Coalition Politics and Foreign Policy

Abstract

Coalition governments are observed frequently in parliamentary systems. Approximately 70% of all governments in postwar Europe have been one type of coalition or another. Israel has never been ruled by a single-party government in its history. Recently, majoritarian systems like Britain produced coalitions, taking many by surprise. The prominence of coalitions in parliamentary democracies compels researchers to study them more closely. The Comparative Politics literature investigates, in particular, the dynamics of coalition formation and termination, as well as the domestic policy outputs of coalitions, especially compared to governments ruled by a single party. Coalitions have generated interest on the International Relations front as well. One avenue of research transcends the “political party” as a building block and conceptualizes coalitions as a “decision unit” by focusing on the group of veto players in a regime’s foreign policy apparatus. Another line of scholarship, situated in the “Democratic Peace” framework, looks at coalitions as a domestic-institutional factor to observe their effects on the likelihood of international conflict. Departing from the “Democratic Peace” tradition, more recent research in Foreign Policy Analysis rejuvenates the study of coalitions in international politics. This literature not only encourages theory development by scrutinizing why coalitions behave differently than single-parties in the international arena but also bridges the gap between International Relations and Comparative Politics. Emphasizing the organic relationship between domestic politics and foreign policy, foreign policy researchers dissect coalition governments to highlight the role political parties play on foreign policy formulation and implementation. This literature also illustrates the merits of methodological plurality in studying foreign policy. Using a combination of comparative case studies, process tracing, Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and regression modeling, it sheds light not only on the broader trends that characterize coalition foreign policy but also on the causal mechanisms and contextual factors which often go unaccounted for in purely statistical analyses. The recent advances in role and image theories in Foreign Policy Analysis are expected to influence the study of coalitions and their foreign policies, offering an interpretivist take alongside this positivist trajectory.

Foreign Military Intervention and Cabinet Government Stability

“…These results also have implications for the growing literature on coalition government foreign policy (Kaarbo 2012;Oktay 2022). Not all of the cabinets analyzed here involve party coalitions, but coalition governments are included in our sample and the various political ramifications of coalition cabinets have received considerable recent study.…”

Chamber of opportunities: Legislative politics and coalition security policy

“…It highlights a mechanism by which ‘weak’ coalitions can withstand ‘strong’ parliaments and engage in assertive policies such as military action. Much has been written on the inability of coalitions to engage in extreme foreign policy behaviour (see Oktay 2017 for a review); parliamentary logrolling proves to be a fruitful mechanism for weak coalitions to secure support and engage in such behaviour.…”

“…Parliamentary systems provide excellent settings to study legislative logrolls because these systems often generate multi-party executives. Single-party majority governments are rare outcomes in parliamentarism (Gallagher et al, 2006; Oktay, 2017). Between 1945 and 2015, only about 12% of all governments in western Europe had enjoyed single-party majorities (Bassi, 2017).…”

Introducing the parliamentary deployment votes database

“…Variation in the number of deployment votes point to different legislative–executive relations in security and defence policy, ranging from executive dominance in Belgium or Australia to tight parliamentary constraints in Germany or Italy. Prior studies have identified the role of cabinets and legislatures in decision-making on the use of force as an explanatory factor of Western interventionism (Auerswald & Saideman, 2014; Kaarbo & Beasley, 2008; Oktay, 2022; Palmer, London & Regan, 2004). The PDVD datasets help to examine the role of legislatures further by going beyond constitutional provisions, providing insights into actual parliamentary practice.…”