OFFICE AND
POLICY PAYOFFS
IN COALITION
GOVERNMENTS
MARC DEBUS
Carlotta Bernardi
SUMMARY:
Debus uses two models to identify the key parties in the coalition
game:
1. the PORTFOLIO ALLOCATION (Laver and Shepsle)
2. and the POLITICAL HEART MODEL (Schofield)
He then modifies both models to incorporate political and
institutional constrains on coalition formation,
and compares the predictions from the four models with the
governments that actually formed in five European countries
(Austria, Belgium, Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands).
• What he finds is that his ‘modified models’ better predict
the outcomes than the original ones.
PELEG’S DOMINANT
PLAYER
The dominant player in a political game should became member
of a government:
• because of his seat strength in parliament;
• In addition , if it is centrally located w.r.t. the other parties, it
holds a pivotal position.
Debus combines this theory with his ‘modified models’ of
portfolio allocation and political heart to define (two
different) key players in the coalition game: this allows
him to make predictions on
• Coalition formation
• Payoff structure in coalition governments
WHAT THESE TWO
MODELS SAY?
1. PORTFOLIO ALLOCATION MODEL:
• office-oriented approach
parties care about office;
• stresses importance on the share of cabinet offices held by
each party, because cabinet ministers have considerable
influence over governmental decision-making in their area of
jurisdiction:
• the party that holds a portfolio actually sets its policy.
• Identification of strong parties.
Basically what this model predicts is that a strong party
should be able to gain a surpassing share of cabinet
offices, and, therefore, should be the key player.
WHAT THESE TWO
MODELS SAY?
2. POLITICAL HEART MODEL:
•
policy-oriented approaches
•
Takes into account both the seat strength of parties in
parliament and their programmatic positions
•
Stresses importance on the policy implementation of key
actors
•
It differentiates between dominant and peripheral parties in
the coalition game
parties care about policies
Key coalition game players implement their policy views
better than their coalition partners.
DEBUS’ MODIFIED
MODEL
•
Debus adds to the office and policy aspects a BEHAVIORIST and
INSTITUTIONAL aspect in order to analyse coalition politics
third term of Debus’ modified model
•
Examples: pre-electoral alliances or potential future coalitions that
are rejected a priori by some parties.
•
What is the effect on the two models?
1.
Portfolio allocation model: you can exclude those cabinets that
are not feasible.
2.
Political heart model: not every proto-coalition located on one
median line has the same probability of becoming the future
government coalition
deep effect: if we some coalitions are
precluded, the heart solution becomes unstable or it may even
break down into a ‘modified core solution’.
CASE SELECTION AND
METHOD
Debus studies the government formation of five countries in different
periods of time:
•
Austria (1983-2002),
•
Belgium (1985-2003),
•
Ireland (1982-2002),
•
Germany (1980-2005),
•
The Netherlands (1977-2003).
Why?
•
At least one of them has a unipolar, bipolar or multipolar party
system
variation in patterns of party competition;
•
A priori coalition statement or rejection of alliances are common;
CASE SELECTION AND
STUDIES:
To evaluate if a strong party exists in these countries, Debus uses
two dimensions:
1.
the conflicts in economic and social policy (on which the
ideological party competition is based),
2.
Plus a country specific third dimension:
•
•
•
Foreign policy for Austria, Germany and The Netherlands
The conflict over decentralization for Belgium
The debate on the status of Northern Ireland in Ireland
Debus analyses himself policy documents.
•
In the case of parties he refers to their election manifestos
•
To estimate the position of the coalition governments he takes in
consideration coalition agreements
FINDINGS
1. Estimating key players with the modified portfolio allocation
model (strong party concept) does not generally perform
well in explanatory terms.
2. By contrast, the modified heart solution not only always
identifies a key player, it also delivers more correct
predictions w.r.t. the outcome of the coalition game.
• In 15 cases where one median line remains stable, the two
parties on that median line formed the next government.
• If we have only one political actor , as in the case of the
remaining 24 cases, the respective party also became a
member of the next (coalition) government.
CONCLUSIONS:
What are the implications of a key player status for the office and
policy payoff structure?
•
Parties that are key players should be able to win a surpassing
share of offices - their share of captured cabinet portfolios should
be larger than their share of seats inside the coalition
government’s majority parliament.
•
•
But from the analysis of the data, key players were not able to
do it!
The key player should be closer to the programmatic position
mentioned in the coalition agreement than the remaining coalition
parties are; ergo, key players should be able to better implement
their policies.
•
The data show that key players received the highest policy
payoffs!!
CONCLUSIONS:
• The modified strong party concept:
• allows only for predictions whether a strong party exists
(28 out of 39 cases)
• this party did not always become a member of the next
government.
• The modified heart solution:
• enables estimation of the composition of the next
government in all cases
• and it predicts the partisan structure of the future (coalition)
government in all cases.
CONCLUSIONS:
 There is another implication worth noting:
• Coalition agreements should reflect the policy goals of the
parties
• However, when we look at the weighted Euclidean distances
between the positions of the individual governing parties and
the coalition agreements, we see that agreements in some
cases are not close to any of the parties.
• Why? Debus suggests that probably also macroeconomic
conditions matter and, thus, coalition agreement’s should
mirror also this aspect
it is not always possible to change
the status quo into one preferred by themselves!!
GOVERNMENT
TURNOVER
CONCEPTS, MEASURES AND
APPLICATIONS
FRANCESCA UNGARELLI
FEATURES OF
TURNOVER
Is a basic source of variation in institutions and policies across
democracies and autocracies with different intensity
The frequency and character of turnover depend on:
• Voter preferences
• Political institutions
• Salient events and issues
TURNOVER AND
ECONOMIC IMPACT
What impact might governement turnover have on
economic institutions and policies?
2 cases:
-Short-lived governments: risk associated with a
new government coming to power
-Long-lived governments: incentive to implement a
broader range of corrupt policies
THE CREATION OF
MARKET INSTITUTIONS:
THE ‘STRONGMAN IDEA’:
A dictator who sweeps away the failed past system
and imposes basic market institutions:
• New, istitutionalized system that survives the
passing of the dictator
• (e.g Postwar Japan and Germany)
WEAK LINK:
Benevolence of the dictator
THE CREATION OF
MARKET INSTITUTION
(II)
REGULAR TURNOVER OF GOVERNMENTS (When political
competition may generate consensus in favour of market
institutions):
2 cases of costraints for Turnover’s benefits:
Under democracy:
•
Unpredictability leads the need to appeal to the Median Voter
(no benefits to interest groups)
Under autocracy:
•
Economic cost of discontinuity is contingent upon the
policies pursued if a given authoritarian government is able
to remain in power
•
Quality-based frequent turnover may be more likely to disrupt
the development of market institutions
CONCEPTS OF
TURNOVER
IDEOLOGICAL VS LEADERSHIP:
Change in the
rules’ ideology
Change in
rules
• The number of relevant ideological turnovers always <
or = to the number of leadership turnover
• Not all ideological turnover are expected to have an
equal effect (i.e. magnitude and direction to be
considered)
MEASUREMENTS OF
TURNOVER
LEADERSHIP TURNOVER
How is turnover to be measured in legislative
institutions?
• Change in the istitutional parties that form a
majority coalition
• Total change in the composition of a party
leadership
MEASUREMENTS OF
TURNOVER (II)
How to measure leadership turnover including
executives with veto power?
• Count turnover only once it occurs in all the
legislature institutions
• Count and code turnover as fractional
alternation
• anyway
A complete leadership turnover
would be required to make a likely
substantial impact on the
legislative status quo
MEASUREMENTS OF
TURNOVER (III)
IDEOLOGICAL TURNOVER:
• Ideological difference needs to be measured
• Choice of treshold distance of change to count
ideological turnovers when occurring
• Judgment of the size of the change according on
the dependent variable examined (POLICY
OUTCOME)
MEASUREMENTS OF
TURNOVER (IV)
TIME SPAN OF MEASURING TURNOVER:
• Consistent with the hypotesized impact of
turnover on the outcome of interest
• Measure of cumulative turnover: simplest
approach in a cross-sectional research design
A RESEARCH
ANALYSIS
Turnover analysis in 28 post- communist countries,
from the system changes of 1989–1991 through 2005.
First area of discussion:
Leadership and Idelogical alternation
Tresholds :
1) More than a bare majority of the coalition must be
new to count as a leadership turnover
2)
Do not impose for turnover a totally new coalition
(i.e to include minority party form old coalitions)
A RESEARCH
ANALYSIS (II)
Measure of IDEOLOGICAL DISTANCE:
• two-dimensional ideological space
•
four discrete intervals along each dimension
ECONOMIC POLICY
Far left, Centre-Left, Far
Right, Centre-right
Depending on:
Level of support for
transition to a
market economy
and for social
welfare services
NATIONAL IDENTITY
Extreme nationalist,
moderate nationalist,
moderate autonomist,
secessionist
Depending on:
Their positions on minority
rights and on relations with
ethnic kin in neighbouring
countries.
A RESEARCH
ANALYSIS:
While there is great ideological variation among parties,
almost all governments have fallen into 3 out of the 16
possible categories:
•
Far left and moderate nationalist,
• Centre-left and moderate nationalist
• Centre-right and moderate nationalist.
HOW TURNOVER AFFECTS
DEVELOPMENT OF THE RULE OF LAW
Rule of law prevails when laws are made and enforced so as
to treat all individuals, firms, civil society organisations and
other legal acorts EQUALLY.
It is CORRUPTED to the extent actors are able to use political
influence to have laws applied and interpreted on an ad hoc
basis to suit their interests.
I) HOW WOULD TURNOVER OF
GOVERNMENTS BE EXPECTED TO
AFFECT THE RULE OF LAW?
Turnover of governments would be expected to disrupt longterm corruption contracts
Long-term special
deals between
economic actors and
governemnt
Increse economic actors’ incentive to ask for general rules rather than
special deals.
More frequent government turnover in the past will lead acotrs to expect
more frequent turnover in the future, which will make corruption contracts
less valuable.
II) MIGHT VERY FREQUENT
TURNOVER AT SOME POINT EVEN
INCREASE CORRUPTION?
We would expect more frequent government turnovers:
•To INCREASE corruption when combined with deviations from
market-based legal and security regimes and weak prospects of
regaining lost power and influence
•To REDUCE corruption when government turnover takes place
within market-based legal and security regimes
III) WOULD CORRUPTION-REDUCING
EFFECTS OF TURNOVER BE EXPECTED
TO BE SIMILAR IN ALL POLITICAL
CONTEXTS?
Transitional political systems
Established political systems
Are more likely to be reshaping judicial,
law enforcement and regulatory
institutions
It is more likely that judicial, law
enforcment and regulatory
institutions will develop indipendently
of serving goverments
More frequent turnover should disrupt
a wider range of corruptions
opportunities, greater impact
Turnover will affect a narrower range
of corruption opportunities, and
should have less impact
POST-COMMUNIST
COUNTRIES
•Hypothesis:
Increased government turnover should reduce gains from
investment in influence, and hence contribute to development of a
more neutral rule of law
•Measure:
Cumulative measure, as additional turnovers should further
reduce expected gains from investing in influence
•Expectation:
Ideological turnover has a greater effect than leadership turnover
LEADERSHIP
TURNOVER
IDEOLOGICAL
TURNOVER
LEVEL OF RULE
OF LAW
COMPARATIVE
POLITICAL DATA SETS
Comparative Political
Data Set I
• 1960-2009
• research projects “Die
Handlungs-spielräume
des Nationalstaates“
and “Critical
junctures”,Klaus
Armingeon
• 23 democratic
countries
• demographic, socioand economic variables
• for cross national,
longitudinal and pooled
time series analyses
Comparative Political
Data Set II
• 1989-2007
• research project
“Forms of
Government”,Klaus
Armingeon
• 28 Post Communist
Countries
• demographic, and
socio-economic
variables
Comparative Political
Data Set III
• 1990-2009
• 35 OECD Countries
and/or EU-member
countries
• different
operationalisation for
some of the institutional
variables
• data are drawn from
two data sets I and II
• the cabinet composition
(right-centre-left) was
calculated both as a
percentage of
parliamentary seats
and as a percentage of
cabinet positions
SOME MAIN
VARIABLES
DATA SET I.pdf
DATA SET II.pdf
DATA SET III.pdf