Aspects of Coalition Payoffs in European Parliamentary Democracies

Abstract

One important proposition about the distribution of coalition payoffs is found in W. A. Gamson's theory of coalition formation: “Any participant will expect others to demand from a coalition a share of the payoff proportional to the amount of resources which they contribute to a coalition.” This proposition is tested in a universe of cabinet coalitions existing in thirteen European democracies during the postwar period. Here, payoffs to partners are indicated by the percentage share of cabinet ministries received by parties for their percentage contribution of parliamentary seats/votes to the coalition. The proportionality proposition is shown to hold strongly. Disproportionality, however, is observed to occur in distributions at the extremities of party size—large parties tend to be proportionately underpaid and small parties overpaid, the larger or smaller they become. This effect, however, is most pronounced when the size of the coalition is small, and tends to reverse itself as the size of the coalition increases.