Portfolio allocation or policy horizons? determinants of coalition formation in danish local government
By: SERRITZLEW, Søren
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Contributor(s): BLOM-HANSEN, Jens | SKJAEVELAND, Asbjørn.
Material type: 
ArticlePublisher: Oxfordshire : Taylor & Francis, dec. 2010Subject(s): Administração Regional | Políticas Públicas | Planejamento | Parceria | Cooperação | Modelo de Gestão | DinamarcaLocal Government Studies 36, 6, p. 843-866Abstract: It is widely assumed that policy considerations are important when parties form government coalitions. But if this is so, and if coalitions are negotiated in multi-dimensional policy spaces with no majority parties, then a rapid turn-over of coalitions should be observed, cf. the chaos theorem. However, we rarely witness this. Here we analyse two of the most prominent theories that address this puzzle: Laver and Shepsle's portfolio allocation model; and Warwick's policy horizon hypothesis. We do not analyse the usual suspects (i.e. national government formations in Europe), but present a new empirical testing ground: Danish local governments. We rely on Laver and Shepsle's Winset programme to identify strong parties in the portfolio allocation model but develop a new measure of Warwick's policy horizons that better deals with problems of multi-dimensionality. In a conditional logit analysis of survey data from 3000 local councillors, we find support for the policy horizons model, but not for the portfolio allocation model
It is widely assumed that policy considerations are important when parties form government coalitions. But if this is so, and if coalitions are negotiated in multi-dimensional policy spaces with no majority parties, then a rapid turn-over of coalitions should be observed, cf. the chaos theorem. However, we rarely witness this. Here we analyse two of the most prominent theories that address this puzzle: Laver and Shepsle's portfolio allocation model; and Warwick's policy horizon hypothesis. We do not analyse the usual suspects (i.e. national government formations in Europe), but present a new empirical testing ground: Danish local governments. We rely on Laver and Shepsle's Winset programme to identify strong parties in the portfolio allocation model but develop a new measure of Warwick's policy horizons that better deals with problems of multi-dimensionality. In a conditional logit analysis of survey data from 3000 local councillors, we find support for the policy horizons model, but not for the portfolio allocation model
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