Bargaining theory and portfolio payoffs in European coalition governments 1945-83

Abstract

Coalition formation has been the subject of much theoretical work in the past decade or so. The theories that have been way or another, upon assumptions about the ways in accruing to a particular coalition is distributed among its less empirical work has been done on the process of payoff some of the fundamental assumptions of coalition theories, at their practical application to coalition governments, have tested. Several theories of payoff distribution have been however. It is the purpose of this article to test the application theories to the practice of coalition government in Europe. We begin by looking in more detail at the role of payoff theories formation. We then review both the theoretical and coalition payoffs, especially those payoffs denominated in posts. This sets the scene for a comparative testing of three proportional payoffs, the bargaining set and the kernel, in terms of each theory to predict portfolio payoffs in twelve post-systems. This study is conducted both on a general and a basis, since past analyses have demonstrated that differences are at least as significant as those between theories.

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