Coalition formation at the local level: Institutional constraints, party policy conflict, and

office-seeking political parties

Forthcoming in Party Politics

Marc Debus & Martin Gross

Mannheim University & MZES

Abstract

This article examines the determinants of coalition formation on the local level. In addition to

standard office- and policy-seeking variables, we incorporate the local institutional setting and

the constraints on local coalition politics emerging from patterns of party competition at the

superior level of the political system. We test our expectations on the basis of a dataset

providing information on the characteristics of potential and formed coalitions in 29 German

cities. The results show that – even on the local level, which is often described as less

politicised – office-seeking variables but also the ideological positioning of parties are good

predictors for local coalition formation in German cities. Additionally, our findings suggest

that local political actors take the party affiliation of the directly elected mayor into account

when forming coalitions in local councils. The findings imply that political actors on all levels

of political systems try to maximise their payoffs and form coalitions accordingly.

Keywords

Coalition formation; local politics; coalition theory; institutional constraints; multi-level

system.

1
Introduction

While coalition theories have been frequently applied to the study of government formation

on the national level (see, e.g., Martin and Stevenson 2001, 2010; Strøm et al. 2010) and also

to the analysis of government formation in the regional sphere (see, for example, Bäck et al.

2013; Downs 1998; Ştefuriuc 2009, 2013), research on party competition, coalition politics

and its impact on policy-making on the local level has been ‘terra incognita’ (Laver 1989: 17).

The application of coalition theories to the local level only recently gained momentum due to

the notion that the local level is a promising research area to test coalition theories with new

data, to increase the number of cases, and to hold the institutional context and ‘time’ constant

(Camões and Mendes 2009: 72; Laver et al. 1998: 352; Skjæveland et al. 2007: 726). All in

all, the study of local coalition formation is one way to solve the problematic, ‘incestuous’

relationship in coalition research between theory development and data since there is only a

limited number of national and regional coalitions (Laver 1989: 16). In addition, turning the

perspective to the local level which is – at least in the country we study here, i.e. in Germany

– often seen as a less politicised part of the political system and where decision-making is

assumed to follow a more pragmatic, consensual way, we can analyse whether political actors

even on this level of a political system adopt an utility-maximising strategy as the standard

models of coalition formation suggest (e.g., Axelrod 1970; De Swaan 1973; Laver and

Shepsle 1996; Riker 1962; von Neumann and Morgenstern 1944). If this is the case, then

models on political decision-making that are based on rational choice theory receive empirical

evidence from a level of the political system that is often described as ‘different’ from other

spheres of a polity.

The aim of this paper is to identify the factors that drive the formation of coalitions on the

local level. To restrict our analysis not only to office- and policy-seeking theories of coalition

formation, we widen our theoretical and empirical perspective by incorporating incentives

that emerge from the multi-level structure of a political system and further institutional

2
constraints. We select the multi-level system of Germany and argue that – besides policy

distances and office-seeking incentives – coalition formation on the local level is also

influenced by institutional constraints. Particularly, the implementation of direct elections of

the mayor and the abolishment of local councils’ right to appoint the mayor strengthened the

mayor’s political role. We argue that local political actors have an incentive to include the

mayor’s party in a coalition to avoid situations of ‘cohabitation’, i.e. a situation where a

coalition in the local council is opposed to the party of the directly elected mayor.

Consequently, the party of the mayor should have an advantage in the local coalition

formation game. Additionally, the relationship between the local and regional level sets

specific incentives for the coalition formation process on the local level. Since local units in

Germany depend on the support of the regional government to a significant degree, political

actors should be more likely to include parties in a coalition on the local level that also hold

key offices in the regional government.

Our findings, which are based on a completely new dataset that covers information on

local party competition in 29 large cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants in the German

state of North Rhine-Westphalia, show that there is evidence that local political actors in

Germany are office- and policy-seekers. Furthermore, there exists a ‘cohabitation effect’ with

respect to the local coalition formation process. The directly elected mayor – or more

precisely, the mayor’s party affiliation – is a key factor in the local coalition game. These

findings remain stable after performing several robustness checks.

This finding sets incentives to refer to the local level when testing theories on political

decision-making in specific institutional contexts like quasi-presidential or semi-presidential

systems, where there are only few studies (see Clark et al. 2012: 506). The number of existing

hybrid systems is not only small but also their institutional characteristics vary to a decisive

degree, so that it is hard to isolate the key mechanisms that influence government formation

and coalition politics. ‘Scaling down’ (Snyder 2001) to the local level might help to solve this

3
problem. Furthermore, our results add to our understanding of local coalition formation in

Western European countries by analysing local coalition formation in Germany for the first

time in a large-N quantitative design, and – in contrast to other studies (Bäck 2003;

Skjæveland et al. 2007) – by covering a ten-year time period.

The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. Next, we give a brief overview of the

local institutional setting, party competition and coalition formation in Germany in general

and in the selected 29 cities in particular. In the third section, we provide our main arguments

regarding the analysis of local coalition formation. We discuss case selection, data,

operationalization of the variables and the applied statistical method in the fourth section. The

fifth section presents the results and evaluates the hypotheses. The concluding section

summarises the findings and discusses further research possibilities that emerge from

focussing on the local level of political systems.

Institutional setting and patterns of political decision-making on the local level

The application of coalition theories to the coalition bargaining processes on the local level

requires the recognition of office and policy payoffs for political actors, the identification of a

coalitional arena and the explanation of the ‘nature’ of local coalitions. Since our empirical

analysis focuses on the local level in Germany – more precisely on coalition formation in 29

larger cities in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia – we briefly have to outline the

institutional setting and patterns of party competition in which coalition formation on this

level of the German political system takes place.

Despite the different local institutional settings in the German Länder, all local

constitutions create incentives for political actors to compete over policy issues and local

offices. German municipalities still have considerable rights to self-government and can shape

the local policy. Especially during the economic and financial crisis, local political actors had

to decide between budget consolidation and the preservation of public social spending. In

4
addition, recent research shows that the ideological positions of parties are a key predictor on

policy outcomes that deal with highly politicised issues such as the degree of registration fees

for same-sex unions (Debus et al. 2013) or fees for Kindergarten places (Goerres and Tepe

2013).

Concerning office payoffs, the German local political system does indeed hold some

positions that can be seen as ‘functional equivalents’ to ministerial offices on the state and the

national level. For example, heads of departments and deputy mayors are elected by the local

council and therefore have to rely on the support of a parliamentary majority (Bogumil and

Holtkamp 2013: 40; Egner et al. 2013: 86; Mellors and Brearey 1986: 288). Additionally, in

most of the municipalities, the composition of committees depends on the allocation of seats

in the local council. Hence, the largest party frequently can install one of its actors as

committee chairperson. Since in most cases no single party is able to win a majority of seats

in the local council, there is an incentive for parties to form coalitions on the local sphere in a

way that they maximise their office benefits.

The German local government system has recently been called a ‘semi-presidential’ one

due to the implementation of directly elected mayors (Bäck 2005). In North Rhine-

Westphalia, there exists a dual executive with the mayor (and the local administration) on the

one hand and the local council on the other hand. This means that both the mayor and the

local council are shaping the local policy agenda (Egner et al. 2013). The differences to

parliamentary and presidential systems are obvious. In contrast to a parliamentary system, the

local council and the mayor are elected separately (most of the time on different election

days), and they both have their independent legitimation. Hence, the mayor does not rely on a

local council’s majority, and the local council cannot deselect the mayor. 1 As distinct from

pure presidential systems, the directly elected mayor (as functional equivalent to the

president) has no possibility to choose his ‘ministers’, i.e. the deputy mayors and heads of
1
Mayors can be deselected by the electorate. Local councils only have the right to initiate the procedure of
deselection (Egner et al. 2013: 35).

5
departments. Consequently, this feature corresponds to Bäck’s (2005: 83) definition of a local

semi-presidential system: “In semi-presidentialism […] the mayor would surround himself

with a collective executive appointed by the council” (emphasis in original). All in all, the

local council is the main sphere of activity for local parties and independent local lists.

Turning to the process of local coalition formation, the local council is the coalitional arena in

German local politics (see also Hogwood 1999).

Nevertheless, local government coalitions are quite distinct from national and regional

government coalitions in general (Laver 1989). This is particularly true for the German case.

Likewise to presidential and parliamentary systems, where the government (or parts of it) do

not need the support of a parliamentary majority to get into or to remain in office (Clark et al.

2012; see also Bergman 1993), the end of a coalition can result in the formation of a new

coalition in the local councils. But there is no requirement to build a new coalition

immediately. Instead, the local parties can also build ad hoc coalitions for specific policy

issues.

This raises the questions why local political actors do form coalitions in the first place, and

why they are not exclusively dealing with ad hoc coalitions? Descriptive analyses of local

coalition politics show that local political actors are forming coalitions and are simultaneously

signing coalition agreements (which imply the prospect of a permanent cooperation) in order

to reduce their bargaining and transaction costs (see, for example, Martinussen 2002). Second,

the signing of a coalition agreement sends a signal to local voters in a way that there will not

be abrupt changes in the policy-making process. Thirdly, this comes with higher credibility

and accountability (see Lupia and Strøm 2010). To sum up, local coalitions with signed

coalition agreements are not an equivalent to national or regional executive coalitions, but

they have a more formal character than pure legislative ad hoc coalitions.

Theoretical considerations and hypotheses

6
Like in other European countries (see, e.g., Bäck 2003; Skjæveland et al. 2007), parties play

an important role in coalition formation on the local level in Germany. From a general

perspective, political parties – the most important actors in modern democracies – are

assumed to pursue three major goals: maximising the number of votes in an election,

maximising their share of offices in a (coalition) government and maximising the number of

enforced policy proposals (Strøm and Müller 1999). Local politicians are office-, policy- and

vote-seeking actors as well (Skjæveland et al. 2007: 726). This perspective has

straightforward implications for local coalition formation: parties should prefer coalitions that

(1) have the support of a majority in parliament, (2) include a preferably small number of

partisan actors and (3) are ideologically cohesive. Therefore, coalitions on the local level

should be more likely if they reflect the characteristics of key coalition theories that help to

explain the coalition game outcome on other levels of the political system.

From an office-seeking point of view, coalitions should be more likely to form if they are

minimal or minimum winning coalitions (Riker 1962; von Neumann and Morgenstern 1944).

Coalitions are not expected to be oversized because otherwise the coalition parties’ share of

cabinet offices decreases. Furthermore, parties should not only prefer coalitions with small

majorities but also coalitions with the smallest number of parties in order to reduce

transaction costs (Leiserson 1966). In addition, non-cooperative game theorists like Austen-

Smith and Banks (1988) stress the importance of the largest parliamentary party in the

coalition game, which has the best chance to become a member of the government (see also

Baron and Diermeier 2001; Baron and Ferejohn 1989). Policy-seeking theories, by contrast,

focus on the policy preferences of political parties (as unitary actors) and predict coalitions

that not only fulfil the criteria of office-seeking theories but also have the smallest

programmatic distance on relevant policy dimensions (e.g., Axelrod 1970; De Swaan 1973).

In line with the famous model by Downs (1957), coalition theorists argue that the party that

controls the median legislator on the general left-right dimension has a pivotal position in the

7
coalition formation process and is thus more likely to become a member of the next

(coalition) government (Müller and Strøm 2000; Saalfeld 2000; Strøm 1990; van Roozendaal

1993). Furthermore, there is ample evidence that the status quo matters for the coalition

formation game (see, e.g., Franklin and Mackie 1983; Strøm et al. 1994; Warwick 1996). In

line with the current literature, we are expecting that incumbent coalitions should have an

advantage in the local coalition formation game as well (Martin and Stevenson 2010). This

brings us to the following hypotheses derived from ‘classical’ theories of coalition formation:

Coalitions on the local level should be more likely to form:

H1) if they are minimal or minimum winning coalitions;

H2) if they comprise the smallest number of parties (‘bargaining proposition’);

H3) if they include the largest party in the local parliament;

H4) the smaller the distance between the positions of local political actors is on key

policy dimensions;

H5) if they include the party of the median legislator;

H6) if the respective party combination forms the current coalition in the local council.

The direct election of the mayors creates an additional institutional constraint for local

political actors with regard to coalition formation. The mayors can shape the local policy

agenda, in particular in their function as the head of the local administration. The relationship

between the mayor and the local council is crucial for understanding the process of political

decision-making, in particular since the mayors in North Rhine-Westphalia get directly

elected in separate elections since 1999. The mayor does not have the right to appoint a local

politician to form a coalition, but local political actors are likely to take into account the party

affiliation of the mayor. It is not uncommon that directly elected mayors declare their

coalition preferences in public. For example, the Christian Democratic mayors in the North

Rhine-Westphalian cities Duisburg and Köln stated that they are strongly against coalitions

8
between the Social Democrats, the Greens and The Left.2 To put it in other words, the mayors

are against coalitions excluding their own party. Hence, the role of the directly elected mayor

can be understood as being a ‘powerful player’ (cf. Strøm and Swindle 2002). They can

approve or disapprove a coalition proposal and influence the local coalition game, but their

“consent is neither sufficient nor necessary” (Strøm and Swindle 2002: 579) for the outcome

of the coalition formation process.

Viewed from the perspective of local political parties, majority groups in the local council

cannot be sure that they are going to bargain in everyday business with a mayor from their

own party since voters might prefer – for whatever reason – a candidate from a smaller party

in the mayoral election. Furthermore, note that in situations of opposing party memberships of

local coalition members and of the directly elected mayor, local council majority groups often

cut back responsibilities of directly elected mayors. In turn, mayors delay or even do not

implement some council decisions (Bogumil and Holtkamp 2013: 189). Therefore, such

situations of ‘cohabitation’ could potentially increase bargaining and transaction costs, which

will result in gridlock situations or at least in a slower process of political decision-making.

The latter is likely to result in frustration among voters, who could punish the responsible

parties – the ones forming the coalition and/or the parties supporting the mayor – in the

upcoming elections. Consequently, parties should favour a political constellation that secures

an efficient governing process since one key goal of political parties on all levels of the

political system is to maximise their vote share (see, e.g., Strøm and Müller 1999). Hence, we

assume that local political actors take the mayor’s party affiliation into account and that they

have an incentive to form coalitions including the mayor’s party in order to avoid a situation

with opposite party orientations as well as to reduce transaction costs. 3 We formulate the

following hypothesis:

2
See Kölnische Rundschau (07.12.2005); www.derwesten.de/staedte/duisburg/adolf-sauerland-will-koalition-
der-vernunft-id158797.html (access on 05.12.2013).
3
See also Kang (2009) who shows for presidential and semi-presidential systems that the president’s party
has a significantly higher chance than other parties to be a member of the coalition government.

9
 H7) Coalitions on the local level should be less likely to form if they do not include the

party of the mayor (‘cohabitation’).

The main theoretical approaches ignore more or less contextual features that also affect

patterns of government formation, especially in ‘nested games’ (Tsebelis 1990) like local

coalition formation in the German multi-level setting. However, the behaviour of parties that

act in multi-level political systems is shaped by different kinds of incentives or pressure

exerted by higher levels of the political system (see, e.g., Deschouwer 2006; Downs 1998;

Müller 2013; Swenden and Maddens 2009; van Houten 2009). Recent research argues that

coalitions that are congruent with the partisan composition of government on the national

sphere are significantly more likely to form in European multi-level systems (see, e.g., Bäck

et al. 2013; Ştefuriuc 2009, 2013). This is for the reason that congruent coalitions have some

advantages for political actors in multi-level systems: they facilitate political decision-making

in areas with shared competencies (Bolleyer 2006; Hough and Jeffery 2006; Ştefuriuc 2009)

and with multiple veto players like in federal systems (for the German case see, e.g.,

Fortunato et al. 2013).

However, local political actors are not represented in any kind of ‘second chamber’ at the

regional level, where they could influence legislative decision-making. Therefore, there seems

to be no need to form congruent coalitions to the regional government. Nevertheless, local

units depend to a decisive degree on the (financial) support of regional governments. In order

to increase their chances to receive benefits from the regional government, incentives exist for

local political actors to include those political parties in the coalition that are in charge of key

positions in the regional government. In the case of North Rhine-Westphalia, the Ministry of

the Interior is responsible for all local affairs. By considering ministerial discretion and by

assuming that cabinet ministers can act as gatekeepers (Laver and Shepsle 1996; for a recent

analysis of portfolio allocation on the German state level see, e.g., Raabe and Linhart 2013), a

10
better connection to the state minister of the interior can be an advantage for local political

actors by using intra-party channels for the purpose of getting important information, so that

political actors from the respective local unit have some advantages in bargaining about

financial grants (see, e.g., Ştefuriuc 2009: 98). Therefore, we expect that:

H8) Coalitions on the local level are more likely to form if they include the party of the

state minister of the interior.

Case selection, data and methods

We test our expectations by studying coalition formation in North Rhine-Westphalian cities

with at least 100,000 inhabitants. We define a local coalition as any cooperation between two

(or more) parties (or independent local lists) that is based on a written and signed coalition

policy agreement and that follows a local election. 4 Many studies on local politics in Germany

show that particularly the local councils in large cities can be seen as equivalents to national

and regional parliaments with the ‘classical’ antagonism between majority and minority

factions (see, e.g., Egner et al. 2013; Gunlicks 1986). In addition, the impact of national and

regional parties on local politics increases with the number of inhabitants (see Brearey 1989;

Fried 1976).

The case selection of North Rhine-Westphalia for an application of coalition theories to

local coalition formation in Germany has five advantages. First, compared to an analysis of

more than one German local government system, we are able to hold the institutional setting

constant in the sense that we are not coping with different types of local constitutions (see

Laver et al. 1987: 503). Therefore, our research design has almost ‘laboratory-like conditions’

(Stecker 2013). Second, local coalition formation does not take place in all German

municipalities. Local politics in German municipalities is more and more politicised as the
4
Party members switch factions in local councils in Germany quite often (see, e.g., Bogumil et al. 2010). This
influences and changes the strategic calculations of local political actors in general and in terms of coalition
formation in the local council in particular. Unfortunately, local electoral offices only provide data on local
council’s seat distributions directly following a local election, so that we have to exclude all coalitions that
formed after the break-up of a former coalition throughout a legislative period due to lack of data.

11
number of inhabitants is increasing, and the incentives to form coalitions are increasing as

well. North Rhine-Westphalia is the most populated German state with almost 18 million

inhabitants, and 29 out of 80 German cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants are located

there. Third, the local government system of North Rhine-Westphalia can be seen as a

‘prototype’ of a competitive political system (Holtkamp 2008). Local politics is characterised

by a high politicisation of local parties and (to a lesser extent) by independent local lists. This

results in conflicts between majority and opposition groups in the local council and leads to a

coherent voting behaviour of parliamentary party groups. Fourth, concentrating on coalition

formation on the local level in North Rhine-Westphalia allows for studying the potential

impact of an additional institutional constraint in terms of the directly elected mayors and

their party affiliations in the coalition bargaining process. Unlike the situation in Baden-

Wuerttemberg or Bavaria, where mayors always have been elected directly, the

implementation of direct mayoral elections in North Rhine-Westphalia in 1999 is relatively

new. There should be a lesser extent of path dependence regarding the relationship between

local council majorities and directly elected mayors, so that we are dealing with a least likely

case to identify an impact of the partisan affiliation of the mayor on the outcome of the local

coalition formation process. Fifth, local councils in North Rhine-Westphalia have a

considerable amount of power because they are electing the deputy mayors and are defining

their business circles without the interference of the mayor (Egner et al. 2013: 49).

We created a dataset that comprises information on local election results, on the allocations

of seats in the local council, on local parties’ and independent local lists’ policy positions, and

on the outcome of the coalition formation process in the local councils. 5 Furthermore, we

included information on the party affiliation of the directly elected mayors and of the state

5
There exists no national or regional institution in Germany that provides data of local coalition formations.
We thus contacted the local administrations of the 29 North Rhine-Westphalian cities under investigation as
well as the local party branches of the national parties that were in the German national parliament back then
(CDU, FDP, Greens, SPD, and The Left) in order to get information about the formation of coalitions.
Furthermore, we collected local election manifestos of local parties and independent local lists for the local
elections in 1999, 2004, and 2009 to estimate their policy positions.

12
minister of the interior. The time period covered ranges from 1999 to 2009, so that our

observation period starts in exactly the year when the first direct elections for the mayor

positions were held in North Rhine-Westphalia.

For the application of office-seeking theories, we use data on the distribution of seats in the

local councils in order to determine how many local coalitions could have been formed and

which potential local coalitions are minimal or minimum winning coalitions as well as how

many parties are parts of a potential coalition. Furthermore, we create an additional dummy

variable indicating if a potential coalition includes the largest party in the local council, i.e.

the party with the highest number of parliamentary seats. Further binary coded variables

indicate if a potential coalition already exists, if it includes the party of the directly elected

mayor6 and if it covers the party of the state minister of the interior.

Contrary to other studies on local coalition formation (see Denters 1985; Laver et al. 1998;

Steunenberg 1992), we are not using national party positions as a proxy for local party

positions. Following recent research on party positions on the German state level showing that

there are decisive differences between the policy positions of the national parties compared to

the ones of their regional branches (Bräuninger and Debus 2012; Müller 2009, 2013), we are

expecting local party positions to differ as well since local parties address different electorates

which are likely to have other policy preferences than the electorate on the regional or

national level. Unfortunately, unlike for studies on local coalition formation in Sweden (Bäck

2003) and Denmark (Skjæveland et al. 2007), there exists no expert survey information on the

positions of local parties’ policy positions on key policy dimensions that cover our time

period from 1999 to 2009.7

To determine policy positions of local parties, we examine party manifestos from the local

level by using quantitative content analysis. On that basis, we derive positions of local parties

6
Our dataset covers no case where the mayor is a nonpartisan actor.
7
Egner et al. (2013) provide a self-assessment of local council members in German municipalities and cities
on a left-right dimension, based on a survey that was conducted between October 2007 and June 2008. This
is, however, only a snapshot for the time 2007/2008.

13
and independent local lists on a general left-right axis and on an economic and a societal

policy dimension – the two policy dimensions that structure party competition in Germany

(e.g., Pappi 2009) – by applying the Wordscores approach. Wordscores requires the

identification of ‘reference texts’ and ‘reference scores’ (for a detailed description see Laver

et al. 2003, and Lowe 2008). We use the election manifestos of CDU, FDP, Greens and SPD

for the state elections in North Rhine-Westphalia in 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005 and 2010 as well

as the election manifesto of The Left for the state election in 2010 as ‘reference texts’. 8 The

respective ‘reference scores’ for the ‘reference texts’ were assigned by using information on

the policy positions of the North Rhine-Westphalian state parties with respect to the general

left-right axis, the economic and the societal dimension.9 The policy positions of German state

parties are provided by a study on party competition in the German states (Bräuninger and

Debus 2012). We test the policy-seeking aspect by including, first, the policy-area specific

veto player distance (Tsebelis 2002) within each potential coalition and, second, by

identifying the parliamentary party of the median legislator in the local council on the basis of

the parties’ position on the general left-right dimension.10

We apply conditional logit (CL) models (McFadden 1974) to analyse the determinants of

local coalition formation. CL models have become the standard in the empirical analysis of

8
In 2005, two predecessors (PDS and WASG) of The Left ran for office in the state election. We refrain from
using their election manifestos as ‘reference texts’.
9
For local parties and independent local lists with missing local election manifestos, we used the policy
positions of their local basic programmes as a proxy. In cases where our collection of local election
manifestos does not cover the whole time period under consideration, or in cases where we were not able to
collect any manifesto, we either imputed the policy positions of the previous or following manifesto, or we
imputed the average of all scored policy positions in the ‘virgin texts’ of the respective party or list. For the
‘Pirate Party Germany’ (PIRATEN), the ‘German Centre Party’ (ZENTRUM), and ‘The Grays’ (GRAUE),
we used the 2002 national election manifesto (GRAUE), the 2012 North Rhine-Westphalian state election
manifesto (PIRATEN), and the national basic programme (ZENTRUM), respectively, as proxies. In addition,
we refer to expert survey results from Benoit and Laver (2006) and use them as proxies for the policy
positions of right-wing extremist parties on the local level. We identified the following parties as parties with
an extremist ideological orientation: ‘German Communist Party’ (DKP), ‘German People’s Union’ (DVU),
‘Law and Order Offensive Party’ (Offensive D), ‘National Democratic Party of Germany’ (NPD), and ‘The
Republicans’ (REP). We also consider ‘PRO Köln’ as well as ‘PRO NRW’ as right-wing extremist
movements. For the determination of their local policy positions, we used the average of the policy positions
of the DVU, NPD, and REP.
10
We also identified the party affiliation of the median legislator in the local council on the economic and
societal policy dimension. Including both measures in the empirical models does, however, neither provide
statistically significant findings nor does it change the effects of the other independent variables.

14
government formation over the last decade (see, e.g., Martin and Stevenson 2001, 2010) and

have also been successfully applied to the analysis of local coalition formation (Bäck 2003;

Skjæveland et al. 2007). Each local coalition formation process is represented by a ‘choice

set’ that comprises not only the actual formed coalition (which receives a value of one in the

dependent variable) but also all other logically possible combinations of parties and

independent local lists having gained seats in the local council (which are coded zero in the

dependent variable). Therefore, the actual number of parties and independent local lists

elected to local councils determines the size of the choice set.11

Results

Overall, 55 local coalitions in North Rhine-Westphalian cities were formed in the time period

under investigation (see Table 1). Since the implementation of direct mayor elections in 1999,

48 out of 55 local council coalitions have included the mayor’s party. There are only seven

situations of ‘cohabitation’, where the mayor’s party is not a member of the coalition in the

local council. This descriptive information already provides support for the hypothesis that

parties in the legislature have an incentive to include the mayor’s party in the coalition and

that local political actors try to avoid ‘cohabitation’. The party of the state minister of the

interior is in 30 out of 55 cases part of the local coalition, giving support for our expectation

that stressed the impact of ministerial discretion and intra-party communication on local

coalition politics.

***Table 1 about here***

11
Glasgow et al. (2012) argue that mixed logit models are also appropriate when analysing coalition
formation. We also applied mixed logit models to our data. However, likelihood ratio tests confirm that
mixed logit models are not a better fit to our data than CL models. This is no surprise, because we were not
expecting any unobserved heterogeneity in the estimated effects a priori due to our case selection, which
fixed the institutional setting and political culture.

15
The overwhelming majority of local coalitions have been minimal winning coalitions.

Minority and surplus majority coalitions are rarely formed (ten and two times, respectively).

The average number of parties in local coalitions is 2.2. These descriptive findings provide

evidence for our office-seeking hypotheses that local political actors do not only try to form

minimal winning coalitions but rather minimal winning coalitions with the smallest number of

parties included (see also Table A1 in the appendix).

Figure 1 displays the local parties’ policy positions (and the policy positions of independent

local lists, subsumed under the label ‘others’) in large North Rhine-Westphalian cities on the

economic, the societal and a general left-right dimension. Note that the policy position

patterns on all three dimensions show a high resemblance to the positioning of German

regional and national parties (see, e.g., Bräuninger and Debus 2012; Linhart and Shikano

2007, 2009; Müller 2009, 2013; Pappi 2009). The results also reveal that there is substantial

diversity both between and within the programmatic orientation of local parties. It is therefore

appropriate to rely on the policy positions of local parties in order to cover specific patterns of

party competition in the respective cities instead of applying policy positions of parties from

the regional or national level. Furthermore, the parties’ order from left to right based on our

Wordscores estimation is identical to the self-assessments of local council members in

German municipalities and cities (cf. Egner et al. 2013).

***Figure 1 about here***

Having shown that local political parties indeed adopt different programmatic positions in

their election manifestos that vary within parties and across cities, the question is if these

policy positions between parties have an impact on local coalition formation. Are local

political actors policy-seeking and do they – from a general perspective – act in accordance

with rational choice-based theories on maximizing the number of offices despite the

16
perception of local politics as less ideological and more pragmatic in terms of political

decision-making? Or are local institutional, contextual and multi-level features decisive for

the outcome of coalition formation processes on the local level in the case under study here?

The results of the CL models are presented in Table 2.12 Besides variables reflecting office-

seeking theories of coalition formation as well as institutional and contextual constraints, the

first three models include – as an indicator for the impact of policy-seeking approaches – the

veto player distance between the two most extreme parties on the general left-right dimension

and a variable identifying whether the median party on the left-right dimension is included in

the coalition or not. Models 4 and 5 are based on a two-dimensional policy space and include

the veto player distance between the most extreme parties in potential coalitions on the

economic and societal policy dimension, respectively.

The results mostly support our hypotheses. The decision-making process is – even on the

local level – about maximising the control over the number of offices. A potential coalition is

more likely to form if it reflects the characteristics of a minimal winning coalition (von

Neumann and Morgenstern 1944) and especially of Leiserson’s (1966) bargaining

proposition: local political actors prefer coalitions with as few parties as possible to reach a

parliamentary majority. There is, however, no evidence that parties in the local parliament

prefer minimum winning coalitions (Riker 1962). These results corroborate findings for local

coalition formations in Belgium (Geys et al. 2006) and the Netherlands (Steunenberg 1992).

The inclusion of the largest party into a potential coalition does not increase the chance that

this potential coalition forms. The variable has the expected positive sign but does not reach

conventional levels of statistical significance in all models presented in Table 2. Therefore, it

seems not to be a common pattern in local politics to give the largest party in parliament the

12
We followed Martin and Stevenson (2001) to evaluate if the independence of irrelevant alternatives (IIA)
assumption is violated by dropping a random set of alternatives from each formation opportunity and by
applying a Hausman test. We used 50 replications where a random set of 10 per cent of the choices was
dropped. The average p-values for all five models are shown in Table 2. They are far greater than 0.05, so we
conclude that the IIA assumption is not violated here (see also the average p-values of the estimated models
as robustness checks in Tables A2 and A3 in the appendix).

17
‘right’ to make the first move to form a coalition. The findings remain robust when

performing several robustness checks: even when deleting those potential coalitions that

include one or more ‘anti-system’ or ‘pariah’ parties from the set of possible outcomes of the

coalition formation process (see Ştefuriuc 2013: 69, fn. 3) or when including office-seeking

factors in the analysis only, the direction and statistical significance of the variables reflecting

office-seeking coalition theories remain basically the same (see Tables A2 and A3 in the

appendix).13

The variables providing information on the veto player distance between the most extreme

parties within a potential coalition have the expected negative direction. However, only the

distances measured on the basis of the general left-right axis (models 1, 2 and 3) and the

societal policy dimension (models 4 and 5) reach standard levels of statistical significance.

Overall, potential coalitions are more likely to form if they comprise parties that are

ideologically close to each other. When excluding potential coalitions that comprise parties

with extremist policy positions from the analysis a priori, the statistically significant and

negative effect of the variable reflecting the societal policy distance disappears, while the

distance on the overall left-right dimension remains negative and significant according to

models 2 and 9 in Table A3. The inclusion of the party that covers the median legislator on

the general left-right axis does not significantly increase the chances that a theoretically

possible coalition forms in reality.

We also find that throughout all the models incumbent local coalitions have a significantly

higher chance to be the next coalition than other potential coalitions. This result is in line with

the ones for local coalition formation processes in other European countries (see Bäck 2003;

Skjæveland et al. 2007).

***Table 2 about here***

13
We define ‘anti-system parties’ or ‘pariah parties’ as all parties with an extremist ideological orientation (cf.
footnote 9).

18
Furthermore, the results provide empirical evidence for our expectation regarding the impact

of the partisan affiliation of the directly elected mayor on the outcome of the local coalition

formation processes: Directly elected mayors and their party affiliation play a key role for the

outcome of the coalition formation process in the local government system under study here.

The estimated effect of the variable that identifies potential coalitions that do not include the

mayor’s party (‘cohabitation’) has the expected negative sign and is statistically significant at

standard level of statistical significance (see Table 2). These findings are corroborated by the

models presented in Tables A2 and A3 in the appendix: even when including only few of the

identified independent variables and/or when excluding all coalitions that include at least one

‘anti-system’ party from the analysis, potential coalitions excluding the party of the mayor

have a smaller chance to form. Hence, studies on local politics and policy-making – at least in

Germany and in similarly structured polities – should consider the role of the mayor as a

decisive actor in the process of political decision-making.

Turning to multi-level factors, which are introduced in models 3 and 5 in Table 2, the

estimated coefficients show mixed evidence for our expectations that local political actors in

North Rhine-Westphalian cities include the party of the state minister of the interior, who is in

charge for local affairs in the state government. The estimated effect is positive and

statistically significant at the 90% level in model 2, but fails to reach the significance level

mentioned last in model 5. Since the effect does not remain statistically significant from zero

when looking at the models presented in Tables A2 and A3, we refrain from saying that this

particular multi-level factor is decisive for coalition formation in the local council. In order to

evaluate this hypothesis adequately, it seems to be required to increase the number of

observations under study.

Conclusion

19
The purpose of this study was to ‘scale down’ (Snyder 2001) and to analyse the determinants

of coalition formation on the local level by using a new data set on local election results and

local coalition formation. Building on ‘classical’ theories of coalition formation, we argued

that local political actors are additionally constrained in their search for a coalition by

institutional and contextual factors. Our findings confirmed most of our expectations and

showed that political actors from the local level follow by and large the same utility-

maximising strategies like their fellow politicians acting on other, superior levels of a political

system. Office-seeking motivations play a role in local coalition formation processes. We find

evidence that local political actors rather prefer to form minimal winning coalitions with the

smallest number of parties than forming minority or surplus majority coalitions. Moreover,

coalitions are more likely to form if the ideological distance between parties decreases. In

addition, incumbent coalitions have a greater chance to become the next coalition as well.

Second, our findings reveal that studies on coalition formation in hybrid settings like the

local level in the selected cases of North Rhine-Westphalia should consider the role of the

head of the executive – in our cases: of the directly elected mayor – as a decisive or ‘powerful

player’ (Strøm and Swindle 2002) in the coalition formation game. As the results and the

robustness checks on the basis of different models and of a smaller database indicated, parties

are less likely to form a coalition when the respective coalition does not include the mayor’s

party. However, we do not know whether this is for the reason of the mayor’s potential

agenda-setting power, their indirect formateur role or whether it is in the interest of the

legislators to incorporate the MPs from the mayor’s party into a coalition. In order to

understand the causal process leading to the inclusion of mayor’s parties into local coalitions,

a small-N strategy that investigates typical and deviant cases on the basis of the predictions of

the various models in this study seems worthwhile (see, e.g., Bäck and Dumont 2007;

Lieberman 2005).

20
 These findings give rise to a bunch of additional research questions that further studies

could address. The empirical finding that political actors most often form coalitions with the

smallest number of parties seems plausible because there are only a finite number of offices to

allocate on the local level. Given that local political actors always have the possibility to form

ad hoc coalitions in the local council, it seems worthwhile to analyse why local parties are

forming coalitions at all. Therefore, one should further investigate the reasons or ‘conditions’

for the forming of coalitions on the basis of a written and signed coalition agreement.

Shifting the focus to the local sphere provides enough cases for performing empirical tests

of theoretical arguments and models by concurrently holding the institutional setting constant.

This provides incentives to study patterns of coalition politics and governance in presidential

or semi-presidential systems – like the role of the head of state in the coalition bargaining

process – in a quantitative manner by referring to the local level as a proxy. One could, for

instance, study the determinants of government formation in hybrid or semi-presidential

systems which differ in their institutional structure – the degree of power provided to the head

of state by the constitution – to a significant degree, so that it is complicated to isolate effects

emerging from independent variables researchers are interested in like, for instance, the

influence of the head of a state on patterns of political decision-making.

Furthermore, the findings for large North Rhine-Westphalian cities presented here set

incentives both for a broader analysis of the determinants of local coalition formation within

the states of Germany, which still differ to some degree with regard to their local institutional

setting, and for cross-country studies by including various European countries. Recent local

government reforms in European countries show that there is a great variety of local

competencies with regard to political decision-making (see Loughlin et al. 2011). Moreover,

most of these local government reforms implemented direct elections of mayors. Therefore,

we expect to find similar results regarding the impact of the mayor’s preferences in local

decision-making processes in other European countries.

21
Table 1: Characteristics of actually formed and potential coalitions in large North Rhine-
Westphalian cities, 1999-2009

Formed coalitions Potential coalitions

Share Share
Frequency Frequency
(percentage) (percentage)
Minimal winning 43 78.2 549 5.1
Minimum winning 13 23.6 300 2.8
Minimal winning with 44 80.0 1,211 11.3
smallest no. of parties
Including largest party 47 85.5 5,248 48.9
Including median party 43 78.2 5,784 53.9
(left-right dimension)
Incumbent coalition 12 21.8a 47 0.4a
Including party of the 48 87.3 5,392 50.3
mayor
Including party of the state 30 54.6 5,392 50.3
minister of the interior
Total 55 100 10,729 100
a
There had not been an incumbent coalition in 8 of 55 cases.

22
Table 2: Conditional logit analyses of coalition formation in 29 North Rhine-Westphalian
cities, 1999-2009
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5
Office-seeking factors
Minimal winning coalition 2.91*** 2.70*** 2.62*** 2.85*** 2.54***
(0.57) (0.57) (0.57) (0.58) (0.60)
Minimum winning coalition 0.28 0.45 0.69 0.49 0.85+
(0.45) (0.47) (0.51) (0.46) (0.51)
Bargaining proposition 1.99*** 1.98*** 2.14*** 2.03*** 2.24***
(0.49) (0.52) (0.53) (0.50) (0.58)
Largest party included 0.89 0.55 0.71 1.04+ 0.70
(0.61) (0.60) (0.57) (0.61) (0.58)
Policy-seeking factors
Left-right policy distance -0.27*** -0.28*** -0.28***
(0.07) (0.07) (0.08)
Inclusion median party left-right dimension 0.38 0.24 0.18
(0.45) (0.47) (0.47)
Economic policy distance -0.09 -0.09
(0.08) (0.09)
Societal policy distance -0.12* -0.11*
(0.05) (0.05)
Institutional/contextual factors
Incumbent coalition 1.85*** 1.84*** 1.89*** 1.89*** 1.99***
(0.52) (0.53) (0.53) (0.57) (0.56)
‘Cohabitation’ -1.21* -0.96+ -1.04*
(0.49) (0.50) (0.52)
Party of the state minister of the interior included 0.72+ 0.63
(0.40) (0.39)
Number of potential coalitions 10,729 10,729 10,729 10,729 10,729
Formation opportunities 55 55 55 55 55
Pseudo R2 0.549 0.562 0.569 0.537 0.556
Log pseudolikelihood 120.90 117.51 115.66 124.27 119.14
AIC 255.80 251.01 249.32 262.53 256.28
IIA-test 0.83 0.87 0.88 0.92 0.91
Comments: Robust standard errors are shown in parentheses. + = p < 0.1; * = p < 0.05; ** = p < 0.01; *** = p <
0.001.

23
Figure 1: Positions of local parties and independent local lists in North Rhine-Westphalian

cities on three policy dimensions, 1999-2009

The Left

Greens

Others

SPD

CDU

FDP

0 5 10 15 20

Economic policy Societal policy Left-right dimension

Note: Low scores indicate an economically leftist position, a progressive policy position on societal issues, and

a leftist position on the general left-right dimension, while high scores indicate economically liberal

positions, conservative policy preferences on societal affairs, and a rightist position on the general left-

right dimension.

24
Table A1: Descriptive statistics

N Min. Max. Average SD

Independent variable
Minimal winning coalition (MWC) 10,729 0.00 1.00 0.51 0.22
Minimum winning coalition 10,729 0.00 1.00 0.28 0.16
MWC with smallest no. of parties 10,729 0.00 1.00 0.11 0.32
Largest party in coalition 10,729 0.00 1.00 0.49 0.50
Policy distance in coalition (left-right dimension) 10,729 0.00 18.35 6.63 4.28
Policy distance in coalition (economic dimension) 10,729 0.00 15.07 5.70 3.05
Policy distance in coalition (societal dimension) 10,729 0.00 16.56 7.62 5.05
Median party in coalition (left-right dimension) 10,729 0.00 1.00 0.54 0.50
Incumbent coalition 10,729 0.00 1.00 0.00 0.07
‘Cohabitation’ 10,729 0.00 1.00 0.50 0.50
State minister of the interior’s party in coalition 10,729 0.00 1.00 0.50 0.50

25
Table A2: Robustness tests (all potential coalitions are included)
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5 Model 6 Model 7 Model 8
Office-seeking factors
Minimal winning coalition 3.08***
(0.54)
Minimum winning coalition 0.33
(0.44)
Bargaining proposition 2.91***
(0.47)
Largest party included 1.20* 1.34* 1.44*
(0.60) (0.65) (0.63)
Policy-seeking factors
Left-right policy distance -0.53***
(0.06)
Inclusion median party left-right dimension 1.65***
(0.40)
Economic policy distance -0.16***
(0.05)
Societal policy distance -0.22***
(0.04)
Institutional/contextual factors
Incumbent coalition 3.56*** 3.43*** 3.52***
(0.44) (0.45) (0.43)
‘Cohabitation’ -1.90*** -1.94*** -1.14+ -1.21*
(0.41) (0.43) (0.61) (0.59)
Party of the state minister of the interior included 0.12 -0.31 -0.23
(0.31) (0.35) (0.32)
Number of potential coalitions 10,729 10,729 10,729 10,729 10,729 10,729 10,729 10,729
Formation opportunities 55 55 55 55 55 55 55 55
Pseudo R² 0.49 0.19 0.11 0.11 0.06 0.16 0.08 0.18
Log pseudolikelihood -135.85 -218.16 -237.93 -239.96 -251.63 -224.65 -247.59 -219.82
AIC 279.70 440.32 479.86 483.92 505.26 455.31 499.18 447.63
IIA-test 0.83 0.84 0.83 0.67 0.42 0.77 0.91 0.77
Comments: Standard errors are shown in parentheses. + = p < 0.10; * = p < 0.05; ** = p < 0.01; *** = p < 0.001.

26
Table A3: Robustness tests (potential coalitions consisting of at least one ‘anti-system’ party are excluded)
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5 Model 6 Model 7 Model 8 Model 9 Model 10
Office-seeking factors
Minimal winning coalition 2.91*** 2.57*** 2.64***
(0.52) (0.57) (0.58)
Minimum winning coalition 0.42 0.72 0.69
(0.42) (0.50) (0.52)
Bargaining proposition 2.58*** 2.21*** 2.38***
(0.42) (0.54) (0.58)
Largest party included 1.17* 1.33* 1.38* 0.69 0.78
(0.59) (0.65) (0.61) (0.57) (0.56)
Policy-seeking factors
Left-right policy distance -0.50*** -0.21+
(0.07) (0.11)
Inclusion median party left-right dimension 1.58*** 0.22
(0.41) (0.46)
Economic policy distance -0.27*** -0.15
(0.08) (0.11)
Societal policy distance -0.03 0.08
(0.10) (0.11)
Institutional/contextual factors
Incumbent coalition 3.27*** 3.10*** 3.17*** 1.88*** 1.92***
(0.41) (0.40) (0.39) (0.53) (0.52)
‘Cohabitation’ -1.90*** -1.93*** -1.13+ -1.23* -0.96+ -0.95+
(0.41) (0.42) (0.61) (0.58) (0.50) (0.51)
Party of the state minister of the interior included 0.12 -0.31 -0.23 0.69+ 0.72+
(0.31) (0.34) (0.31) (0.40) (0.40)
Number of potential coalitions 6,841 6,841 6,841 6,841 6,841 6,841 6,841 6,841 6,841 6,841
Formation opportunities 55 55 55 55 55 55 55 55 55 55
Pseudo R2 0.48 0.13 0.06 0.10 0.07 0.16 0.08 0.18 0.54 0.53
Log pseudolikelihood -129.74 -216.81 -232.14 -222.83 -231.48 -207.66 -227.46 -203.14 -114.53 -115.41
AIC 267.48 437.62 468.28 449.66 464.96 421.31 458.92 414.28 247.07 249.02
IIA-test 0.82 0.77 0.86 0.79 0.45 0.80 0.91 0.91 0.94 0.86
Comments: Standard errors are shown in parentheses. + = p < 0.10; * = p < 0.05; ** = p < 0.01; *** = p < 0.001.

27
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