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Conflict of Interest and Coalition Formation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Brian Barry
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Extract

At the time of going to press (November 1970) the Journal has proved successful in attracting articles but much less so in getting notes. I am sorry about this because one of the most important functions which we hoped the Journal would serve was that of improving communications within the discipline, especially in Britain. It is for that reason that we should like to give a generous amount of space for notes. But unless an editor is gifted with ESP he can hardly know that someone has had an idea or hit upon some new information suitable for publication in a note.

Type
Notes
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , April 1971 , pp. 255 - 256
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1971

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References

1 Chicago: Markham, 1970.

2 In a note to Table 8–1 on page 178, which contains the analysis of Italian coalitions, Axelrod remarks that: ‘Abstentions were counted as support if and only if the cabinet needed some abstentions to win a vote of confidence and the abstentions were sufficient.’ Although the point is not crucial in the present case it is quite clear that this must have a tendency to inflate the success rate of all hypotheses about coalition-formation which predict that parties not necessary for a majority will not form part of the winning coalition. For in effect abstentions are here counted as ‘support’ where they are necessary to make the coalition a winning one but not where they threaten to make the coalition a non-minimal one. To repeat, however, this inflation applies to the four theories with which Axelrod compares the MCW theory, and also of course applies to the minimal-span theory, so it should leave their relative success fairly unchanged. The minimal-span theory is sustained in the ten cases which sustain the MCW theory (necessarily so, since the MCW theory is a special case of it) plus the one analysed in the Postscript.