Franklin demonstrated that parties in a coalition tend to receive portfolio payoffs in almost perfect proportionality to their seat share. Even though this result has been confirmed in several studies, few researchers have asked what the underlying mechanism is that explains why parties receive a proportional payoff. The aim of this paper is to investigate the causal mechanism linking party size and portfolio payoffs. To fulfil this aim, a small-n analysis is performed. By analysing the predictions from a statistical analysis of all post-war coalition governments in 14 Western European countries, two predicted cases are selected, the coalitions that formed after the 1976 Swedish election and the 1994 German election. In these case studies two hypotheses are evaluated: that the proportional distribution of ministerial posts is the result of a social norm, and that parties obtain payoffs according to their bargaining strength. The results give no support to the social norm hypothesis. Instead, it is suggested that proportionality serves as a bargaining convention for the actors involved, thus rendering proportional payoffs more likely. Adapted from the source document.