Factors of Coalitional Governments Formation Between Regionalist and Nationwide Political Parties in Regions of Spain

Received 09.09.2020. The paper focuses on one of the most significant arenas of multi-level politics – the interaction between regionalist and state-wide parties in the creation and functioning of government coalitions at the regional level. The research is aimed at determining the factors influencing the creation of such coalitions in which regionalist parties act as coalition partners with a specific agenda. Spain provides significant empirical material for research on this issue, where regionalist parties function in most regions, and state-wide parties often enter government coalitions with them at the level of autonomous communities. A comparative analysis of the practices of concluding coalition agreements between statewide and regionalist political parties in the regions of Spain during the democratic period is a key research method. The theoretical part of the article provides an overview of the theories of party coalitions accumulated by Political Science since the 1950s and updated by researchers due to actualization of new circumstances in the context of multilevel politics. The empirical part of the article examines the influence of three categories of factors on the construction of coalition deals between regionalist and state-wide political parties in the Spanish autonomous communities, including: the size of the coalition, the ideological inter-party distance (comprising the regionalist-ideological dimension) and correspondence of the alignments of party forces at the regional and national levels. The research demonstrates that the factor of coalition size is fundamental for transactions between regionalist and state-wide political parties, while the other two categories of factors manifest themselves situationally. Acknowledgements. The research was carried out at the expense of a grant from the Russian Science Foundation (project No. 19-18-00053 " Subnational regionalism and dynamics of multilevel politics (Russian and European practices)") at the Perm Federal Research Center of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Direct democracy, coalition size and public spending

This article contributes to the literature on direct democracy and public spending in two ways. First, we explore how direct democratic institutions interact with a specific aspect of the representative system, the size of the governing coalition, to influence public spending. Second, based on newly collected data, we examine the relationship between three different direct democratic institutions, coalition size and public spending over the period from 1860 to 2015. Empirically, we find that initiatives increase the size of the public sector under single-party governments, but this positive relationship disappears as coalition size increases. In contrast, we find that financial referendums slow down the growth of public spending, while law referendums are not systematically associated with public spending. Finally, we find that the relationship between direct democratic institutions, coalition size and public spending does not change over time despite the long period under investigation.

How Valuable Is a Presidential Cabinet? Measuring Ministries’ Political Attractiveness in Brazil

ABSTRACTHow valuable is a cabinet position? While the current literature does not ignore the reality that ministries differ from one another, it does not offer either theoretical or methodological procedures to assess such differences. This article introduces a refined measure of coalescence degree that considers several characteristics ministries may have, as well as politicians’ preferences about cabinet appointments. We estimate the effect of this alternative measure of coalescence on the president’s legislative success using large Brazilian datasets from 1995 to 2014 and an elite survey conducted with 62 Brazilian legislators. Controlling for other coalition management variables (coalition size and ideological heterogeneity), our refined coalescence metric turns out to be a more appropriate tool to assess the president’s performance in Congress.

Oil Wealth, Winning Coalitions, and Duration of Civil Wars

New research has begun to underscore the complicated relationship between democratic institutions and the duration of civil wars. Specifically, greater constraints placed on executives often lead to considerably longer civil wars as leaders are limited in how they bargain with dissidents. This presents a puzzle as democracies are often seen as credible negotiators in international disputes. This article suggests that the size of the government’s winning coalition represents a double-edged sword. Larger winning coalitions allow governments to bargain more credibly but also place constraints on what governments can offer since peace agreements may alienate coalition members. Fortunately, future access to postwar oil wealth provides the feasibility for the governments to compensate hard-liners who may lose out on any settlement, making them more likely to allow concessions to rebels. This combined credibility of large winning coalitions and the feasibility provided by oil wealth allows for peace agreements, therefore shortening the duration of civil wars. We test these propositions by examining the conditional relationship between oil wealth and coalition size on the duration of all civil wars between 1950 and 2009.

Budgetary Authority and Coalition Management

This chapter considers how presidents use their budget powers and the allocation of targeted discretionary spending to manage their coalitions. It considers the costs of budget tool deployment (in terms of time, controversy, and economic resources), and the factors that affect these costs: system-level factors (government transparency, federalism, personal-vote elections), coalition-level factors (coalition size, fragmentation, and heterogeneity), and conjunctural factors (economic crises and energy prices). It explores these factors with cases of budget tool deployment in Ukraine, Ecuador, and Russia. The Ecuadorean and Russian cases illustrate the divergent effects of resource dependence on the cost of budget tool dependence. Finally, it uses data from MP surveys to show the high value that legislators attribute to budget tools, and to illustrate how the composition of coalitions affects the costs that presidents are likely to face.

The Exchange of Favours and Coalition Management

This chapter examines the role of informal tools in coalition management. Informal tools are understood as the ‘exchange of favours’: access to electoral resources, favourable state treatment of allies’ business interests, the conferral of lucrative or influential positions outside of the legislature and the cabinet, and, in some cases, illicit forms of exchange. It discusses the costs associated with these tools (financial, political, personal, public), and the factors that exacerbate or mitigate these costs: system-level factors (rule of law and personal-vote electoral systems), coalition-level factors (coalition size and congruence with the cabinet coalition), and conjunctural factors (proximity to the next election). The ways in which presidents deploy this tool are illustrated with detailed examples from Ecuador, Armenia, and Kenya. Finally, data from surveys of MPs are analysed to illustrate the relative costs of deploying the exchange of favours under different country conditions.

Rethinking coalition size and trade policies in authoritarian regimes: Are single-party dictatorships less protectionist?

Recent studies find that single-party dictatorships are more open to trade due to their larger coalitions than other types of dictatorships. However, this line of research assumes that the preference for trade policies is homogeneous among members of the coalition. This assumption means existing studies fail to explain why single-party dictatorships have more dispersed and complex tariffs rates, an alternative form of protectionism. In this article, I argue that the heterogeneous preferences for free trade among social groups lead to tariff complexity under dictatorships with large coalitions. When dictators need to build larger coalitions, they do not need to exclude all special interest groups but to respond to heterogeneous demands of trade policies in a more selective way. Thus, politicians under single-party dictatorships are more likely to set ad hoc tariffs to favor different members in their coalitions, resulting in complex tariff schedules.