Joris Alberdingk Thijm, PhD student from ICS, University of Lisbon, presented a chapter of his PhD thesis. It follows the abstract:
“The aim of this chapter is to discuss a selection of the most important theories of coalition formation that have emerged in the literature since the mid-20th century. This exercise will ultimately inform the formulation of an original theoretical model of government coalitions in presidential systems in a subsequent chapter. Four different but interconnected literatures can inform our attempt to build such model. These are: (1) the fundamental game theoretical literature and the two applied literatures inspired by it, namely (2) the literature on government coalitions in parliamentary systems, which is mainly centered on Europe, and (3) the social choice literature on legislative coalitions, which is mostly based on the US context. Aside from those three literatures, there is (4) the younger literature on government coalition formation and management in multiparty presidential systems, which is mainly empirical in origin. This chapter is organized into four main sections, one for each aforementioned literature. The focus will be on theories and theoretical arguments; we do not concern ourselves here with the findings of empirical studies that operationalize and test these theories. Furthermore, as explaining oversized coalitions in presidential systems is one of the main objectives of this thesis, the focus will be of theories and models which have something to say about coalition size.”
