Policy-Making in Coalition Governments: The Enactment of Coalition Agreements (COALITIONPOLICY)

为什么联合政府（不）遵守他们在联合协议中做出的政策承诺？在联合政府接管行政办公室之前，他们通常会进行密集的联合谈判，并公布一份全面的联合协议，其中详细说明他们计划在政府中实施的政策改革。尽管这些联盟协议不具有法律约束力，但它们对内阁政党的行为具有重要约束力，因为可以公开指责联盟政党不遵守它们在联盟协议中所作的承诺。然而，先前的案例研究证据表明，在联合协议中承诺的所有政策改革中，只有大约三分之二实际上得到了实施。尽管中央的重要性，联盟协议的立法行为的多党内阁在其任期内，文献一直主要致力于研究的形成和生存的联盟内阁，而我们的知识，决策在多党内阁在其任期内仍然是稀缺的。因此，我们的目标是通过追求两个主要目标来缩小文献中的这一重要差距。首先，我们将开发一个全面的理论框架，概念化的联盟协议的制定过程中，同时受到内部内阁因素（显着性，冲突，偏好切线，议价能力）和外部因素（公众舆论，经济表现，机构否决球员）。第二，我们将测试我们的理论预期，通过汇编一个新的和全面的数据集，在2000年至2015年期间，24个西欧和东欧国家的多党内阁谈判达成的100多个联盟协议的颁布，并将这个新的数据集与内阁特征，公众舆论，经济表现和制度特征的信息相结合。了解（不）遵守联盟协议中的政策承诺的原因不仅对了解多党内阁（欧洲国家最常见的政府类型）的政策制定方式具有重要意义，而且对更普遍的政治代表性也具有重要意义，因为选民在很大程度上根据政府的表现来评估政府。

Why do coalition governments (not) comply with the policy commitments they have made in coalition agreements? Before coalition governments take over executive offices, they typically engage in intensive coalition negotiations and publish a comprehensive coalition agreement in which they provide a detailed account of the policy reforms they plan to enact in government. Even though these coalition agreements are not legally binding, they importantly constrain the behaviour of cabinet parties as coalition parties can be publicly blamed for not complying with the promises they have made in the coalition agreement. However, previous case study evidence shows that only about two thirds of all the policy reforms promised in coalition agreements were actually enacted. Despite the central importance of coalition agreements for the legislative behaviour of multiparty cabinets during their time of office, the literature has been primarily devoted to studying the formation and the survival of coalition cabinets while our knowledge about policy-making in multiparty cabinets during their time of office is still scarce. We therefore aim to close this important gap in the literature by pursuing two major objectives. First, we will develop a comprehensive theoretical framework that conceptualizes the enactment of coalition agreements as a process that is simultaneously affected by internal cabinet factors (salience, conflict, preference tangentiality, bargaining power) and external factors (public opinion, economic performance, institutional veto-players). Second, we will test our theoretical expectations by compiling a new and comprehensive dataset on the enactment of more than 100 coalition agreements negotiated by multiparty cabinets in 24 West and East European countries from 2000 until 2015 and by combining this novel dataset with information on cabinet features, public opinion, economic performance and institutional characteristics. Understanding the reasons for (non) compliance with the policy commitments made in coalition agreements does not only have important implications for understanding how policy-making in multiparty cabinets - which are the most frequent type of government across European countries - works, but also for political representation more generally as voters evaluate governments to a large extent based on their performance in office.