IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jothpo/v33y2021i1p3-24.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A model of electoral alliances in highly fragmented party systems

Author

Listed:
  • Marcelo de C Griebeler

    (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil)

  • Roberta Carnelos Resende

    (UNISINOS, Brazil)

Abstract

Highly fragmented party systems are composed of a large number of political groups, many of which have negligible bargaining power when it comes to negotiations of electoral alliances. Inspired by the Brazilian system—one of the most fragmented in the world—we provide a stylized model of electoral alliances in which there is a competition for the support of the small parties. Two leading parties try to entice a small one by simultaneously offering transfers (e.g. government positions, support in other elections, prestige). Through a first-price sealed-bid auction approach, we can analyze the role of two particular factors in alliance formation, namely pragmatism and ideology. Our findings show that, in equilibrium, the favorite party tends to offer lower transfers than the underdog. Furthermore, the closer the leading and the small parties are in terms of ideology, the smaller the transferred amount. When the ideological closeness between the small party and the underdog is sufficiently large—relative to the favorite—the effect may be strong enough to overcome the electoral advantage of the favorite.

Suggested Citation

  • Marcelo de C Griebeler & Roberta Carnelos Resende, 2021. "A model of electoral alliances in highly fragmented party systems," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 33(1), pages 3-24, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jothpo:v:33:y:2021:i:1:p:3-24
    DOI: 10.1177/0951629820963182
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0951629820963182
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0951629820963182?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Federico Ferrara & Erik S. Herron, 2005. "Going It Alone? Strategic Entry under Mixed Electoral Rules," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 49(1), pages 16-31, January.
    2. Frechette, Guillaume R. & Kagel, John H. & Morelli, Massimo, 2005. "Gamson's Law versus non-cooperative bargaining theory," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 365-390, May.
    3. Golder, Sona Nadenichek, 2006. "Pre-Electoral Coalition Formation in Parliamentary Democracies," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 36(2), pages 193-212, April.
    4. Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay & Kalyan Chatterjee & Tomas Sjöström, 2013. "Pre-electoral Coalitions and Post-election Bargaining," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Bargaining in the Shadow of the Market Selected Papers on Bilateral and Multilateral Bargaining, chapter 7, pages 129-181, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    5. Kellam, Marisa, 2017. "Why Pre-Electoral Coalitions in Presidential Systems?," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 47(2), pages 391-411, April.
    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. Stiadle, Thomas I. & Bayliss, Alvin & Volpert, Vladimir A., 2023. "Cyclic Ecological Systems with an Exceptional Species," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 443(C).

    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. Francesco Giovannoni & Daniel Seidmann, 2014. "Corruption and power in democracies," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 42(3), pages 707-734, March.
    2. Blane D. Lewis & Adrianus Hendrawan, 2018. "The impact of mayor-council coalitions on local government spending, service delivery, and corruption in Indonesia," Departmental Working Papers 2018-19, The Australian National University, Arndt-Corden Department of Economics.
    3. Blane D. Lewis, 2018. "The impact of pre-electoral coalitions on mayoral election outcomes in Indonesia," Departmental Working Papers 2018-20, The Australian National University, Arndt-Corden Department of Economics.
    4. Lewis, Blane D. & Hendrawan, Adrianus, 2019. "The impact of majority coalitions on local government spending, service delivery, and corruption in Indonesia," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 178-191.
    5. Rafael Hortala-Vallve & Jaakko Meriläinen & Janne Tukiainen, 2024. "Pre-electoral coalitions and the distribution of political power," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 198(1), pages 47-67, January.
    6. Gantner, Anita & Horn, Kristian & Kerschbamer, Rudolf, 2016. "Fair and efficient division through unanimity bargaining when claims are subjective," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 56-73.
    7. de Groot Ruiz, Adrian & Ramer, Roald & Schram, Arthur, 2016. "Formal versus informal legislative bargaining," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 1-17.
    8. Nunnari, Salvatore, 2021. "Dynamic legislative bargaining with veto power: Theory and experiments," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 186-230.
    9. Chessa, Michela & Hanaki, Nobuyuki & Lardon, Aymeric & Yamada, Takashi, 2023. "An experiment on the Nash program: A comparison of two strategic mechanisms implementing the Shapley value," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 141(C), pages 88-104.
    10. Kim, Duk Gyoo & Lim, Wooyoung, 2024. "Multilateral bargaining over the division of losses," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 59-76.
    11. Annika Hennl, 2014. "Intra-party dynamics in mixed-member electoral systems: How strategies of candidate selection impact parliamentary behaviour," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 26(1), pages 93-116, January.
    12. Agranov, Marina & Cotton, Christopher & Tergiman, Chloe, 2020. "Persistence of power: Repeated multilateral bargaining with endogenous agenda setting authority," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 184(C).
    13. Miller, Luis & Montero, Maria & Vanberg, Christoph, 2018. "Legislative bargaining with heterogeneous disagreement values: Theory and experiments," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 60-92.
    14. M. Puy, 2013. "Stable coalition governments: the case of three political parties," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 40(1), pages 65-87, January.
    15. Jung, Florian & Sunde, Uwe, 2014. "Income, inequality, and the stability of democracy — Another look at the Lipset hypothesis," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 52-74.
    16. Maria Montero & Martin Sefton & Ping Zhang, 2008. "Enlargement and the balance of power: an experimental study," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 30(1), pages 69-87, January.
    17. Dotti, Valerio, 2019. "Political Parties and Policy Outcomes. Do Parties Block Reforms?," MPRA Paper 100227, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Hughes, Niall, 2016. "Voting in legislative elections under plurality rule," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 51-93.
    19. Drouvelis, Michalis & Montero, Maria & Sefton, Martin, 2010. "Gaining power through enlargement: Strategic foundations and experimental evidence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 274-292, July.
    20. David P Baron, 2018. "Elections and durable governments in parliamentary governments," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 30(1), pages 74-118, January.

    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:sae:jothpo:v:33:y:2021:i:1:p:3-24. 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.