Pre-electoral Coalitions Research Articles

No coalition is an island: how pre-electoral coalitions at the national-level shape local elections

ABSTRACT The rise of populist parties has affected the structure of electoral competition on the national level. To evaluate the depth of such changes, this paper examines whether pre-electoral coalitions (PEC) that contested the 2021 Czech general election aiming to replace the populist ANO in the government were replicated at the local level. Using the probit multilevel model estimated on the dyads, the results indicate that local pre-electoral coalitions were more likely to form if they were based on two (of three) pre-electoral coalitions that contested the 2021 general election. The strength of the populist party, however, does not increase the probability of anti-populist PECs. Instead, parties in local opposition are more likely to coalesce together, no matter which party governs. In addition, forming PEC in the Senate election is associated with a higher probability of forming the same PEC in local election.

Government formation in presidentialism: Disentangling the combined effects of pre-electoral coalitions and legislative polarization

Abstract Recent research has shed light on the impact of pre-electoral coalitions on government formation in presidential democracies. However, the fact that pre-electoral coalitions are not automatically transformed into coalition cabinets has often gone under the radar. In this article, I argue that the importance of pre-electoral pacts for government formation depends on the degree of legislative polarization. When parties are distant from one another in the ideological spectrum, presidents face more difficulties in breaking away from the pre-electoral pact and rearranging their multiparty alliances. Conversely, when polarization is not pervasive, presidents have more leeway to build coalition cabinets different from the ones prescribed by pre-electoral coalitions. Drawing on a dataset of 13 Latin American countries, the results support my claim and suggest that the relationship between government formation and the concession of office benefits for pre-electoral coalition members is more nuanced than previously assumed.

Transition from parliamentarism to presidentialism and the restructuring of the Turkish party system

ABSTRACT The role of institutional factors on party system change has received increasing scholarly attention. This article analyses the emergence of new trends in the structure of party competition in Turkey following the transition from parliamentarism to presidentialism in 2017. The newly-adopted presidential system endowed the president with extraordinary powers and reduced the role of the parliament. Presidential elections assumed central importance in electoral politics; competition was structured by pre-electoral coalitions and party alliances; more than two-thirds of the voters cast their ballots for one of the two main electoral alliances; and there was a trend towards the emergence of a bipolar party system. The analysis presented in this study emphasizes the role of institutional engineering, especially the introduction of presidentialism and changes in electoral laws, as major factors in the restructuring of the Turkish party system.

Pre-electoral coalition agreement from the Black–Scholes point of view

A political party can be considered as a company whose value depends on the voters support i.e. on the percentage of population supporting the party. Dynamics of the support is thus as a stochastic process with a deterministic growth rate perturbed by a white noise modeled through the Wiener process. This is in an analogy with the option modeling where the stock price behaves similarly as the voters’ support. While in the option theory we have the question of fair price of an option, the question that we ask here is what is a reasonable level of support that the coalition of a “major” party (safely above the election threshold) and a “minor” party (under or around the election threshold) should achieve in order for the “minor” party to get one more representative. We shall elaborate some of the conclusions in the case of recent elections in Montenegro (June, 2023) which are particularly interesting due to lots of political subjects entering the race.

Pre-electoral coalitions and the distribution of political power

Pre-electoral coalitions (PECs) may increase parties’ chances of winning an election, but they may also distort electoral results and policies away from citizens’ preferences. To shed light on how PECs shape post-electoral power distribution, we study the causes and consequences of PECs in Finland where elections use an open-list proportional representation system, and parties may form joint lists. We present descriptive evidence showing that PECs are more common between parties of equal size and similar ideology, and when elections are more disproportional or involve more parties. Using difference-in-differences and density discontinuity designs, we illustrate that voters punish coalescing parties and target personal votes strategically within the coalitions, and that PECs are formed with the particular purpose of influencing the distribution of power. PECs increase small parties’ chances of acquiring leadership positions, lead to more dispersed seat distributions, and sometimes prevent absolute majorities. They can thus enable a broader representation of citizens’ policy preferences.

Pre-electoral coalitions, familiarity, and delays in government formation

During the past decade, many parliamentary democracies have experienced bargaining delays when forming governments. The previous literature has attributed protracted government formation processes to a high degree of preference uncertainty among the political parties and a high level of bargaining complexity. The article draws on such theories, but also adds a third theoretical mechanism, commitment problems, and highlights two explanatory variables that have not received much attention so far. The first is pre-electoral coalitions, which are declarations by parties stating that they intend to collaborate with each other after the election. The second is familiarity, which is the mutual trust between parties that comes from having worked together in the past. By combining a large-N study of government formation processes in 17 West European parliamentary democracies (1945–2019) with an in-depth case study of the prolonged Swedish government formation process in 2018–2019, it is shown that pre-electoral coalitions that fail to win a majority can sometimes delay, not speed up, government formation. In addition, a lack of familiarity may sometimes lead to a breakdown of negotiations and drawn-out government formation processes.

Question of Timing: Pre-Electoral Coalitions in Multiparty Presidential Regimes

This paper focuses on the timing of coalition formation under presidential systems. While elections in parliamentary regimes have recently been characterized by a high degree of uncertainty both in the results and the formation of cabinets, this is not the case for presidential politics. As a result, we argue that coalition cycles differ across systems of government. As a matter of fact, we argue that the process of coalition formation under presidentialism is more complicated. To test our claim, we look at forty-four multiparty governments in Latin America and Asia. We find that presidentialism — with its fixed mandate and its specific institutional mechanism for selecting the president — directly affects the ‘coalition life cycle’ and fosters a stronger propensity to pre-electoral agreements.

Opposition failures in forming pre-electoral coalitions in Zimbabwe

ABSTRACT There is an enduring discussion in the literature on why African opposition parties often fail to unite to fight the incumbent from a position of strength. Much of the extant studies have examined success stories of pre-electoral coalition-building in established democracies. There is less focus on why African opposition parties fail to form coalitions. In seeking to contribute to this debate, the article examines why Zimbabwean opposition parties failed to coalesce to form a pre-electoral coalition ahead of the 2018 election. This is against the axiom in the literature that pre-electoral coalitions do matter in increasing opposition stakes in elections, as read in line with the historical context of countries like Kenya. Using evidence gleaned from a qualitative study, it is argued that opposition-led pre-electoral coalitions remain uneasy to establish, especially in competitive authoritarian regimes like Zimbabwe, owing to structural and co-ordination challenges.

Pre-electoral coalitions and cabinet stability in presidential systems

Previous research on coalition stability in presidential systems has relied to a substantial extent on the parliamentary literature. By focusing on the post-electoral bargaining environment, these approaches have neglected the key role played by pre-electoral agreements formed around the winning presidential candidate in the making and breaking of coalitions under presidentialism. We claim that cabinets derived from pre-electoral coalition should foster trust and reduce uncertainty regarding partners’ future behaviour. However, the positive effect of pre-electoral coalitions over cabinet duration is conditional on cabinet status, that is, the control of a legislative majority or near majority. Therefore, we argue that pre-electoral coalition cabinets holding a majority or near majority of seats will be more durable than purely post-electoral majority coalitions, whereas minority pre-electoral coalition cabinets congruent should endure less than minority post-electoral coalition cabinets. We test these hypotheses using a dataset of pre- and post-electoral coalitions in 11 Latin American countries.

Forming Pre-Electoral Coalitions in Competitive Authoritarian Contexts: The Case of the 2018 Parliamentary Elections in Turkey

ABSTRACT In competitive authoritarian regimes, forming a pre-electoral coalition (PEC) provides a mean for opposition parties to defeat the incumbent party. In Turkey, the ruling Justice and Development Party initiated a PEC by forming the People’s Alliance with two other parties. Like the opposition in other competitive authoritarian regimes, Turkey’s opposition parties also formed a PEC, namely the Nation Alliance. Looking at the political affinity of these parties by using their election manifestos and Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES) data, the paper argues that while the People’s Alliance was formed by ideologically close parties, the Nation Alliance was composed of ideologically distant parties, whose main aim, under a competitive authoritarian regime, was to prevent the incumbent from gaining a parliamentary majority.

When Opposites Attract

Pre-electoral coalitions form across a variety of political contexts. Prevailing explanations suggest that ideological proximity between coalition partners and the size of the contribution that parties make explain the character of coalitions. These expectations hold only partially true in the case of Mexico. Rather, as this article suggests, parties also evaluate the degree to which they consider prospective coalition partners reliable and trustworthy. Some otherwise viable coalitions fail to form because of lack of trust or form despite ideological disparities, when a party’s contribution to defeating a common enemy is considered.

District magnitude, electoral coordination, and legislative fragmentation

ABSTRACT Theories of party systems suggest that more restrictive rules should lead to fewer parties. According to this line of reasoning, parties and voters should strategically respond to reforms in electoral rules, such as changes in district magnitude. That is, a decrease in district magnitude should decrease the size of the party system, whereas an increase in magnitude should enlarge the party system. Using a series of difference-in-differences models based on data from Brazilian municipalities before and after an exogenous reform in magnitude, I study the effects of this electoral reform on both electoral coordination and legislative fragmentation. Contrary to the expectation, the number of lists did not change after a decrease in magnitude. However, parties formed more pre-electoral coalitions in municipalities that lost seats. Voters also coalesced around fewer lists. Lastly, as expected, the reform produced a decrease in legislative fragmentation. Both mechanical and psychological effects were responsible for this modification in fragmentation.

How Polling Trends Influence Compensational Coalition-Voting

Compensational voting refers to when voters cast a vote for a more extreme party than they prefer, in order to push policies closer to an ideal point. This article develops the idea of compensational voting in regard to pre-electoral coalition signals and polling trends. The argument is that a significant share of voters consider the relative strength of the parties in their preferred pre-electoral coalition, and adjust their vote choice accordingly. This is elaborated by conducting a mixed logit model over eight Swedish general elections where parties were more or less clear about their intentions to collaborate with other parties. Combining unique data from parties’ election manifestos including negative and positive quotes about other parties with polling trends and voters’ approval rating of parties, the analysis lends support to the idea that this type of coalition-oriented compensational voting occurs.

Pre-Electoral Coalitions: Insights into the Creation of Political Parties

Pre-Electoral Coalitions: Insights into the Creation of Political Parties

ЭТНИЧЕСКИЕ ПАРТИИ КАК КАТАЛИЗАТОР ЭТНИЧЕСКИХ КОНФЛИКТОВ: ТЕОРЕТИЧЕСКИЕ И ЭМПИРИЧЕСКИЕ АРГУМЕНТЫ

Ethnic parties are representing the interests of ethnic groups in politics. There is a debate in political science about whether ethnic parties are catalysts for ethnic conflict. The purpose of the article is to provide a critical review of contemporary theoretical and empirical arguments about the relations between ethnic conflicts and ethnic parties. The author focuses on theoretical arguments of supporters of the model of consensus democracy (consociationalism) and supporters of the centripetal model of multiethnic states’ institutions. These models see the roles of ethnic parties differently. Consensus model of democracy presupposes active ethnic representation with ethnic parties, while the centripetal model proposes to incorporate ethnic parties into nationwide pre-electoral coalitions. The article proves that these models do not contradict each other, but only describe different institutional designs that can be used in different circumstances. Comparing theoretical and empirical arguments, the author of the article shows that the connection between ethnic parties and ethnic conflicts is found in the context of institutional restrictions on the possibility of including ethnic groups in politics and the lack of cooperation between the elites of ethnic groups

Parties as pay-off seekers: Pre-electoral coalitions in a patronage democracy

The study of party coalitions largely focuses on national elections in western democracies. How are coalitions formed in political systems in which competition occurs on a clientelistic rather than programmatic foundation? To examine coalition formation outside the context of western party systems, we study pre-electoral coalitions formed in subnational executive government elections in Indonesia. Using a unique dataset of 5048 such coalitions in combination with fieldwork conducted in several provinces, we analyze coalition patterns. In contrast to conventional ideological and office-seeking explanations we find that, at least until recently, in forming coalitions parties regularly prioritized immediate pay-offs from candidates – which mostly come in the form of cash payments – over longer-term office and patronage benefits. Attributing this finding to the limited influence that parties exert over politicians once they are elected in regional Indonesia, we highlight the interaction between coalition formation and the incentives that politicians have once in office.

Campaign resources and pre-electoral coalitions

Why do parties form pre-electoral coalitions (PECs) in executive elections? The party of the executive candidate may welcome coalition partners because of the votes that they can deliver. However, PECs often include parties that bring few votes to the coalition. I theorize that parties with a candidate in the executive election welcome small parties because of the campaign resources that they bring to the PEC. I test this argument using data from mayoral elections in Brazil, where parties do not control access to advertisement on radio/TV. The results indicate that campaign resources increase the likelihood of being admitted to a PEC when the party without an executive candidate has few votes to offer.

Electoral incentives to coalition formation in multiparty presidential systems

Coalition theories of presidential regimes have frequently assumed that coalition formation is a mostly post-electoral phenomenon. We challenge this view by showing that pre-electoral bargaining shapes to a substantial extent minority presidents’ disposition to cooperate with the legislature by forming a majority cabinet. Examining a dataset of pre- and post-electoral coalitions from 18 Latin American countries, we find that majority coalition cabinets are more likely to occur when elected presidents form pre-electoral coalitions (PECs), to the extent that pre-electoral agreements create stronger incentives for cooperation, by relying on a broader set of rewards than any post-electoral agreement. Moreover, we find that the likelihood of majority coalition formation increases as the share of PEC seats increases, thus reducing the need to engage in post-electoral bargaining. Our findings carry important implications for the study of cabinet formation in presidential regimes by introducing pre-electoral agreements as a key determinant of cabinet formation.

How do coalition signals shape voting behavior? Revealing the mediating role of coalition expectations

Existing empirical research suggests that there are two mechanisms through which pre-electoral coalition signals shape voting behavior. According to these, coalition signals both shift the perceived ideological positions of parties and prime coalition considerations at the cost of party considerations. The work at hand is the first to test another possibility of how coalition signals affect voting. This coalition expectation mechanism claims that coalition signals affect voting decisions by changing voters' expectations about which coalitions are likely to form after the election. Moreover, this paper provides the first integrative overview of all three mechanisms that link coalition signals and individual voting behavior. Results from a survey experiment conducted during Sweden's 2018 general election suggest that the coalition expectation mechanism can indeed be at work. By showing how parties' pre-electoral coalition behavior enter a voter's decision calculus, the paper provides important insights for the literature on strategic voting theories in proportional systems.

Marriage of love or marriage of convenience? The determinants of pre-electoral coalition formation during the French Fifth Republic 1962–2012

ABSTRACT In multiparty countries, parties often form strategic alliances to contest elections together. Pre-electoral coalitions can offer a clear alternative to the government, and as such may get the chance to govern. However, the parties have to convince their voters to support the alliance as a unit. Hence the parties may face a dilemma: whether to choose pre-electoral coalition partners that they have the potential to win the most seats with, or ideologically close allies. Pre-electoral coalitions form before an election; thus, normally, we can only infer the parties’ motivations to form them from the results of their cooperation. I circumvent this problem by using manifesto and electoral data from the first round of the French legislative elections from 1962 to 2012 to predict which alliances form in the second round. I find that ideological closeness is an important factor in PEC formation but only if parties can gain electorally from the alliance.