Coalition Policy-Making under Constraints: Examining the Role of Preferences and Institutions

Figures & data

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H1a.	A pledge is more likely to be fulfilled if it is supported by all coalition parties.
H1b.	A pledge is more likely to be fulfilled the smaller the distance between the coalition parties on the respective policy dimension.

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H2.	The more important a pledge is to the pledge-making party the more likely it is to be fulfilled.

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H3.	A pledge is more likely to be fulfilled if it has majority support in parliament.

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H4.	A pledge is more likely to be fulfilled if it is included in the coalition agreement.

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H5.	A pledge is more likely to be fulfilled if the pledge-making party controls the corresponding portfolio.

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H6.	The presence of a watchdog junior minister weakens the effect of ministerial control on pledge fulfilment.

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H7.	A pledge is more likely to be fulfilled if it represents the status quo.

Table 1. Pledges in election manifestos (%)

	1999		2002		2006
	ÖVP	FPÖ	ÖVP	FPÖ	SPÖ	ÖVP
Statements containing no pledge	59.2	76.2	46.7	66.5	35.7	48.1
Statements containing judgemental pledge	32.7	11.7	41.8	23.5	49.5	41.3
Statements containing definitive pledge	8.1	12.1	11.5	10.1	14.8	10.5

Note: Our unit of observation is a statement based on the AUTNES coding procedure. AUTNES splits sentences into shorter statements according to grammatical rules (see discussion in the text).

Table 2. Inter-coder reliability

	1999		2002		2006
	ÖVP	FPÖ	ÖVP	FPÖ	SPÖ	ÖVP
Krippendorff’s α (ordinal scale)	0.84	0.95	0.88	0.85	0.85	0.77
Percentage agreement	89.1	95.2	91.0	87.6	90.0	86.1

Table 3. Pledge fulfilment by legislative period (%)

	1999–2002	2003–06	2007–08	Total (N = 1,143)
	ÖVP–FPÖ (N = 408)	ÖVP–FPÖ (N = 460)	SPÖ–ÖVP (N = 275)
Not fulfilled	62.0	43.5	52.0	52.1
Partly fulfilled	3.7	6.1	5.1	5.0
Fulfilled	34.3	50.4	42.9	42.9

Note: Due to a lack of data the fulfilment of 96 pledges could not be examined. Typically, such problems arise when no official (or otherwise useable) statistical data are available. A good example is the pledge to decrease the average duration of civil lawsuits, for which no estimates exist prior to 2008.

Table 4. Descriptive statistics

Variable	N	Mean	SD	Minimum	Maximum
Pledge fulfilment (0 = no, 1 = partly/fully)	1,143	0.479	0.500	0	1
Consensus	1,143	0.082	0.275	0	1
Policy distance (logged)	1,100	–3.151	1.529	–7.711	0.430
Pledge saliency (mentioned twice times)	1,143	0.231	0.422	0	1
Pledge saliency (mentioned three times)	1,143	0.084	0.277	0	1
Pledge saliency (mentioned four-plus times)	1,143	0.085	0.279	0	1
Parliamentary majority	1,143	0.093	0.290	0	1
Coalition agreement	1,143	0.486	0.500	0	1
Minister, no watchdog junior minister	1,143	0.464	0.499	0	1
Minister plus watchdog junior minister	1,143	0.107	0.309	0	1
Status quo	1,143	0.184	0.387	0	1
Period: 2003–06	1,143	0.402	0.491	0	1
Period: 2007–08	1,143	0.241	0.428	0	1
Party: FPÖ	1,143	0.117	0.322	0	1
Party: SPÖ	1,143	0.351	0.477	0	1

Note: Since no policy scale exists in the AUTNES scheme for pledges referring to infrastructure, 43 observations are missing for the policy distance variable.

Table 5. Binary logistic regressions: determinants of pledge fulfilment

	Preferences	Institutions	Full model (A)	Full model (B)
Consensus	1.889^∗		1.141	1.377
	(2.35)		(0.44)	(1.08)
Policy distance (log)	0.848+		0.946	0.911
	(–1.82)		(–0.57)	(–0.97)
Pledge saliency (mentioned twice)	0.999		0.929	0.952
	(–0.01)		(–0.43)	(–0.29)
Pledge saliency (mentioned three times)	1.043		1.242	1.245
	(0.18)		(0.84)	(0.86)
Pledge saliency (mentioned four-plus	1.131		1.139	1.297
times)	(0.48)		(0.48)	(0.96)
Majority (excluding consensual pledges)	1.520+		1.263	1.432
	(1.94)		(0.99)	(1.56)
Coalition agreement		2.054^∗∗∗	1.973^∗∗∗
		(5.40)	(4.84)
Minister, no watchdog		1.624^∗∗∗	1.612^∗∗	1.658^∗∗∗
		(3.36)	(3.13)	(3.35)
Minister plus watchdog		1.488+	1.355	1.440
		(1.76)	(1.27)	(1.54)
Status quo		8.589^∗∗∗	8.571^∗∗∗	8.213^∗∗∗
		(10.39)	(10.14)	(10.04)
Party: SPÖ	0.501^∗∗	0.621+	0.632	0.576^∗
	(–2.63)	(–1.79)	(–1.62)	(–1.97)
Party: FPÖ	0.486^∗∗∗	0.655^∗∗	0.659^∗	0.633^∗∗
	(–4.69)	(–2.71)	(–2.44)	(–2.71)
Legislative period: 2003–06	1.430	2.389^∗∗∗	2.044^∗	1.815^∗
	(1.33)	(5.54)	(2.43)	(2.05)
Legislative period: 2007–08	0.896	1.612^∗	1.305	1.237
	(–0.30)	(2.11)	(0.67)	(0.54)
Observations	1,100	1,143	1,100	1,100
Cases correctly predicted (%)	59.18	67.72	67.82	66.64
McFadden’s R^2	0.045	0.152	0.152	0.136

Note: Figures are odds ratios; t-statistics in parentheses; + p < 0.1, ^∗ p < 0.05, ^∗∗ p < 0.01, ^∗∗∗ p < 0.001.

Figure 1 Predicted probabilities of (partial) pledge fulfilment