Learning to Govern Together in Representative Democracy : The Dynamics of Cooperation and Competition in Coalition Governance

Learning to Govern Together in Representative Democracy introduces a dynamic theory on coalition governance and circular regression for studying joint policy-making of coalition parties, which considers the “pro tempore” nature of representative democracy. Because representative democracy limits the time to govern, the implementation of a common policy agenda is temporarily constrained.In parliamentary democracies, in which coalition governance is the rule, this temporal constraint demands that coalition parties overcome their collective action problems in joint policy-making within a term.This book argues that the cooperative and competitive incentives of coalition parties vary over time.In the beginning of a term, coalition parties only have a prior belief about the type of partnership, and ministerial office-holders, who are responsible for the implementation of a common policy agenda, do not know how many bills they will initiate and whether their partner will respond cooperatively