Analysing Payoff Salience in Coalition Allocation: Ministers, Deputy Ministers and Committee Chairs

Abstract

Research during the past six decades has found that parties joining coalition governments receive payoffs, in the form of government posts, in proportion to their coalition share. These findings, however, do not indicate which coalition partners receive payoffs that will most enable them to influence their preferred policies. This article joins recent qualitative analyses of coalition allocation and examines payoffs in terms of the salience of positions relative to the policy goals of the parties receiving them. The single-country study of eight Israeli governments from 1992 to 2015 integrates quantitative and qualitative analyses of coalition payoffs. This article contributes to coalition allocation research by expanding the scope of coalition payoffs to include junior ministers and committee chairs, and by distinguishing payoff outcomes for different party families. The results show an edge for formateur parties in obtaining policy-salient ministerial payoffs and an advantage to non-formateurs for policy-salient deputy (junior) minister positions.

The Allocation of Committee Chairs and the Oversight of Coalition Cabinets in Belgium

“…Second, policy salience influences not only which departments parties pursue as coalition payoffs (Bäck et al 2011; Ecker et al 2015; Raabe and Linhart 2015) but also which committee chair positions they seek to obtain (Evans 2020). Previous research has also shown that there is a higher likelihood of shadowing by junior ministers when the department deals with a more salient policy area (Lipsmeyer and Pierce 2011).…”

Ideological Positions and Committee Chair Appointments

“…Sieberer and Höhmann (2017) consequently present a comparative study of the formal powers of agenda setting of committee chairs but find that chairs in most countries have only few formal powers—yet, it is unclear how much actual power chairs can wield with only one or two formal prerogatives of setting the agenda. Previous studies suggest that chairs are in fact consequential by the way these positions are divvied up by coalition partners (Evans 2020), which strategically allocate chair positions among each other to ensure mutual checks and balances within the coalition (e.g., Carroll and Cox 2012; Kim and Loewenberg 2005). In particular, parties in coalition government make use of their committee chairs to amend unloved proposals by their government partners (Fortunato, Martin, and Vanberg 2019; Krauss, Praprotnik, and Thürk 2021) or to deter legislative initiatives of the coalition partner in that jurisdiction altogether (Fujimura, 2019).…”