Coalition Formation and Bargaining in Legislatures

在所有民主制度中，政策结果基本上是 联盟的形成和立法机构内的讨价还价。 后 在20世纪60年代和早期， 1970年代，我们对这一问题的理解几乎没有进展。 现象。 然而，最近在理论上的分析进展已经打开了 为富有成效的研究开辟新的途径。 这项研究集中在两个逻辑上不同的问题。 第一 关注不确定性在立法谈判中的作用， 议会民主国家的政党。 在早期的工作中， 研究人员探讨了一种特殊类型的 三党制议会中没有一个政党举行谈判的机构 多数席位。 在这个机构里，研究人员假设， 最大的政党首先有机会组成联合政府 政府，提出一项政策，以执行和分配 投资组合。 如果这个政党失败了，那么下一个最大的政党是 提供了类似的机会，等等。研究人员发现， 如果缔约方的目标没有不确定性， 政策和投资组合的相对评价，那么最大的一方 总是能以最小的规模成功组建联合政府 党 显然，这种情况并不总是发生。 一种自然的方式， 进一步发展模型，提供了一种可能性， 预测更丰富的立法结果，是为了使更多的 一个现实的假设，即不是一个政党目标的所有方面都是 其他政党都知道 这一发展是第一个 研究人员正在研究这个奖项。 第二个问题涉及部长在立法方面的作用。 结果。 在上面提到的工作中，“投资组合”是 简单地描述为办公室的特权。 因为调查人员 假设政策有一个非常简单的结构（即， 行），这种定性是合理的。 然而，真实的政策是 复杂的投资组合本质上是权利的分配， 选择总体政策的某些方面的责任。 认识到这一点，研究人员正在研究战略 性质的各种机构，以确定如何投资组合 在联合政府中分配，以及他们 随后生成。 初步调查显示， 政府可以在这样的制度下产生并保持稳定：迄今为止， 找到一个可以预测少数政府的理论模型， 被证明是难以捉摸的

In all democratic systems, policy outcomes are essentially the product of coalition formation and bargaining within the legislature. After a flurry of basic research on these topics in the 1960's and early 1970's, there has been very little progress in our understanding of the phenomena. However, recent analytical advances in theory have opened up new avenues for productive research. This research focuses on two logically distinct issues. The first concerns the role of uncertainty in legislative bargaining among parties in parliamentary democracies. In earlier work, the investigators explored the consequences of a particular type of bargaining institution when no party in a three-party legislature held a majority of seats. In this institution, the researchers assumed that the largest party was given the first opportunity to form a coalition government, proposing a policy to implement and a distribution of portfolios. If this party failed, then the next largest party was offered a similar opportunity, and so on. The researchers discovered that if there was no uncertainty about parties' objectives and relative evaluations of policy and portfolio, then the largest party would always form a coalition government successfully with the smallest party. Evidently, this does not always happen. One natural way to develop the model further, one which offers the possibility of predicting a richer set of legislative outcomes, is to make the more realistic assumption that not all facets of a party's objectives are known for sure by every other party. This development is the first issue that the investigators are studying under this award. The second issue concerns the role of portfolios in legislative outcomes. In the above referenced work, "portfolios" were characterized simply as perqs of office. Because the investigators assumed that policies had a very simple structure (viz. points on a line), this characterization was sensible. However, real policies are complex and portfolios are essentially allocations of rights and responsibilities for choosing certain aspects of overall policy. Recognizing this, the researchers are studying the strategic properties of a variety of institutions for determining how portfolios are allocated in coalition governments, and what policies they subsequently generate. Preliminary work already reveals that minority governments can occur and be stable under such institutions: hitherto, finding a theoretical model that can predict minority governments has proved elusive.