You’ll never rule alone: how football clubs and party membership affect coalition formation

The research on coalition formation has used the abundance of local-level data to test the classical theories of coalition formation. I take the classical theories as a baseline and supplement them with additional factors related to how political agents are embedded in the local community. In particular, I investigate how the social capital of elected councillors attained in local football clubs and the membership bases of local party branches affect coalition formation. The results of conditional logit models show that coalitions are more likely to be formed between parties whose elected councillors are members of a local football club. In addition, a higher share of elected councillors who are not party members is associated with preference for oversized coalitions. This indicates that when local party branches are not sure about their own and their coalition partners’ unity, they prefer to ensure coalition survival by including an additional party.