An empirical investigation of coalitional bargaining procedures

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Diermeier, D; Merlo, A
• 署名单位: University of Pennsylvania; Northwestern University; Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR)
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/S0047-2727(03)00035-5
• 发表日期: 2004
• 页码: 783-797
• 关键词: government formation; proposer selection; bargaining procedures

摘要

Models of government formation processes in multi-party democracies are usually highly sensitive to the rules that govern the selection of formateurs (i.e. the parties selected to propose a potential government). The theoretical literature has focused on two selection rules: selection proportional to seat share, and selection in order of seat share. In this paper, we use a new data set on government formations in 11 parliamentary democracies to empirically assess which selection rule most closely approximates the data. We find that while there is little empirical support for selection in order of seat share, proportional selection fits the data well. However, we also find that a simple alternative that combines the insights of the two selection rules outperforms both of them in their ability to explain the data. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.