Now You See Me, Now You Don't: Anticipatory Coalitional Strategies in European Representative Democracies

Abstract

This article approaches the puzzle of how parties can strategically anticipate coalition formation and make themselves more attractive coalition partners in their electoral strategies. It argues that parties can strategically adjust the salience of issues that are secondary to them in pursuit of increased ‘coalitionability’. It tests the argument through analysis of the salience of secondary policy dimensions of up to 232 European parties between 1970 and 2019, finding evidence that parties adjust the levels of salience of their secondary dimension in response to the probability of their being included in a coalition government and their distance from the coalition in which they are most likely to be included.

Electoral Campaigns and Parliamentary Practice: Do Parties Pursue the Issues They Campaigned On?

“…Additionally, parties use manifestos to signal to rival parties what their policy priorities would be once in government (see, e.g., Thomson et al., 2017). Furthermore, they signal their coalition potential to other parties by highlighting which issues and positions would either be disputed or where mutual agreements could be reached if parties were in a position to bargain over the next government (Naurin & Thomson, 2020, p. 289; see also Lindahl, 2023).…”