Prospects and pitfalls of studying local coalitions

Any general theory of coalitions should help our understanding of coalitional behaviour at all levels, but traditionally most studies have focussed on national coalitions. In contrast, sub-national coalitions have attracted far less public and academic attention, but are equally important for understanding the nature of coalitional behaviour. There are numerically many more opportunities for studying inter-party agreements at the local level than there are at national level, and, by using the local context, it is possible to examine a number of coalitions simultaneously within a single country. Moreover, the study of local coalitions means that we emphasise intra-party relationships among the factors which may influence coalitional behaviour, and therefore no longer automatically view the party as a unitary actor.

A major criticism of traditional coalition theories has been their tendency to look upon political parties as unitary actors, each making rational calculations about the utility of coalition formation. To some extent, this tendency is the result of borrowing and adapting assumptions from earlier socio-psychological and game theory approaches to coalitions where the actor was believed to be both rational and single-minded. In political life, the coalition actor, the political party, does not possess the perfect knowledge and foresight which are prerequisites of rationality and is generally much less single-minded: intra-party conflict is frequently as fierce as inter-party rivalry.