Coalition and Party Policy in Ireland

Do leadership-dominated parties change more?

“…They use two expert surveys (Laver and Hunt 1992;Rohrschneider and Whitefield 2012). Both ask experts to evaluate (1) how much the party leadership determines party policy and (2) how much party activists determine party policy.…”

“…Both ask experts to evaluate (1) how much the party leadership determines party policy and (2) how much party activists determine party policy. The first expert survey (Laver and Hunt 1992) applies a 20-point scale, the second a 7-point scale (Rohrschneider and Whitefield 2012). After rescaling these question on the same interval (0-1), Schumacher and Giger (2017) subtract question 2 from question 1 providing a scale indicating pure activist-domination (−1) and pure leadership domination (+1).…”

coalition governance and foreign policy decision-making

“…As a case in point, respondents to a large-scale expert survey put the foreign ministry down as the second most important department in 21 out of 24 Western democracies, behind the ministry of finance. The foreign ministry was among the top three departments in all countries under study and always the highest-ranked department within the foreign policy executive, ahead of portfolios such as defence, trade or international development (Laver and Hunt, 1992). A more recent expert survey in 14…”

“…6 At the same time, the very fact that a party has come to lead the foreign ministry will often indicate that it takes a particular interest in foreign affairs. Policy saliency theory suggests that the qualitative allocation of cabinet portfolios is driven by the relative salience coalition partners attribute to different policy dimensions (Laver and Hunt, 1992). This is because parties are interested, either intrinsically or instrumentally with a view towards their electoral prospects, to control coalition policy on the policy fields which they have emphasised most in their party platforms and which they have therefore become linked with in the public mind.…”

Politics, parties, and parliaments: political change in Norway

“…In fact, the policy motive for gaining cabinet portfolios appears to be espe cially powerful in Norwegian politics (Laver and Hunt, 1992;Stram and Leipart, 1993).…”