Which measure of political difference between parties works better? A comparison in predicting coalition formation

Government Formation and Political Discussions in Twitter: An Extended Model for Quantifying Political Distances in Multiparty Democracies

“…It can obviously lead to a large number of hypothesis and interpretations of users’ retweet behavior and may help uncovering different latent attributes of the most influential users of a given network. In that same sense, Mölder (2017) used raw data from the manifesto project data set (Volkens et al, 2015) to measure the index of similarity between parties, as a simple and effective way to explain differences between parties that may have an impact on the formation of coalitions and governments in multiparty democracies. For Mölder (2017), the index of similarity was a more reliable measure than the ideological position of parties, since the former tells us about the differences between two parties and the latter about the location of parties severally.…”

“…In that same sense, Mölder (2017) used raw data from the manifesto project data set (Volkens et al, 2015) to measure the index of similarity between parties, as a simple and effective way to explain differences between parties that may have an impact on the formation of coalitions and governments in multiparty democracies. For Mölder (2017), the index of similarity was a more reliable measure than the ideological position of parties, since the former tells us about the differences between two parties and the latter about the location of parties severally. Thus, the RON method is intended to find a measure of similarity between parties considering the retweeting behavior of the users in Twitter.…”

“…Even more, if we consider that when new parties enter parliament, uncertainty is aggravated (Grotz & Weber, 2016). The processes of government formation have been vastly analyzed by scholars in political science (Ceron, 2016; Mölder, 2017), and it is a central field in comparative political science (Debus, 2009). However, this theoretical productivity has failed in explaining and predicting the formation of real-world governments (Martin & Stevenson, 2001).…”

“…One of the main factors that contribute to the explanation of coalition formation is that of the ideological distances between parties (Volden & Carrubba, 2004). Differences between parties have been usually estimated in terms of ideological distance (Mölder, 2017). These distances can have a psychological meaning for political actors (Grofman, 1982; Laver, 1998).…”

Losers together? Grand coalitions in the EU member states

“…The study of coalitions has provided a great deal about how coalitions form and under which conditions and what causes them to fall apart (Laver and Budge, 1992; de Swann, 1973; Ansolabehere et al ., 2005). Recent cross-national comparative research has investigated the determinants of coalitions (Albala, 2017; Mölder, 2017) as well as at the local level (Debus and Gross, 2016; Gross, 2018). GCs can be considered a unique subset of coalition governments in developed democracies and have been a growing object of scholarly research.…”