Coalition Mood in European Parliamentary Democracies

Autor(en)

Michael Imre, Alejandro Ecker, Thomas M. Meyer, Wolfgang C. Müller

Abstrakt

The success and longevity of coalition governments depends on the ability to keep conflicts between coalition members at bay. The risk of such conflicts is often assessed by drawing on proxy measures such as the ideological heterogeneity among government parties. This manuscript presents a new approach to measure the atmosphere between government parties. The ‘coalition mood’ is a time-varying measure that draws on applause patterns between coalition partners during legislative debates. The manuscript exemplifies the measurement approach based on automated analyses of over 105,000 plenary debates in Germany and Austria. The manuscript then assesses the measure’s face-, concurrent-, and predictive validity. It finds the measure well-aligned with qualitative evidence and shows that the mood is correlated with poll ratings of the government parties and helps to predict the duration of legislative processes. The conclusion highlights future applications of the coalition mood for research on coalition politics and public policy.

Organisation(en)

Institut für Staatswissenschaft

Externe Organisation(en)

Universität Heidelberg, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Universität Mannheim

Journal

British Journal of Political Science

Band

53

Seiten

104-121

Anzahl der Seiten

18

ISSN

0007-1234

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123421000739

Publikationsdatum

2021

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

506014 Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft

Schlagwörter

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Political Science and International Relations

Link zum Portal

https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/de/publications/coalition-mood-in-european-parliamentary-democracies(b271e5cd-8fdc-483d-a82c-47c8060dbb8f).html