IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/pscirm/v3y2015i01p53-72_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Commitment Problems in Coalitions: A New Look at the Fiscal Policies Of Multiparty Governments

Author

Listed:
  • Bäck, Hanna
  • Lindvall, Johannes

Abstract

Many political scientists and economists have argued that coalition governments tend to accumulate more debt than single-party governments do, but the evidence for this proposition is mixed. This article argues that only some coalition governments are more likely to increase public debt than single-party governments: those in which parties are unable to make credible promises to their partners about future policy. It introduces the concept of ‘commitment potential’ within coalitions and proposes a way of measuring it. The study evaluates its theoretical claims using data on 20 advanced democracies observed over a period of almost 50 years. It finds that multiparty governments with high commitment potential do not, on average, accumulate more debt than single-party governments, but that governments with low commitment potential do.

Suggested Citation

  • Bäck, Hanna & Lindvall, Johannes, 2015. "Commitment Problems in Coalitions: A New Look at the Fiscal Policies Of Multiparty Governments," Political Science Research and Methods, Cambridge University Press, vol. 3(1), pages 53-72, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:pscirm:v:3:y:2015:i:01:p:53-72_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S2049847014000119/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Warwick, Paul V., 1996. "Coalition Government Membership in West European Parliamentary Democracies," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 26(4), pages 471-499, October.
    2. Carmen M. Reinhart & Kenneth S. Rogoff, 2009. "Varieties of Crises and Their Dates," Introductory Chapters, in: This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, Princeton University Press.
    3. Thomas Herndon & Michael Ash & Robert Pollin, 2014. "Does high public debt consistently stifle economic growth? A critique of Reinhart and Rogoff," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 38(2), pages 257-279.
    4. Wehner, Joachim, 2010. "Institutional constraints on profligate politicians: the conditional effect of partisan fragmentation on budget deficits," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 28649, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    5. Alberto F. Alesina & Roberto Perotti, 1999. "Budget Deficits and Budget Institutions," NBER Chapters, in: Fiscal Institutions and Fiscal Performance, pages 13-36, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Mark Hallerberg & Jürgen von Hagen, 1999. "Electoral Institutions, Cabinet Negotiations, and Budget Deficits in the European Union," NBER Chapters, in: Fiscal Institutions and Fiscal Performance, pages 209-232, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Mrs. Nina Budina & Ms. Andrea Schaechter & Miss Anke Weber & Mr. Tidiane Kinda, 2012. "Fiscal Rules in Response to the Crisis: Toward the "Next-Generation" Rules: A New Dataset," IMF Working Papers 2012/187, International Monetary Fund.
    8. Persson, Torsten & Roland, Gerard & Tabellini, Guido, 2007. "Electoral Rules and Government Spending in Parliamentary Democracies," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 2(2), pages 155-188, May.
    9. Nickell, Stephen J, 1981. "Biases in Dynamic Models with Fixed Effects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 49(6), pages 1417-1426, November.
    10. Johannes Lindvall, 2010. "Power Sharing and Reform Capacity," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 22(3), pages 359-376, July.
    11. Beck, Nathaniel & Katz, Jonathan N., 1995. "What To Do (and Not to Do) with Time-Series Cross-Section Data," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 89(3), pages 634-647, September.
    12. de Haan, Jakob & Sturm, Jan-Egbert, 1997. "Political and economic determinants of OECD budget deficits and government expenditures: A reinvestigation," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 13(4), pages 739-750, December.
    13. Alesina, Alberto & Drazen, Allan, 1991. "Why Are Stabilizations Delayed?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(5), pages 1170-1188, December.
    14. Hallerberg, Mark & Strauch, Rolf & von Hagen, Jurgen, 2007. "The design of fiscal rules and forms of governance in European Union countries," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 338-359, June.
    15. Kathleen Bawn & Frances Rosenbluth, 2006. "Short versus Long Coalitions: Electoral Accountability and the Size of the Public Sector," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 50(2), pages 251-265, April.
    16. International Monetary Fund, 2010. "A Historical Public Debt Database," IMF Working Papers 2010/245, International Monetary Fund.
    17. Simon Hug & George Tsebelis, 2002. "Veto Players and Referendums Around the World," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 14(4), pages 465-515, October.
    18. Mariano Tommasi & Carlos Scartascini & Ernesto Stein, 2014. "Veto players and policy adaptability: An intertemporal perspective," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 26(2), pages 222-248, April.
    19. Tsebelis, George, 1995. "Decision Making in Political Systems: Veto Players in Presidentialism, Parliamentarism, Multicameralism and Multipartyism," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 25(3), pages 289-325, July.
    20. Poterba, James M. & von Hagen, Jurgen (ed.), 1999. "Fiscal Institutions and Fiscal Performance," National Bureau of Economic Research Books, University of Chicago Press, edition 1, number 9780226676234.
    21. Franklin, Mark N. & Mackie, Thomas T., 1983. "Familiarity and Inertia in the Formation of Governing Coalitions in Parliamentary Democracies," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 13(3), pages 275-298, July.
    22. James M. Poterba & Jürgen von Hagen, 1999. "Fiscal Institutions and Fiscal Performance," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number pote99-1.
    23. Jakob Haan & Richard Jong-A-Pin & Jochen Mierau, 2013. "Do budgetary institutions mitigate the common pool problem? New empirical evidence for the EU," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 156(3), pages 423-441, September.
    24. Hanna Bäck & Patrick Dumont, 2008. "Making the first move," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 135(3), pages 353-373, June.
    25. Edin, Per-Anders & Ohlsson, Henry, 1991. "Political determinants of budget deficits: Coalition effects versus minority effects," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 35(8), pages 1597-1603, December.
    26. Wehner, Joachim, 2010. "Cabinet structure and fiscal policy outcomes," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 28648, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    27. de Haan, Jakob & Sturm, Jan-Egbert & Beekhuis, Geert, 1999. "The Weak Government Thesis: Some New Evidence," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 101(3-4), pages 163-176, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hanna Bäck & Wolfgang C. Müller & Benjamin Nyblade, 2017. "Multiparty government and economic policy-making," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 170(1), pages 33-62, January.
    2. Lasse Aaskoven, 2018. "Budget institutions and taxation," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 174(3), pages 335-349, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dilla, Diana, 2017. "Staatsverschuldung und Verschuldungsmentalität [Public Debt and Debt Mentality]," MPRA Paper 79432, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Hanna Bäck & Wolfgang C. Müller & Benjamin Nyblade, 2017. "Multiparty government and economic policy-making," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 170(1), pages 33-62, January.
    3. Heiner Felix Mikosch & Silke Übelmesser, 2007. "Staatsverschuldungsunterschiede im internationalen Vergleich und Schlussfolgerungen für Deutschland," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 8(4), pages 309-334, November.
    4. Beate Jochimsen & Robert Nuscheler, 2011. "The political economy of the German Lander deficits: weak governments meet strong finance ministers," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(19), pages 2399-2415.
    5. Makoto Nakanishi, 2019. "Budgetary institutions with or without coalition government: political economy of parliamentary democracies," International Journal of Economic Policy Studies, Springer, vol. 13(1), pages 193-216, January.
    6. Ringa Raudla, 2010. "Governing budgetary commons: what can we learn from Elinor Ostrom?," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 30(3), pages 201-221, December.
    7. Falcó-Gimeno, Albert & Jurado, Ignacio, 2011. "Minority governments and budget deficits: The role of the opposition," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 554-565, September.
    8. Alesina, A. & Passalacqua, A., 2016. "The Political Economy of Government Debt," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 2599-2651, Elsevier.
    9. Marc-Daniel Moessinger, 2014. "Do the personal characteristics of finance ministers affect changes in public debt?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 161(1), pages 183-207, October.
    10. Casper Hunnerup Dahl, 2014. "Parties and institutions: empirical evidence on veto players and the growth of government," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 159(3), pages 415-433, June.
    11. Marcela Eslava, 2011. "The Political Economy Of Fiscal Deficits: A Survey," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(4), pages 645-673, September.
    12. Borge, Lars-Erik, 2005. "Strong politicians, small deficits: evidence from Norwegian local governments," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 325-344, June.
    13. Jochimsen, Beate & Thomasius, Sebastian, 2014. "The perfect finance minister: Whom to appoint as finance minister to balance the budget," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 390-408.
    14. Woo, Jaejoon, 2003. "Economic, political, and institutional determinants of public deficits," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(3-4), pages 387-426, March.
    15. Oliver Pamp, 2008. "Partisan Preferences and Political Institutions: Explaining Fiscal Retrenchment in the European Union," European Political Economy Review, European Political Economy Infrastructure Consortium, vol. 8(Spring), pages 4-39.
    16. Joaquín Artés & Ignacio Jurado, 2018. "Government fragmentation and fiscal deficits: a regression discontinuity approach," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 175(3), pages 367-391, June.
    17. Feld, Lars P & Kirchgassner, Gebhard, 2001. "Does Direct Democracy Reduce Public Debt? Evidence from Swiss Municipalities," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 109(3-4), pages 347-370, December.
    18. Mohamed Zaky & Sarah El khishin, 2016. "Fiscal Governance in Egypt: Strengthening Budgetary Institutions to Counteract Political Fragmentation," Working Papers 1027, Economic Research Forum, revised Jul 2016.
    19. Sergio Bejar & Bumba Mukherjee & Will Moore, 2011. "Time horizons matter: the hazard rate of coalition governments and the size of government," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 12(3), pages 201-235, September.
    20. Jan Zápal, 2007. "Cyclical Bias in Government Spending: Evidence from New EU Member Countries," Working Papers IES 2007/15, Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Economic Studies, revised May 2007.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:pscirm:v:3:y:2015:i:01:p:53-72_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/ram .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.