First published in 1984. In this book, the authors set forth the central ideas and results of the major theories of coalition forming behavior. These theories address situations of partial conflict of interest with the following aspects: (1) there are three or more players, (2) players may openly communicate with each other, and (3) players form coalitions by freely negotiating agreements on how to disburse the gains that result from the coalition members’ joint coordinated efforts. These models arise from the two disciplines of mathematics, in the theory of cooperative n-person games with side payments, and social psychology, in theories of small group behavior in mixed-motive situations. The goal is to explore the various solution concepts that make up this body of theory, and in particular to examine the psychological premises that underlie the various theoretical models.
Drawing upon and extending his inaugural Lipsey Lectures, Debraj Ray looks at coalition formation from the perspective of game theory. Ray brings together developments in both cooperative and noncooperative game theory to study the analytics of coalition formation and binding agreements.
This is the classic work upon which modern-day game theory is based. What began as a modest proposal that a mathematician and an economist write a short paper together blossomed, when Princeton University Press published Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. In it, John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern conceived a groundbreaking mathematical theory of economic and social organization, based on a theory of games of strategy. Not only would this revolutionize economics, but the entirely new field of scientific inquiry it yielded--game theory--has since been widely used to analyze a host of real-world phenomena from arms races to optimal policy choices of presidential candidates, from vaccination policy to major league baseball salary negotiations. And it is today established throughout both the social sciences and a wide range of other sciences.
Coalition Formation and Social Choice provides a unified and comprehensive study of coalition formation and collective decision-making in committees. It discusses the main existing theories including the size principle, conflict of interest theory, dominant player theory, policy distance theory and power excess theory. In addition, the book offers new theories of coalition formation in which the endogenous formation of preferences for coalitions is basic. Both simple game theory and social choice theory are extensively applied in the treatment of the theories. This combined application not only leads to new theories but also offers a new and fresh perspective on coalition formation and collective decision-making in committees. The book covers the fundamental concepts and results of social choice theory including Arrow's Impossibility Theorem. Furthermore, it gives a coherent treatment of the theory of simple games. Besides more traditional topics in simple game theory like power indices, it also introduces new aspects of simple games such as the Chow parameter, the Chow vector and the notion of similar games.
A comprehensive view of coalition formation is presented here. Each of the chapters gives a summary of theories and research findings in a specific field of interest, at various levels of human and primate organisation.
This book develops a new theory of collaborative lobbying and influence to explain how antipoverty advocates gain influence in American social policymaking.
Why do some parties coordinate their electoral strategies as part of a pre-electoral coalition, while others choose to compete independently at election time? Scholars have long ignored pre-electoral coalitions in favor of focusing on the government coalitions that form after parliamentary elections. Yet electoral coalitions are common, they affect electoral outcomes, and they have important implications for democratic policy-making itself. The Logic of Pre-Electoral Coalition Formation by Sona Nadenichek Golder includes a combination of methodological approaches (game theoretic, statistical, and historical) to explain why pre-electoral coalitions form in some instances but not in others. The results indicate that pre-electoral coalitions are more likely to form between ideologically compatible parties. They are also more likely to form when the expected coalition size is large (but not too large) and when the potential coalition partners are similar in size. Ideologically polarized party systems and disproportional electoral rules in combination also increase the likelihood of electoral coalition formation. Golder links the analysis of pre-electoral coalition formation to the larger government coalition literature by showing that pre-electoral agreements increase (a) the likelihood that a party will enter government, (b) the ideological compatibility of governments, and (c) the speed with which governments take office. In addition, pre-electoral coalitions provide an opportunity for combining the best elements of the majoritarian vision of democracy with the best elements of the proportional vision of democracy.
This book explores how intra-party politics affects government formation and termination in parliamentary systems, where the norm is the formation of coalition governments. The authors look beyond party cohesion and discipline in parliamentary democracies to take a broader view, assuming a diversity of preferences among party members and then exploring the incentives that give rise to coordinated party behaviour at the electoral, legislative and executive levels. The chapters in this book share a common analytical framework, confronting theoretical models of government formation with empirical data, some drawn from cross-national analyses and others from theoretically structured case studies. A distinctive feature of the book is that it explores the impact of intra-party politics at different levels of government: national, local and EU. This offers the opportunity to investigate existing theories of coalition formation in new political settings. Finally, the book offers a range of innovative methods for investigating intra-party politics which, for example, creates a need to estimate the policy positions of individual politicians inside political parties. This book will be of interest to political scientists, especially scholars involved in research on political parties, parliamentary systems, coalition formation and legislative behaviour, multilevel governance, European and EU politics.
The Oxford Handbooks of Political Science is a ten-volume set of reference books offering authoritative and engaging critical overviews of the state of political science. Each volume focuses on a particular part of the discipline, with volumes on Public Policy, Political Theory, Political Economy, Contextual Political Analysis, Comparative Politics, International Relations, Law and Politics, Political Behavior, Political Institutions, and Political Methodology. The project as a whole is under the General Editorship of Robert E. Goodin, with each volume being edited by a distinguished international group of specialists in their respective fields. The books set out not just to report on the discipline, but to shape it. The series will be an indispensable point of reference for anyone working in political science and adjacent disciplines. The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Politics offers a critical survey of the field of empirical political science through the collection of a set of chapters written by forty-seven top scholars in the discipline of comparative politics. Part I includes chapters surveying the key research methodologies employed in comparative politics (the comparative method; the use of history; the practice and status of case-study research; the contributions of field research) and assessing the possibility of constructing a science of comparative politics. Parts II to IV examine the foundations of political order: the origins of states and the extent to which they relate to war and to economic development; the sources of compliance or political obligation among citizens; democratic transitions, the role of civic culture; authoritarianism; revolutions; civil wars and contentious politics. Parts V and VI explore the mobilization, representation and coordination of political demands. Part V considers why parties emerge, the forms they take and the ways in which voters choose parties. It then includes chapters on collective action, social movements and political participation. Part VI opens up with essays on the mechanisms through which political demands are aggregated and coordinated. This sets the agenda to the systematic exploration of the workings and effects of particular institutions: electoral systems, federalism, legislative-executive relationships, the judiciary and bureaucracy. Finally, Part VII is organized around the burgeoning literature on macropolitical economy of the last two decades.
