Policy as a bargaining outcome: coalition leverage and pledge fulfillment

Journal article

Which parties can deliver the policies that they promised? In multiparty contexts, parties must bargain to realize electoral promises. Prior work shows that parties influence policy change by using their resources in the existing government-opposition constellation such as legislative seats, ministerial posts, and agenda, veto, and policing powers. Only theoretical work considers parties’ bargaining leverage from potentially changing the government. But for parties, the politically important outcome is fulfilling pledges (not incremental policy change) and they use their full leverage, including power over government change, to achieve it. We offer and test a more complete and politically relevant account of multiparty policymaking that includes parties’ bargaining leverage from coalition options and focuses on the realization of distinct policy promises. We estimate regression analyses of pledge fulfillment in 9 parliamentary democracies from 1974 to 2011 as well as local average treatment effects across a discontinuity and find that parties’ bargaining leverage from potential coalition change trumps conventional explanations for policy outcomes.

Authors: Kayser, MA; Rehmert, J; Schleiter, P

• Publication status: Accepted
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Journal: British Journal of Political Science
• Acceptance date: 2026-03-23
• EISSN: 1469-2112
• ISSN: 0007-1234
• Language: English
• Keywords: coalition bargaining; bargaining leverage; policymaking; coalition government; pledge fulfillment