Coalition formation during turbulence : A large-n study examining the effects of economic and political instability on government-coalition formation

Sammanfattning: This thesis examines the effects of economic and political turbulence on coalition-formation across 37 EU and OECD democracies. Utilizing the existing potential-coalitions research, it analyzes how increases in turbulence affect common variables predicted to determine which coalitions are chosen of all potential cabinets following an election. These variables drawn from the coalition-formation field are examined using a conditional logit regression model with interaction effects, and results indicate that both political and economic turbulence highly affect the way coalition formation is carried out, although the effects of the two turbulence types vary. During economic turbulence larger coalitions appear to be warranted, although results simultaneously suggest that ideological cohesion is hard to achieve during turbulent times. During political turbulence, instead, results suggest ideologically wide coalitions are more common but that minority cabinets are still more likely to appear. Despite the varying results, this analysis finds support that coalition formation is greatly affected by both economic and political turbulence. While the effects of some coalition-formation variables utilized by previous researchers appear to withstand the addition of turbulence, other effects change greatly when levels of instability are considered.