How Voters Predict Coalition Bargaining Outcomes

• In Event: Citizens and Coalition Politics: A Democratic Challenge?

Abstract

Multiparty parliamentary democracy presents an interesting problem to voters: in order to cast a
policy-oriented vote, they must first come to have some expectations of how likely various coalition governments are to form following the election. We present an ecologically rational theory of the formation of coalition expectations and derive global and contextual empirical expectations. To test these predictions, we design an experimental platform that allows us to learn the rules voters use to infer which parties will coalesce, as well as how these rules vary across contexts. The evidence suggests that voters possess an abstract model of coalition bargaining that is consistent with our theoretical arguments; that, in general,
voters’ coalition expectations are reasonable; and finally that the cues they use to generate coalition expectations vary cross-sectionally according to the empirical regularities of government formation.

Authors

• David Fortunato, University of California, San Diego

• Seonghui Lee, University of Essex

• Randolph T. Stevenson, Rice University