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Working Papers
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Coalition
Parties vs. Coalition of Parties:
How Electoral Agency
Shapes the Political Logic of Costs and Benefits
by
Kathleen Bawn
Department of Political Science
UCLA
and
Frances
Rosenbluth
Department
of Political Science
Yale
University
Abstract:
This paper argues that governments formed as transient,
post-election coalitions of many parties make systematically different policy
choices than single-party governments, even though parties large enough to govern
alone obviously represent a coalition of interests. The basis of our argument
is our claim that parties externalize costs not bourne by their support groups.
Larger parties represent more groups and therefore internalize more costs. We
develop a model to show that even though groups do better if they are represented
by large coalition parties, fragmented party systems result of equilibrium choices
with proportional respresentation. The key prediction is that the size of the
public sector should be larger, the more parties in governement and the more fragmented
the party system. These predictions are tested using data from tyhe 1970's-90's
in 17 European countries. We find that increasing the number of parties in government
and increasing the fragmentation of the party system both substantially increase
the fraction of GDP accounted for by governement spending. An additional party
in government leads to an increase of almost a percentage point of GDP spent in
the public sector by centrist governments. The effect of additional parties in
government is more pronounced for right wing coalitions that for those on the
left.
(Click here for PDF download)
Updated August 25, 2003
http://www.yale.edu/polisci/rosenbluth/index1.htm