Pre-electoral coalitions occur frequently in parliamentary democracies. They influence post election coalition formation and surplus division. We study a game theoretic model where political parties can form coalitions both before (ex ante) and after (ex post) the elections. Ex ante coalitions can commit to a seat-sharing arrangement, but neither to a policy nor to a division of rents from office; coalition members are even free to break up and join other coalitions after the election. Equilibrium ex ante coalitions are not necessarily made up of the most ideologically similar parties, and they form under (national list) proportional representation as well as plurality rule. They do not form just to avoid "splitting the vote", but also because seat-sharing arrangements will influence the ex post bargaining and coalition formation. The ex post bargaining protocol matters greatly: there is more scope for coalition formation, both ex ante and ex post, under an Austen-Smith and Banks protocol than under "random recognition".
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Department of Economics, University of Birmingham in its series Discussion Papers with number
09-10.
Find related papers by JEL classification: C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Models of Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior H19 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Other
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: