How Do Minority Presidents Manage Multiparty Coalitions? Identifying and Analyzing the Payoffs to Coalition Parties in Presidential Systems

Abstract

The preponderance of minority presidents in modern democracies has concentrated the attention of researchers on the multiparty coalitions that presidents form to govern in legislative assemblies. This analysis of “coalitional presidentialism” has focused almost exclusively on presidential systems in Latin America, and Brazil in particular. It has understood multiparty presidential coalitions as cabinet-level constructs, which bind the support of parties in legislatures through portfolio payoffs. In this article, we explore this analysis in a non-Latin American context: post-Soviet Ukraine. Using original quantitative and qualitative data, we find that portfolio payoffs are an important tool for managing Ukrainian coalitions. But we also find that minority presidents have relied systematically on the support of legislative parties outside of the cabinet and have used different payoffs to manage their support. Given that this complexity also exists in other new democracies, we argue that there is a need to distinguish between cabinet-level and floor-level coalitions in minority presidential systems.

Flying solo: Explaining single‐party cabinets under minority presidentialism

“…This is consistent with the findings of recent research on Latin America, which has emphasised presidential concerns about 'agency loss' as a motivating factor in decision making on the allocation of cabinet portfolios (Martínez-Gallardo & Schleiter 2015). Thus, our analysis concurs with recent work that places greater importance on the non-cabinet strategies that presidents use to manage particularistic parties (Kellam 2015;Chaisty & Chernykh 2017).…”

Testing the “China Model” of Meritocratic Promotions: Do Democracies Reward Less Competent Ministers Than Autocracies?

“…Second, the need for electoral support will affect the degree to which politically competent behavior is necessary to achieve policy outcomes. Research from democracies suggests that political skills are important to maintain support from coalition partners in the legislature or to advance a particular political agenda (Alexiadou, 2015; Amorim Neto, 2006; Chaisty, Cheeseman, & Power, 2014; Chaisty & Chernykh, 2017; Lee, 2018a). Commonly in parliamentary and presidential systems, well-crafted proposals require some degree of public support to become policy (Centeno & Silva, 1998).…”

The Presidential Party: A Theoretical Framework for Comparative Analysis

“…Analogously, even when the parliamentary majority is led by a party of the same presidential colour, the head of the executive can have trouble in managing the cabinet. In fact, if the party is reluctant to fully support him or her and is factionalised, or is part of a multiparty coalition (Chaisty and Chernykh, 2017; Chaisty et al, 2018), this can generate trouble for the president’s full control of his or her executive agenda. The semi-presidential context, to a certain extent, tends to amplify such dynamics of potential conflict.…”