Size Of Winning Coalitions Research Articles

The economic effects of winning coalition size on the aid‐growth nexus

The economic effects of winning coalition size on the aid‐growth nexus

Leadership turnover, winning coalition size and foreign policy realignment

Why do states realign their foreign policies toward a major power? Conventional wisdom holds that change in political leadership tends to result in less drastic foreign policy realignment in countries with large winning coalitions. The current study capitalizes on this conventional wisdom by invoking a key insight of the selectorate theory, the non-linear welfare function. Since the welfare of coalition members falls before it rises as the size of winning coalition becomes larger, one should expect the stabilizing effects of winning coalitions to be the weakest for low-to-medium sized winning coalitions. Thus, leadership turnover in countries with middle-sized winning coalitions is expected to result in greater foreign policy realignment than in countries with very large or very small coalitions. We test this theoretical proposition by studying the foreign policies of 154 countries towards China from 1972 to 2015. With newly constructed measures of leadership turnover and winning coalitions size, the evidence supports a non-linear relationship between change in leadership and foreign policy realignment along the continuum of winning coalition size.

The Effects of Economic Growth on the Aid–Conflict Nexus

Can foreign aid reduce violence in recipient countries? Empirical studies on the aid–conflict nexus have had mixed results. This paper argues that foreign aid can alleviate political violence in the recipient country, especially when it contributes to economic growth. To test this hypothesis, I collected data on aid-receiving countries in Asia from 1980 to 2010 and empirically examined the relationships among development aid, winning coalition size, economic growth, civil wars, and domestic terrorism using a moderated mediation model. I find that the impact of foreign aid on economic growth depends on the size of the winning coalition. Countries with larger winning coalitions tend to have faster economic growth. And consequently, these countries are less susceptible to civil wars and domestic terrorist attacks.

A new indicator of coalition size: Tests against standard regime‐type indicators

Objective We develop a new measure for selectorate's theory central concept, winning coalition size, using indicators developed by the V-Dem project. Methods To demonstrate the measure's efficacy, we examine its ability to account for government provision of public and private goods, a central prediction in selection theory. The winning coalition measure is compared to eight widely used indicators of regime type in analyses of 30 measures of government policy provision. Results Based on Vuong tests and Akaike information criteria, the new measure generally outperforms the alternative regime measures whether the assessment is across all regimes, within nondemocratic regimes or within democratic settings. Conclusion The new indicator provides an improved tool for testing the nuances of selectorate theory.

A New Indicator of Coalition Size: Tests Against Standard Regime-Type Indicators

A new measure for selectorate’s theory central concept, winning coalition size, is developed using indicators developed by the V-Dem project (Coppedge et al., 2021). To demonstrate the measure’s efficacy, we examine its ability to account for government provision of public and private goods, a central prediction in selection theory. The winning coalition measure is compared to eight widely-used indicators of regime type in analyses of 30 measures of government policy provision. Based on Vuong tests and Akaike information criteria the new measure generally outperforms the alternative regime measures whether the assessment is across all regimes, within non-democratic regimes or within democratic settings. The new indicator provides an improved tool for testing the nuances of selectorate theory.

Selectorate Theory in Hybrid Regimes: Comparing Hong Kong and Singapore

This article investigates public and private goods provision in two hybrid regimes: Hong Kong and Singapore. We build on the selectorate theory, which analyses all regimes in terms of the size of their leaders’ support coalitions. This research follows a differences-in-differences design, with the exogenous political change in Hong Kong in 1997 as a treatment and Singapore as a control case. This study contributes to the literature in two ways. First, as the aim of the selectorate theory is to transcend traditional regime typologies, a focus on hybrid regimes provides another test of the theory beyond the democratic–authoritarian divide. Second, the distinctive comparative set-up allows us to disentangle the effects of the size of the winning coalition from those of supporter loyalty. The empirical results demonstrate that whilst public goods increase with the winning coalition size, private goods provision is not affected unless accompanied by a change in supporter loyalty.

Winning Coalition Size, State Capacity, and Time Horizons: An Application of Modified Selectorate Theory to Environmental Public Goods Provision

Selectorate theory proposes that authoritarian regimes supply fewer public goods than democracies. Smaller winning coalitions make it less costly for autocracies to maintain support among critical groups by providing private goods. Democracies, with large winning coalitions, find it cheaper to provide public goods. In contrast, we argue for a conditional effect of winning coalition size on public good provisions: Many public goods require considerable state capacity to plan, legislate, and implement. Moreover, leaders with short-term horizons are unlikely to invest in public goods that take considerable time to provide. Therefore, our modified selectorate theory suggests that governments will provide public goods if the size of the winning coalition is large enough, state capacity is great enough, and a priori regime durability is long enough. We test our theory on air pollution. While selectorate theory receives little empirical support, our findings cohere with modified selectorate theory. In particular, core democracies—defined as those with large winning coalitions, considerable state capacity, and high regime stability—perform better than autocracies in controlling air pollution.

Coalition Building and Consensus in the Council of the European Union

Although qualified-majority voting is possible, member states in the Council of the European Union (EU) still adopt most policies by consensus. The agent-based model of coalition building in multilateral negotiations presented here addresses this puzzle. The model demonstrates that consensual decisions may emerge as an unintended by-product of government representatives’ desire to form blocking coalitions. A qualitative case study demonstrates the plausibility of the model's assumptions and resulting coalition-building dynamics. Moreover, a quantitative test shows that the model's predictions correspond closely to the observed consensus rates. Finally, computational experiments predict a positive effect of the voting threshold but no effect of increases in membership on winning coalition size, which has important practical implications for institutional design and enlargement policy.

Survival and Accountability: An Analysis of the Empirical Support for “Selectorate Theory”

This study re-examines the empirical support for one of the most influential explanations of leadership tenure, “selectorate theory,” by testing for consistency across key regime categories. The argument made herein is that if the measures are good, the consistency of their relationships should not be limited to particular nominal regime categories, and they should capture the implications of the theory differentiating it from competing theories. Current measures of selectorate theory concepts are wanting on both fronts. I find that the measure used for winning coalition size is correlated with the destabilization of leaders in democracies and the stabilization of leaders in nondemocracies. I also find that the measure of selectorate size exhibits two behaviors inconsistent with the theory: larger selectorates are only stabilizing after the leader has already been in office for an extended period of time; and the effect is only substantial for differentiating between types of military regimes. These findings have five implications: (1) they cast serious doubt on the utility of current measures of selectorate theory; (2) they raise conceptual questions about the treatment of political regimes as vectors or categories; (3) they define substantive, not just statistical, issues that future measures will need to address; (4) they give baselines for re-analysis of the effect of these measures on other implications of interest; and (5) they provide an interesting comment on the comparative politics literature on hybrid regimes and the effect of parliamentary institutions in nondemocratic regimes.

Retesting Selectorate Theory: Separating the Effects ofWfrom Other Elements of Democracy

Kevin Clarke and Randall Stone (2008) offer a methodological critique of some of our tests of the selectorate theory inThe Logic of Political Survival(Bueno de Mesquita et al.2003). We accept their critique of residualization for control variables in those tests, but reject the contention that the size of the winning coalition does not predict the provision of public goods and private benefits. We present new tests that control for elements of democracy other than W and that do not use residualization. These new tests show that selectorate theory is strongly and robustly supported. Our measure of the size of the winning coalition is in the theoretically predicted direction and is statistically significant for 28 out of 31 different public goods and private benefits. Aspects of democracy not contained in the selectorate theory explain less of the variance than does the theory's core factor, namely, winning coalition size, for 25 of the 31 public goods and private benefits.

Coalition Formation in the Texas Legislature: Issues, Payoffs, and Winning Coalition Size

Coalition Formation in the Texas Legislature: Issues, Payoffs, and Winning Coalition Size

Coalition Formation in the Texas Legislature: Issues, Payoffs, and Winning Coalition Size

Coalition Formation in the Texas Legislature: Issues, Payoffs, and Winning Coalition Size

Comment on Shepsle's “On the Size of Winning Coalitions”

Comment on Shepsle's “On the Size of Winning Coalitions”

Minimum Winning Coalitions Reconsidered: A Rejoinder to Butterworth's “Comment”

The purpose of my note, On the Size of Winning Coalitions, was two-fold. First, I wished to address the notion of competitive bribery, underscoring its conceptual relevance to a theory of side-payments and exploiting its theoretical power in a less arbitrary manner than had Butterworth in his Research Note.' Since there is still some apparent confusion on this point, additional details are presented below. The second purpose of my note was to present a general strategy for dealing with some of the problems surrounding the determination of winning coalition size, as well as to argue in behalf of a specific tactic. The general strategy still appears appropriate; the specific tactic, however, has been subjected to some valid criticisms, I believe, in Butterworth's Comment. It needs, therefore, to be re-examined. Butterworth's original contribution in this debate is the discovery of the existence of an individually rational bribe-a form of side-payment which allows an apparent loser to attempt to bribe his way into an otherwise minimal winning coalition so as to minimize his own losses. This process occurs at no apparent expense to the members of the formerly minimal winning coalition (MWC), and may, if for some reason the other losers do not respond appropriately, redound to their positive benefit. In the particular illustration employed by Butterworth (the characteristic function of this game appears in my paper elsewhere in this volume), in which a threeman winning coalition { abc } and a two-man losing coalition {de } are organized so as to receive the payoff