A legislature's ability to engage in oversight of the executive is believed to derive largely from its committee system. For example, powerful parliamentary committees are considered a necessary ...condition for the legislature to help police policy compromises between parties in multiparty government. But can other parliamentary instruments perform this role? This article suggests parliamentary questions as an alternative parliamentary vehicle for coalition parties to monitor their partners. Questions force ministers to reveal information concerning their legislative and extra-legislative activities, providing coalition members unique insights into their partners' behaviour. In order to test our argument, we build and analyse a new dataset of parliamentary questions in the British House of Commons covering the 2010‒2015 coalition. As expected, government MPs ask more questions as the divisiveness of a policy area increases. Legislatures conventionally considered weak due to the lack of strong committees may nevertheless play an important oversight role through other parliamentary devices, including helping to police the implementation of coalition agreements.
To survive in office, dictators need to establish power-sharing arrangements with their ruling coalitions, which are often not credible. If dictators cannot commit to not abusing their “loyal ...friends”—those who choose to invest in the existing autocratic institutions rather than in forming subversive coalitions— they will be in permanent danger of being overthrown, both by members of the ruling elite and by outside rivals. This article explores the role of autocratic political parties and elections (both one-party and multiparty) in mitigating the commitment problem, making power-sharing between the dictator and his ruling coalition possible.
Diversity science training is a requisite element of preparing future generations of psychological scientists. This article describes challenges and tensions in diversity science training—with a ...particular focus on race, ethnicity, and racism—and draws on a project conducted with faculty and students to propose policy‐relevant recommendations that might serve as a starting point in advancing training practices in diversity and psychological science. These include: (1) communicating a top‐down commitment to diversity science; (2) developing strategic planning around diversity science training; (3) establishing diversity science training task forces; (4) maximizing ongoing efforts to increase representation of diverse faculty and students; (5) evaluating and interrogating existing pedagogical approaches and teaching methods; and (6) building coalitions and advocating for trainees. Through ongoing, proactive, and critical inquiry, assessment, evaluation, and instruction, current diversity science training focusing on race and racism in psychological science can transform the field.
In an analysis of the 200‐year history of flood management in Hungary, I use the advocacy coalition framework and the focusing event literature to examine what policy change occurs and what is ...learned as a result of experiencing extreme and damaging flood events. By analyzing the policy response to a series of extreme floods (1998–2001) in this newly democratizing nation, I attempt to identify the factors that influenced the occurrence of policy change and policy‐oriented learning. In 2003, Hungary enacted a comprehensive flood management program that included economic development and environmental protection goals, a distinct departure from Hungary's historical structural approach to flood management. However, it is less clear that long‐lasting changes in belief systems about how floods should be managed have occurred. In this analysis, I argue that processes external to the flood policy subsystem (e.g., process of democratization and Hungary's accession to the European Union), along with the occurrence of the extreme flood events, enabled a coalition of individuals and organizations to press for policy change.
This article analyzes the formation of lobbying coalitions in European Union legislative politics. Specifically, we investigate whether interest organizations establish coalitions and under which ...conditions business interests and non-business interests join a coalition. Our explanatory framework emphasizes three factors that drive coalition formation: the influence-seeking needs of interest groups, the need to ensure organizational maintenance, and policy-related contextual factors. To test our hypotheses, we analyze 72 policies initiated by the European Commission between 2008 and 2010 and 143 semi-structured interviews with representatives of European interest organizations. Our results demonstrate that non-governmental organizations that depend relatively less on membership support are strongly inclined to engage in coalitions. Moreover, the heterogeneous coalitions we identified—consisting of both business and non-business interests—are usually situated in policy areas that enjoy considerable salience among the broader public and emerge on issues that receive substantial media visibility.
These are not happy times for liberal internationalists. No one can be sure how deep the crisis of liberal internationalism runs. However, in what follows, I argue that despite its troubles, liberal ...internationalism still has a future. The nature of the crisis is surprising. The threats to liberal internationalism were expected to come from rising non-western states seeking to undermine or overturn the postwar order. In the face of hostile, revisionist states, the United States and Europe were expected to stand shoulder to shoulder to protect the gains from 70 years of cooperation. But, in fact, liberal internationalism is more deeply threatened by developments within the West itself. The centrist and progressive coalitions that lay behind the postwar liberal order have weakened. Liberal democracy itself appears fragile and polarized, vulnerable to far right populism and backlash politics. In recent decades, the working and middle classes in advanced industrial democracies—the original constituencies and beneficiaries of an open and cooperative international order—have faced rising economic inequality and stagnation. Within the West, liberal internationalism is increasingly seen, not as a source of stability and solidarity among like-minded states, but as a global playing field for the wealthy and influential. Liberal internationalism has lost its connection to the pursuit of social and economic advancement within western countries.
The climate change countermovement (CCCM) in the United States has exerted an important influence on delaying efforts to address climate change. Analyses of this countermovement have primarily ...focused on the role of conservative think tanks. Expanding this research, this article initiates an examination of the structure of key political coalitions that worked to oppose climate action. In conjunction with their allied trade associations, these coalitions have served as a central coordination mechanism in efforts opposed to mandatory limits on carbon emissions. These coalitions pool resources from a large number of corporations and execute sophisticated political and cultural campaigns designed to oppose efforts to address climate change. Through an analysis of twelve prominent CCCM coalitions from 1989 to 2015, I show that over 2,000 organizations were members of these coalitions and that a core of 179 organizations belonged to multiple coalitions. Organizations from the coal and electrical utility sectors were the most numerous and influential organizations in these coalitions. The article concludes with suggestions for further research to expand understanding of complex social movements and countermovements.
While many argue populist radical-right parties to be the largest contemporary threat to democracy, much of the evidence either focuses on the rare case of a populist radical-right prime minister, or ...conflates right-populist prime ministers with right-populist government participation, with some asserting that it would be difficult for these parties to have any real effect without holding the prime ministership. In this paper I conduct a large-scale analysis of European nations to quantify the effect right-populist junior coalition partners have on liberal democracy. I argue that as junior coalition partners, they will indeed affect democratic quality, albeit in ways that differ from that of a right-populist prime minister. While previous literature has demonstrated that populist radical-right parties bring with them decreases in the level of democratic quality pertaining to institutional constraints on power and mass civil liberties, junior coalition partners are only able to effect the latter.
We study coalition formation problems with externalities. We prove that, if expectations are not prudent a stable coalitions structure may fail to exist. Under prudent expectations a stable and ...efficient coalition structure exists if the set of admissible coalitions is single-lapping. However, under this assumption the stable set is not a singleton, and no stable strategy-proof revelation mechanism exists, differently from the case without externalities. Finally, the stable correspondence is Nash implementable.
•If the agents are prudent, a stable coalition structure may fail to exist.•If the agents are prudent and the set of admissible coalitions is single-lapping, a stable coalition structure exists.•The set of stable coalition structures may fail to be efficient.•There is no stable strategy-proof mechanism.•The set of stable coalition structures is Nash implementable.
This paper examines how volunteer and staff participants influence coalition functioning and outcomes. We compare two environmental coalitions in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: the Clean Rivers Campaign ...(CRC), which was supported by a general progressive movement community and led by organizational staff members, and Protect Our Parks (POP), an all-volunteer alliance that was part of a more specific anti-fracking movement community. While much research on social movement coalitions focuses on their formation, we show how coalition structure and types of participants affect the mobilization, longevity and goal achievement of our two cases. Both coalitions succeeded in mobilizing supporters for their campaigns, but the CRC enjoyed greater longevity and had a clearer impact on public policy. Paid staff and organizational members were better able to recruit new activists, maintain commitment and transform coalition goals, affecting longevity and goal achievement. This finding contributes to our understanding of the impacts of different types of structures and activists on coalition outcomes, suggesting that paid organizers do not necessarily limit the range of coalition tactics and goals.