Commitment Problems in Coalitions: A New Look at the Fiscal Policies Of Multiparty Governments*

Hanna Bäck and Johannes Lindvall

Political Science Research and Methods, 2015, vol. 3, issue 1, 53-72

Abstract: Many political scientists and economists have argued that coalition governments tend to accumulate more debt than single-party governments do, but the evidence for this proposition is mixed. This article argues that only some coalition governments are more likely to increase public debt than single-party governments: those in which parties are unable to make credible promises to their partners about future policy. It introduces the concept of ‘commitment potential’ within coalitions and proposes a way of measuring it. The study evaluates its theoretical claims using data on 20 advanced democracies observed over a period of almost 50 years. It finds that multiparty governments with high commitment potential do not, on average, accumulate more debt than single-party governments, but that governments with low commitment potential do.

Date: 2015
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