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In parliamentary democracies, political parties bargain over cabinet portfolios when forming coalition governments. While most of the theoretical literature predicts that only minimal winning coalitions form in equilibrium, the empirical evidence shows that minority and surplus coalitions are about as frequent. In this article, I bridge the gap between the theoretical predictions and the empirical evidence by developing a noncooperative bargaining model in which parties are both office seeking and policy pursuing. Parties bargain over cabinet portfolios, which in turn determines the government policy. Parties are farsighted, and when they coalesce with other parties, they take into account not only the expected cabinet portfolio allocation but also how this allocation would affect the government coalition policy. The model predicts in equilibrium the formation of minimal winning as well as minority and surplus coalitions as a function of a party's size, ideal policies, and relative preference for policy versus office. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a 2012 Journal of Politics article, we presented a zero-intelligence model of government formation. Our intent was to provide a “null” model of government formation, a baseline upon which other models could build. We made two claims regarding aggregate government formation outcomes: first, that our model produces aggregate results on the distributions of government types, cabinet portfolios, and bargaining delays in government formation that compare favorably to those in the real world; and second, that these aggregate distributions vary in theoretically intuitive ways as the model parameters change. In this issue, Martin and Vanberg (MV) criticize our model on theoretical and empirical grounds. Here we not only show how MV’s evaluation of our model is flawed, but we also illustrate, using an analogy to common statistical practice, how one might properly attempt to falsify stochastic models such as ours at both the individual and the aggregate level. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article studies the relationship between elections and domestic terrorism in democracies. Do approaching elections lead to an increase in the volume of terrorist activity? Extant theory suggests that terrorist groups strategically plan their attacks around elections. I argue that approaching elections are not always affiliated with an increase in the volume of terrorist activity. Electoral permissiveness, an important feature of democratic electoral systems, influences the extent to which periods close to elections are periods of heightened terrorist activity. Approaching elections lead to an increase in the volume of attacks in democracies with low electoral permissiveness but not in others. I test my argument with data from Western European democracies between 1950 and 2004. Using statistical models that include country fixed effects, I show that approaching elections are affiliated with an increase of the volume of attacks in democracies with the least permissive electoral systems, but not in democracies with permissive electoral systems. 1 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why some individuals, who would clearly benefit from redistribution, do not vote for parties offering redistributive policies is an old puzzle of redistributive politics. Recent work in political economy offers an explanation based on the interplay between religious identity and party policies. Strategic parties bundle conservative moral policies with anti-redistribution positions inducing individuals with a strong religious identity to vote based on moral rather than economic preferences. I test this theory using microlevel data on individuals’ vote choices in 24 recent multiparty elections in 15 Western European countries. I use an integrated model of religion, economic and moral preferences, and vote choice to show that religious individuals possess less liberal economic preferences, which shapes their vote choice against redistributive parties. This holds even for individuals who would clearly benefit from redistribution. Moreover, the redistributive vote of religious individuals is primarily based on economic not moral preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]