2012/07/26 by Katrin Schermann, Laurenz Ennser‐Jedenastik · 1 voice · 2 citations
Social Sciences · Business, Management and Accounting · #Electoral Systems and Political Participation #Political Influence and Corporate Strategies #Social Policy and Reform Studies
paper · doi:10.1177/1354068812453373
openalex publication_date 2012/07/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Most analyses of policy outcomes from coalition-bargaining have hitherto been conducted within a spatial framework that requires the aggregation of coalition policy into a small number of point estimates. Such an approach, however, is limited in terms of the level of specificity at which it can operate. This article therefore draws on the methodology from the pledge fulfilment literature in order to provide a more in-depth examination of coalition-bargaining outcomes. We are thus able to take advantage of the fact that contemporary coalition agreements provide a wealth of detailed information on the government’s prospective course of policy action. Based on a quantitative text analysis of election manifestos, a dataset of over 1,000 election pledges is used to test a number of hypotheses on the adoption of policies in Austrian coalition agreements between 2002 and 2008. The multivariate models yield strong support for the hypotheses and suggest that the methodological approach has the potential to enhance our understanding of coalition-bargaining.