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In this article I argue that coalitions will tend to employ control mechanisms to facilitate the adoption of compromise policies only when the expected benefit of their use is high enough. When partners are already satisfied with log-rolling policies (compartmentalized by jurisdiction), or when compromise is already attainable self-enforcingly, there are few incentives to use them. Conversely, when partners are interested in compromise policies but are unable to reach that outcome in equilibrium, then control mechanisms are likely to be implemented. The empirical evidence offered tends to support the two main hypotheses of this work: control mechanisms are less necessary when the tangentiality of partners' preferences is high and when they foresee frequent mutual interactions. However, that seems to work better for the allocation of watchdog junior ministers rather than for the writing of comprehensive policy agreements. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright holder.]

Decentralization shapes the way policy authority is shared between the national and regional levels and that, I argue, will have consequences for government formation. In particular, I contend that the allocation of portfolios in regional coalition governments will be affected by the degree of decentralization of each policy. To analyze this relationship I exploit the cross-time, cross-regional, and cross-policy variation of the process of competence devolution to the Spanish Autonomous Communities between 1980 and 2010. I find that, as expected, an increase in the competences managed by the region in a given policy jurisdiction makes the related portfolio more attractive to all coalition parties, although the effect seems to be particularly significant in economically strong and fast-track regions. Adapted from the source document.

This article argues that long periods out of office make parties impatient and more willing to make concessions over portfolio allocation in exchange for participation in a coalition cabinet. Two hypotheses are analysed: on the one hand, being in opposition for a long time should put parties at a disadvantage when bargaining over office payoffs. On the other, this effect should not apply to the formateur party, since formation offers are based on the receivers' impatience. The empirical results largely support these expectations. Additional evidence of the causality of the main effect is obtained through the use of matching techniques based on the propensity score. Adapted from the source document.

Spanish political parties opt whether or not to form alliances with other parties for a number of reasons, one of which is the coalition preferences of their voters. This work explores to what extent party preferences and ideological proximity on the two main dimensions of political competition in Spain affect voters' coalition preferences. Using survey data from 2009, we find that voters' coalition preferences are greatly affected by ideological proximity, especially on the left-right axis, whereas decentralisation preferences are much more salient for the supporters of regionalist parties. However, this general pattern varies depending on the coalition being assessed. Adapted from the source document.

We investigate how particular configurations of national parliaments affect the dynamics of political decentralization in parliamentary democracies. Recent research has emphasized the impact of structural determinants on levels of decentralization across countries. However, we argue that decentralization processes are endogenous to legislative bargaining by political parties. Our main hypothesis is that, ceteris paribus, the greater the legislative bargaining power of parties with decentralization demands, the more likely decentralization reforms are to occur. For that purpose, we calculate an index of the parliamentary salience of decentralization that reflects the distribution of parties' preferences for decentralization weighted by their bargaining power. We test our hypotheses with dynamic models for 19 parliamentary democracies using Comparative Manifesto Project data and the Regional Authority Index. We demonstrate that the dynamics of decentralization are crucially shaped by the configuration of national legislatures, although this only seems to affect the self-rule dimension of decentralization rather than shared rule. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright holder.]

In compounded polities, political parties need to co-ordinate their governing strategies across the central and the regional tiers of government. The coalition game is also more complex in these contexts, especially for the state-wide parties (SWP) that alternate in central office, as their need for cohesiveness across party levels is higher and the quest for vertical congruence across institutional levels is more pressing. This article aims at identifying the influence of the SWP situation at the central level on their government formation strategies at the regional level. By examining the Spanish case, we show that multi-level dynamics provide parties with incentives to trade government formation strategies at different levels. Particularly, when the SWP in the central government has a minority status, parliamentary support is more likely to be given to the investiture of non-state-wide parties (NSWP) in those regions where the latter are stronger. Furthermore, we observe that, as political decentralization advanced, SWP seem to have been more inclined to adopt co-operative behaviour towards NSWP. Overall, our findings suggest that SWP's strategies are not simply interconnected across levels but rather regional government formation decisions are hierarchically subject to central-level considerations. Adapted from the source document.

When governments are in a parliamentary minority they have to negotiate with opposition parties over the annual budget. We argue that, as a consequence, the preferences of the opposition concerning fiscal outcomes should be reflected in the yearly budget balances. We present a theoretical argument in which the opposition faces a trade-off. It has a short-term interest in deficits since they can signal a weak government, but a long-term aversion to them because, if they reach office, they will have to deal with the burden of increased debt. Empirically, we find that opposition parties affect deficit outcomes depending on their probability of governing in the next term and the weakness of the incumbent government. When the opposition is mainly concentrated in one party, it is likely that it will take over the government and this will make the opposition deficit-averse in the current period. However, if the minority government is a coalition, then a concentrated opposition might see deficits as an opportunity to reach office earlier and might be willing to pass budgets with deficit. [Copyright Elsevier B.V.]

According to Gamson's Law, the allocation of cabinet portfolios in parliamentary democracies is proportional to the legislative seat shares of the governing parties. However, portfolio allocation departs systematically from perfect proportionality. This paper proposes a theory of portfolio allocation that seeks to explain the variance in proportionality across different bargaining situations. It argues that the degree to which the coalition formation process is characterised by uncertainty and complexity influences portfolio allocation. In uncertain and complex bargaining situations, parties that otherwise would be in an advantageous bargaining position will have a difficult time exploiting their bargaining advantage. As a result, portfolio allocation in such circumstances will be closer to proportionality. These patterns are observed in data on coalition formation in 14 West European parliamentary systems in the period 1945-1999. Adapted from the source document.