Scenes from a Marriage: Negative Campaigning and Coalition Formation

• In Event: Elections and Campaign Spending in Legislative Politics

Abstract

Recent parliamentary elections in Europe are characterized by a harsh tone between parties on their quest to catch the attention of an increasingly volatile electorate. At the same time coalition governments are the norm, and even occurring in majoritarian systems. If and how parties can overcome differences with their opponents, highlighted by campaigns that focused on discrediting each other, is a relevant question that has electoral consequences: Voters might feel that their vote is inconsequential if parties take a long time to form a government and might punish parties retrospectively for delays.
However, this intersection of two seemingly opposing worlds of conflict and cooperation has received only limited scholarly attention. Specifically, this paper aims at finding an answer to the question how parties’ campaign styles influence their ability to quickly form coalition governments in subsequent negotiations and tests if negativity in campaigns influences the time parties need to form a coalition government. To answer the research question data on election campaigns provided by the Comparative Campaign Dataset and original data on coalition formation processes in 9 European democracies is used. Results indicate that the level of negative campaigning indeed increases the length of coalition formation processes. These findings have important implications for party competition and coalition formation and show that campaign dynamics have long-term consequences that do not disappear as soon as the campaign trail stops.

Author

• Lisa Hirsch, Aarhus University