The logic of Gamson's Law

政党在组成联合政府时，非常关心内阁部长的分配：每个政党将获得多少（以及哪些）职位？ 在关于这个问题的大量文献中，最突出的里程碑是Gamson定律。 甘姆森（1961，第376页）认为，寻求组建联合政府的政党将各自要求获得与各自为联合政府贡献的资源量（具体而言，议会席位）成比例的投资组合份额。 早期的工作强烈支持这一假设的修改版本。 事实上，正如许多学者所指出的那样，甘姆森定律是“政治科学中[统计上最成功的概括]之一。尽管在统计上取得了成功，但甘姆森定律在理论上受到了适当的挑战。 支持它的论点简洁到了一行程序的地步。 此外，它与标准的谈判理论处于紧张状态，在这种理论中，一方在替代性最小获胜联盟之间的能力和/或其（作为“formateur”）提议政府的能力决定了其投资组合的回报。 甘姆森定律被认为有“严重的弱点”，因为“它侧重于席位份额的影响，[而]理论上相关的概念是投票权份额”（斜体为原文）。 在这个提议中，研究人员对甘姆森定律提出了一个新的解释。 他们认为，政府并不总是在不受约束的讨价还价环境中形成的，在这种环境中，所有政党都可以自由地在其他多数派之间自由选择。 特别是，他们有时受到选举前契约的限制，这些契约公开承诺他们与规定的合作伙伴一起进入政府。 他们认为，这些协定的签署国需要在选举前谈判一项原则，指导选举后内阁职位的分配（如果联合政府成功进入政府）;从选举前的角度来看，最自然的原则是甘姆森式的-主要是因为这样一个原则给了联合政府中的所有政党一个强烈的激励，使他们努力工作，为联合政府的多数提供公共利益更广泛的影响：研究工作将在现有的网站www.settingthepara.com上公布。 调查人员希望通过为学术、研究和非商业目的提供公共数据、法典和分析文件，以及继续培养与他们合作的学者和学生网络，来加强比较立法研究的基础设施。 他们还希望，在民主蓬勃发展的地方，更好地了解立法机构如何运作，可能有助于加强民主努力建立的地方的立法机构。

Political parties, when forming coalition governments, are greatly concerned with the allocation of cabinet portfolios: how many (and which) posts will each party get? In the extensive literature on this issue, the most prominent landmark is Gamson's Law. Gamson (1961, 376) argued that parties seeking to form a coalition government would each demand a share of portfolios proportional to the amount of resources-specifically, seats in the assembly-that each contributed to the coalition. Early work strongly supported a modified version of this hypothesis. Indeed, as noted by numerous scholars, Gamson's Law is "one of the [statistically most successful generalizations] in political science."Its statistical success notwithstanding, Gamson's Law has been appropriately challenged on theoretical grounds. The argument in its favor is terse to the point of being a one-liner. Moreover, it is in tension with standard bargaining theories in which a party's ability to pivot between alternative minimal winning coalitions and/or its ability (as "formateur") to propose governments determine its portfolio payoff. Gamson's Law has been viewed as suffering from a "critical weakness," in that "it focuses on the effects of seats shares [when] the theoretically relevant concept is shares of voting weights" (italics in original). In this proposal, the investigators offer a new explanation of Gamson's Law. They argue that governments do not always form in an unconstrained bargaining environment, in which all parties are free to pivot between alternative majorities at will. In particular, they are sometimes constrained by pre-election pacts that publicly commit them to enter government with stipulated partners. They argue that the signatories to such pacts will need to negotiate, prior to the election, a principle that will guide the allocation of cabinet posts after the election (should the coalition succeed in getting into government); and that the most natural principle from a pre-election viewpoint is Gamsonian-largely because such a principle gives all parties in the coalition a strong incentive to work hard to provide the public good of a coalition majority (rather than free riding).Broader Impact: The research effort will be publicized on an existing web site, www.settingtheagenda.com. The investigators hope to enhance the infrastructure for comparative legislative research, by making public data, codebooks, and analytical files for academic, research and non-commercial purposes; and by continuing to foster the network of scholars and students with whom they collaborate. They also hope that a better understanding of how legislatures work, in places where democracy thrives, may contribute to strengthening legislative institutions in places where democracy struggles to establish itself.