Coalitions are important in organizational decision making, but the question of how coalitions are built and make decisions in response to firm performance is still not sufficiently explored. In this ...study, we develop and test theory on how potential coalitions are built through shared experience and recruitment of allies. When organizations respond to performance relative to aspiration levels, either as problemistic search following low performance or opportunity exploration following high performance, members form coalitions to influence decisions. We develop theory of coalition formation that builds on upper echelons theory and the theory of dominant coalitions to predict how past experience of decision makers leads to preferred actions by each member and subsequent coalition formation. We use this theory to make new measures of potential coalitions and apply it to acquisitions made by firms in China. We find evidence that the experience of members of the key decision-making group-the board of directors-affects the potential coalition building, and hence the type of acquisition target, as predicted.
The Coalition between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, formally created on 11
th
May 2010, has introduced a range of initiatives which affect local governance, from the announcement of a new ...Localism Bill through to the abolition of the Audit Commission and the arrival of the 'Big Society' agenda. This article reviews the key policy announcements of the Coalition's first year and analyses the underlying themes and trends which are emerging. It argues that the Coalition's reforms do show traces of an ideological commitment to localism and a new understanding of local self-government; there is an ideological agenda which has the potential to deliver a radically different form of local governance. However, the reform process is far from coherent and the potential for radical change is heavily constrained by: conflicts in Conservative thinking and the failure of the Liberal Democrats to assert their own ideology; the political expediency of budget cuts during an era of austerity and; the problems of implementing an apparently radical agenda after 13 years of New Labour.
This study used the advocacy coalition framework (ACF) to explain stability and change in China's national birth control policy from 1980 to 2015. We found that policy remained stable, despite ...internal and external changes to the relevant subsystem, from 1980 to 2013. The stability was explained by the dominant advocacy coalition's mobilization of considerable resources to defend its policy core beliefs. Policy changes in 2013 and 2015 were caused by a combination of external and internal perturbations, in addition to policy‐oriented learning and advocacy by two expert‐led minority advocacy coalitions. The case showed that the openness and plurality of China's policy processes had increased over time but were still limited in comparison with those in Western democracies. The case analysis confirmed two policy change hypotheses and suggested a mechanism for policy change: a hierarchically superior jurisdiction is more likely to impose a major policy change when it learns that the change is an adaptation to internal and external perturbations and that adopting the change will serve the jurisdiction's political interests.
本研究通过倡导联盟框架（ACF）解释了中国计划生育政策在1980年至2015年间的稳定和变化。我们发现，自1980年至2013年，尽管相关政策子系统的内部和外部发生了变化，但是在此之间政策仍保持稳定。占主导地位的倡导联盟会调动大量资源来守卫其政策核心信念，政策的稳定性正来源于此。然而，自2013年至2015年，以下三个因素带来了政策变化：内外部扰动因素的共同作用，以政策为导向的学习，以及由专家主导的两个少数群体倡导联盟。本文的案例表明，中国政策进程的开放性和多元性随着时间的推移而得到了提高，但与西方民主国家相比仍然有限。通过案例分析，本文证实了关于政策变化的两个假设，并提出一种机制来解释政策变化：当具有更高管辖权的上级决策者认为政策变化是对内外扰动因素的必要适应，且政策变化将有利于其政治利益时，该决策者更有可能实施重大的政策变化。
‘Strategic Relations’ is a concept that has been used extensively in diplomatic and journalistic contexts, but it has been less investigated in scientific studies. Recently, concepts such as ...‘strategic alliance’, ‘strategic coalition’, ‘strategic partnership’ and ‘strategic competition’ has been introduced to use as other forms of ‘strategic relationship’. However, the starting point of this study was composed of the following question: what is a strategic relationship and how is the concept related to a strategic alliance, coalition and partnership strategic competition? To answer this question, a descriptive-explanatory study was conducted. The data were collected through desk studies, interviews with experts by Delphi technique and inferential analysis. This study theoretically focused on concepts such as ‘cooperation’, ‘competition’ and ‘strategy’.
Recent studies document that voters infer parties' left‐right policy agreement based on governing coalition arrangements. This article extends this research to present theoretical and empirical ...evidence that European citizens update their perceptions of junior coalition partners' left‐right policies to reflect the policies of the prime minister's party, but that citizens do not reciprocally project junior coalition partners' policies onto the prime minister's party. These findings illuminate the simple rules that citizens employ to infer parties' policy positions, broaden understanding of how citizens perceive coalition governance and imply that ‘niche’ parties, whose electoral appeal depends upon maintaining a distinctive policy profile, assume electoral risks when they enter government.
Rarely, if ever, has a Finnish general election attracted such foreign media interest. Reporters came from across the globe, not to witness Finland become NATO’s thirty-first member-state on 4 April, ...two days after the general election, but to see if the party-loving Social Democrat prime minister Sanna Marin could secure a second term at the helm.1 In the event, Marin became only the third prime minister in recent times to increase the party vote, albeit by not quite enough, and she promptly indicated she would stand down as party leader. The election was won by the two main opposition parties, the National Coalition and Finns Party. The National Coalition became the largest parliamentary party for only the second time in its history, whilst the Finns Party gained over one-fifth of the national poll for the first time and became the largest party on the basis of the popular vote in no less than half the 12 mainland constituencies. Despite their deep differences on major policy issues – including immigration, taxation, development aid and climate policy – the National Coalition and Finns Party ultimately formed the core of a centre-right government, although it took almost to midsummer to do so, and it was then characterised by a minor coalition party leader as an ‘unhappy marriage’ made out of necessity.
This study explores the structure of advocacy coalitions and frames over time in South Korea's adversarial nuclear energy policy subsystem. It relies on the Advocacy Coalition Frameworks and ...Discourse Network Analysis to guide data collection from 1149 policy statements in 502 newspaper articles of South Korea spanning four years. Using E‐I Index, modularity index, and coalition polarization for data analysis, it finds an alignment of advocacy coalitions with increasing polarization through external events and the ongoing adaptation of frames to these events. The findings contribute insights into the characteristics of distinct, stable, and polarized coalitions and their frames in the high‐conflicted policy areas in tumultuous times in the context of non‐Western countries.
In the last decade and across countries, changes in national intelligence policies have spurred widespread political opposition and public protest. Instances of intelligence policy change warrant ...close academic attention to cast light on the dynamics of policymaking in contested policy areas. In an effort to contribute to further development of a theory of policy change within the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF), this article analyzes the adoption of legislation in Sweden to expand the mandate for signals intelligence gathering. Three explanatory variables are derived from the ACF to explain policy change in this case: shifts in advocacy coalition membership, distribution of coalition resources, and access to policy venues. Whereas shifts in coalition membership were unrelated to policy change in this case, the case‐study lends partial support to the role of resource distribution and policy venues. To promote the progress of an ACF theory of policy change, the study concludes by drawing two theoretical implications: (i) introducing hierarchical classification of coalition resources and (ii) identification of revised policy narratives and exploitative policy entrepreneurship as causal mechanisms linking external shocks to venue shifts and policy change.
The formation of coalitions to achieve both collaborative and competitive goals is a phenomenon we see all around us. The list of examples of this phenomenon is long and varied: production cartels, ...political lobbies, customs unions, environmental coalitions, and ethnic alliances are just a few everyday instances. This book looks at coalition formation from the perspective of game theory. How are agreements determined? Which coalitions will form? And are such agreements invariably efficient from a social perspective? The book brings together developments in both cooperative and non-cooperative game theory to study the analytics of coalition formation and binding agreements. It concentrates on pure theory, but discusses several potential applications, such as oligopoly and the provision of public goods.
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