A Network Theory of the Ruling Coalition

• In Event: Poster Session: Comparative Politics I

Abstract

Political science literature recognizes that every political leader relies on a group of people to stay in power and that such domestic power-sharing arrangements have wide-ranging consequences from quality of governance to foreign policy. Extant models of the ruling coalition see the members of the coalition as identical and equally replaceable members whose count matters for certain outcomes, and do not consider the inner structure of the ruling coalition. I argue that the nature of this coalition matters for the ability of it to act collectively against the ruler, hold the leader accountable, and potentially replace the leader – something assumed away in most models of coalition politics. Specifically, I propose a dynamic network model of the ruling coalition with actors holding differential amounts of power and with varied locations in an ideological continuum. All actors -whether they are presidents, business leaders, military chiefs, or the clergy- prefer the ideology that empowers them the most, and try to shift the weighted ideological balance of the ruling coalition to their ideal point. Actors are assumed to control their outgoing ties, and they send directed loyalty ties based on a function of power and ideology of other nodes, preferring more powerful, ideologically closer nodes. This dynamic network determines the leader and the members of the ruling coalition over time with implications for regime stability and leadership turnover.

Author

• Omer Faruk Yalcin, Pennsylvania State University