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Coalition Governments (coalition + government)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	70%
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	29%

Selected Abstracts

COALITION GOVERNMENTS AND SOVEREIGN DEBT CRISES

ECONOMICS & POLITICS, Issue 2 2009
SEBASTIAN M. SAIEGH
This article examines the domestic politics of sovereign debt crises. I focus on two alternative mechanisms that aggregate the preferences of domestic actors over debt repayment: single-party versus multiparty coalition governments. I uncover a very strong empirical regularity using cross-national data from 48 developing countries between 1971 and 1997. Countries that are governed by a coalition of parties are less likely to reschedule their debts than those under single-party governments. The effect of multiparty coalitions on sovereign defaults is quantitatively large and roughly of the same order of magnitude as liquidity factors such as debt burden and debt service. These results are robust to numerous specifications and samples. [source]

Policing the Bargain: Coalition Government and Parliamentary Scrutiny

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 1 2004
Lanny W. Martin
Policymaking by coalition governments creates a classic principal-agent problem. Coalitions are comprised of parties with divergent preferences who are forced to delegate important policymaking powers to individual cabinet ministers, thus raising the possibility that ministers will attempt to pursue policies favored by their own party at the expense of their coalition partners. What is going to keep ministers from attempting to move policy in directions they favor rather than sticking to the "coalition deal"? We argue that parties will make use of parliamentary scrutiny of "hostile" ministerial proposals to overcome the potential problems of delegation and enforce the coalition bargain. Statistical analysis of original data on government bills in Germany and the Netherlands supports this argument. Our findings suggest that parliaments play a central role in allowing multiparty governments to solve intracoalition conflicts. [source]

Decades of Disillusion: Reappraising the ALP-ACTU Accord 1983,1996

AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND HISTORY, Issue 4 2007
Geoff Dow
In this article we review the Accord between the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), in order to address current uncertainty over the role of unions in politics, particularly in the face of both the Coalition Government's 2006 industrial relations legislation and the ALP's apparent repudiation of the country's longstanding institutional leverage over wages and non-wage policies. The Accord exemplified an explicitly corporatist union strategy and it initially attracted extensive and hostile commentary. However, discussion of the experiment, together with other tripartite approaches to policy formation, has waned in recent years, perhaps suggesting that it was a tactic whose time has passed. Reviewing some major criticisms, we argue that critics have dismissed the Accord too hastily. Although serious problems with the Accord process are acknowledged, the articulation of a broad program of social democratic initiatives is always likely to retain support on the political left. Despite changes in union density and workforce composition, the union movement still possesses capacity to mobilise community support and develop a principled program. [source]

Retrenching or renovating the Australian welfare state: the paradox of the Howard government's neo-liberalism

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIAL WELFARE, Issue 1 2009
Philip Mendes
Most conventional studies of the former Australian Liberal,National Coalition government refer to its neo-liberal ideological agenda: its concern to reduce government interference with free market outcomes by restricting access to social security payments. That analysis suggests a substantial retrenchment of the Australian welfare state based on redirecting responsibility for the disadvantaged from government to corporations, private individuals and families. Yet there is increasing evidence from reliable sources that the government has not reduced social expenditure, and that increasing resources have been directed, particularly via the family payments system, towards some disadvantaged groups such as low-income families and the aged. Utilising the theory of the US political scientist Paul Pierson, this article explores the joint paradox of Australian neo-liberalism: the punitive treatment of some disadvantaged groups such as the disabled and lone parents versus the generosity towards other groups and, more generally, the growth rather than decline in social expenditure. The author asks what this paradox tells us about the likely future of the welfare state in Australia and elsewhere. [source]

A Reconsideration of the Political Significance of Shared Responsibility Agreements

AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND HISTORY, Issue 1 2009
Elizabeth Strakosch
The 1996,2007 Howard Coalition government introduced Shared Responsibility Agreements in 2005 to allocate discretionary funding to indigenous communities in a "mutually responsible" way. The policy was widely criticized as an ineffective and ideologically driven "showpiece". Its significant governance-building dimensions went without comment. Through the deployment of the conceptual tools of contract and governance, SRAs established new and depoliticised relationships between government and indigenous peoples, replacing the centralized political structure of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. The future of the policy under the Rudd Government is uncertain, but understanding the impacts and implications of SRAs remains important. [source]

Poll Driven Government: A Review of Public Administration in 2001

AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, Issue 1 2002
Narelle Miragliotta
The approach of the Howard Coalition government to public administration in 2001 was consistent with the conventional wisdom that governments typically ,play it safe' in an election year. The government's preoccupation with winning a third term in office was a significant determinant of the policy responses of the government on a number of key issues. The events of 2001 serve as a vivid reminder that policy considerations are ultimately subject to the dictates of the electoral cycle. This is the sixth administrative essay publsihed in the journal since the editors resumed the administrative chronicles in 1996. Earlier administrative essays include J Stewart 55(1) 196; S Prasser 56(1) 1997; J Homeshaw 57(3) 1998; J Moon 58(2) 1999; C Broughton and J Chalmers 60(1) 2000. [source]

Electoral promises and minority governments: An empirical study

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL RESEARCH, Issue 3 2008
JOAQUÍN ARTÉS
Content analysis of electoral pledges of Spanish parties is utilised to study the gains that a relatively small party obtains when it helps to sustain the governing party in office without entering a coalition government. According to the authors' results, cooperating in parliament to maintain the minority government in office can be a rational choice for a party because it allows it to obtain significant gains in terms of programme fulfillment. [source]

Community engagement for counterterrorism: lessons from the United Kingdom

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, Issue 4 2010
RACHEL BRIGGS
This article explores the development of community engagement within the UK's strategy to tackle international terrorism linked to and inspired by Al-Qaeda, commonly known as CONTEST. It focuses mostly on the ,Prevent' strand of the strategy which seeks to prevent radicalization towards violence, reduce tacit support for violence, and increase the resilience of communities to tackle radicalization and extremist messages themselves. Community engagement for counterterrorism also relates to certain aspects of the ,Pursue' strand of CONTEST, and these are highlighted. The article outlines the case for a community-based approach to counterterrorism and outlines a number of the key developments in its emergence from 2005 onwards. It analyses the performance of this aspect of the counterterrorism strategy, pointing to a number of shortcomings in relation to the establishment of partnerships, the integration of the approach, capacity shortfalls at the local level, and the wider challenges of a hostile political and media environment. Written as the new UK coalition government announces a review of the ,Prevent' strategy, it offers a number of recommendations for the future direction of this area of policy. It calls for an overhaul in working styles, a focus on people rather than projects, and the need to draw a much clearer line between downstream and targeted ,Prevent' work and the broader and longer-term community development work, with the latter encapsulated within the government's Big Society Programme and aimed at all fragile communities, not just Muslims. [source]

Coalition: A new era in British politics

PUBLIC POLICY RESEARCH, Issue 1 2010
Rick Muir
Rick Muir assesses what the first peace-time coalition government since the 1930s could mean for Britain. [source]

Security, Not Defence, Strategic, Not Habit: Restructuring the Political Arrangements for Policy Making on Britain's Role in the World

THE POLITICAL QUARTERLY, Issue 3 2010
JOHN GEARSON
The Conservative,Liberal Democrat coalition government has committed itself to a Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDR) in 2010. The government and the country face very hard choices to bring United Kingdom defence and security policy back from the brink of bankruptcy,both financial and strategic (Gow). To succeed, it must overcome the failings of the past (Chisnall, Dorman, Rees) and take a truly open and radical look at all aspects of policy and process,including the Trident independent nuclear deterrent (Allen), relations with Europe (Witney) and the importance of cyber-issues in the future security context (Fisher). It must get strategic concepts right to provide flexibility with credibility (Stone). It must deliver ,what the military wants': true strategic prioritisation, radical defence acquisition reform, and credible balancing of resources and commitments (Kiszley). The scale of the challenge facing the United Kingdom in,and beyond,the 2010 SDR is why The Political Quarterly convened a workshop early in 2010 involving MPs, practitioners, retired military personnel, journalists, commentators, business people and academics, and publishes these associated papers. Most of all, to overcome the failings of the past, there must be a radical move beyond the welcome first steps of the Cameron,Clegg government to introduce a National Security Council and a National Security Advisor, to reconfigure relationships within government, across departments and with Parliament to have a government figure of accountability and responsibility,a Secretary of State for Security Policy, primus inter pares with other Secretaries of State,to make sense of the questions needing to be asked and answered (Gearson and Gow). [source]

FISCAL FEDERALISM, STATE LOBBYING AND DISCRETIONARY FINANCE: EVIDENCE FROM INDIA

ECONOMICS & POLITICS, Issue 1 2010
RONGILI BISWAS
In the quasi-federal democratic polity that India has, lobbying for central funds by the states is often done in a subliminal fashion. Hence, it becomes difficult to get an account of how much lobbying has been done to a particular end. Our paper attempts at constructing certain political proxy variables to quantify the extent of such lobbying in India. We quantify lobbying through the ministerial representation in the council of ministers. We also use several time and state dummies to account for the constituent states' political alignment with the center as well as the coalition and the reform period breaks in the Indian system. Taking panel data that cover 29 years and 14 major states we show that our constructed variables do explain disparity in central fiscal disbursements under the non-formulaic "discretionary" head in a robust way. Our findings remain true even after we take into account the impact of endogeneity of net state income on the transfers. Additionally, our exercise brings to the fore the fact that the coalition governments and economic reform measures impact upon state lobbying at the center in a significant manner. [source]

COALITION GOVERNMENTS AND SOVEREIGN DEBT CRISES

Economic performance of ,weak' governments and their interaction with central banks and labour: Deficits, economic growth, unemployment and inflation, 1961,1998

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL RESEARCH, Issue 6 2005
TAKAYUKI SAKAMOTO
Comparative political economists have conventionally claimed that the strength and stability of governments affect policy making and performance, and that what they call ,weak governments', multiparty, minority and short-lived governments , show poorer economic performance. This article tests this and related hypotheses on deficits, economic growth, unemployment and inflation by examining data from 17 OECD countries. I find that there is generally little evidence to indicate that so-called ,weak governments', when considered independently, produce poorer performance than strong ones. However, the effects of different government types are partly contingent on central bank independence and labour organization. When central banks are independent, coalition governments exhibit better inflation and economic growth performance than one-party governments, but the opposite happens when central banks are dependent. I attempt an explanation for these relationships. I also find that independent central banks, under certain conditions, lead to lower growth and higher inflation. Thus, some of the benefits of central bank independence are context-specific, depending on other political-economic factors. [source]

An Estimated Trade Restrictiveness Index of the Level of Protection in Australian Manufacturing

THE AUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 3 2008
Peter Lloyd
In this paper we provide a new 31-year time series of the level of protection in the Australian manufacturing sector. The index used is an estimate of the partial equilibrium form of the Trade Restrictiveness Index recently developed by the World Bank. This is the theoretically correct welfare based average of levels of nominal protection. The paper outlines the index and its properties. Some comments are made on the insights gained from the new series and on the record of the Labor and coalition governments in making reforms to industry assistance. [source]

Coalition-Targeted Duvergerian Voting: How Expectations Affect Voter Choice under Proportional Representation

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 2 2009
Matias A. Bargsted
Inspired by analyses of majoritarian systems, students of consensual polities have analyzed strategic voting due to barriers to party success, namely, district magnitude and threshold. Given the prevalence of coalition governments in proportional systems, we analyze a type of strategic voting seldom studied: how expected coalition composition affects voter choice. We identify Duvergerian behavior by voters targeted at the coalition formation stage. We contend that when voters perceive their preferred party as unlikely to participate in the coalition, they often desert it and instead support the lesser of evils among those they perceive as viable coalition partners. We demonstrate our argument using data on coalition expectations from the 2006 Israeli elections. We find an appreciable albeit differential effect of coalition expectations on voter choice. Importantly, results hold controlling for ideological and coalition preferences. Lastly, we explore a broad cross-national comparison, showing that there is less, not more, proximity voting where coalitions are prevalent. [source]

The Government Agenda in Parliamentary Democracies

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 3 2004
Lanny W. Martin
Lawmaking is a challenge for coalition governments because it inherently demands cooperation and compromise by parties with divergent policy goals. The jurisdictional system of cabinet government exacerbates the problem by providing parties the means to undermine the coalition bargain in the pursuit of their own policy interests. In this article, I explore whether arrangements that allow partners to police one another induce compromise on one of the most important decisions taken by a government,the organization of the policy agenda. In an analysis of original data on the timing and policy content of over 800 government bills from four European democracies, I show that coalition governments pursue a largely "accommodative" agenda. Policy initiatives dealing with issues that are more attractive to all partners in the coalition are likely to be given priority on the agenda, while those dealing with relatively unattractive issues are likely to be postponed. [source]