New Empirical Strategies for the Study of Parliamentary Government Formation

Abstract

In recent years, a consensus has developed that the conditional logit (CL) model is the most appropriate strategy for modeling government choice. In this paper, we reconsider this approach and make three methodological contributions. First, we employ a mixed logit with random coefficients that allows us to take account of unobserved heterogeneity in the government formation process and relax the independence of irrelevant alternatives (IIA) assumption. Second, we demonstrate that the procedure used in the literature to test the IIA assumption is biased against finding IIA violations. An improved testing procedure reveals clear evidence of IIA violations, indicating that the CL model is inappropriate. Third, we move beyond simply presenting the sign and significance of model coefficients, suggesting various strategies for interpreting the substantive influence of variables in models of government choice.

A New Approach to the Study of Parties Entering Government

“…From 1959 to 1994, VVD (the Liberals) and PvdA (Labour) excluded each other as coalition partners, which had the effect of reducing the options to either a centre-right or a centre-left coalition'. 7 The difficult Belgian government formation process in 2007-08 2 Glasgow, Golder, and Golder 2012;Martin and Stevenson 2001. 3 Druckman and Roberts 2007.…”

“…17 Of course, these calculations are derived from a binary choice model that uses the party as the unit of analysis, and thus will have the same flaws -a party's probability of joining the government is assumed to be independent of the characteristics of the other parties in the 14 Glasgow, Golder, and Golder 2012;Train 2009. 15 For more details on specifying and estimating mixed logits in the standard government formation setting see Glasgow, Golder, and Golder 2012. 16 King, Tomz, and Wittenberg 2000.…”

“…15 For more details on specifying and estimating mixed logits in the standard government formation setting see Glasgow, Golder, and Golder 2012. 16 King, Tomz, and Wittenberg 2000. 17 Druckman and Roberts 2007;Savage forthcoming;Tavits 2008. formation opportunity, and of the characteristics of the formation opportunity itself (such as the number of parties in the formation opportunity).…”

Party System Institutionalization and Government Formation in new Democracies

“…The data used here draws specifically on the new democracies of CEE, where the parliamentary institutional arrangements are comparable to those commonly found in Western Europe. 11 However, the implications of this research are potentially generalizable to presidential multi-party systems such as the new democracies of Latin America where it is argued that there are strong incentives for legislative coalition-building even in the absence of the executive's need to retain the confidence of the legislature.…”

“…10 In this research I address this issue by using the mixed effects logit model as described by Glasgow et al…”