Abstract
How do political actors value different portfolios? We propose a new approach to measuring portfolio salience by analysing paired comparisons using the Bradley-Terry model. Paired-comparison data are easy to collect using surveys that are user-friendly, rapid, and inexpensive. We implement the approach with serving legislators in Brazil, a particularly difficult case to assess portfolio salience due to the large number of cabinet positions. Our estimates of portfolio values are robust to variations in implementation of the method. Legislators and academics have broadly similar views of the relative worth of cabinet posts. Respondent valuations of portfolios deviate considerably from what would be predicted by objective measures such as budget, policy influence, and opportunities for patronage. Substantively, we show that portfolio salience varies greatly and affects the calculation of formateur advantage and coalescence/proportionality rule measures.
Highlights
Multiparty coalition formation is a longstanding theme in the study of parliamentary democracy and increasingly central in comparative presidentialism
Measuring portfolio salience is critical to interrogating rival hypotheses about formateur advantage versus proportionality in cabinet formation
While the former predicts that the coalition member recognized as the formateur would attempt to extract a disproportionate payoff (Rubinstein, 1982), empirical analyses tend to support “Gamson’s Law” of proportionality (Browne and Franklin, 1973; Gamson, 1961). This is a classic debate in the parliamentary systems literature (Warwick and Druckman, 2001), but it is especially relevant to presidentialism, wherein the formateur is selected exogenously and ex ante
Summary
Multiparty coalition formation is a longstanding theme in the study of parliamentary democracy and increasingly central in comparative presidentialism. Measuring portfolio salience is critical to interrogating rival hypotheses about formateur advantage versus proportionality in cabinet formation While the former predicts that the coalition member recognized as the formateur would attempt to extract a disproportionate payoff (Rubinstein, 1982), empirical analyses tend to support “Gamson’s Law” of proportionality (Browne and Franklin, 1973; Gamson, 1961). This is a classic debate in the parliamentary systems literature (Warwick and Druckman, 2001), but it is especially relevant to presidentialism, wherein the formateur is selected exogenously and ex ante. Accounting for portfolio salience might, reveal a reduction of proportionality (or “coalescence”) in the allocation to coalition partners
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