Coalition Accountability, Opposition Dynamics, and Perceived Responsiveness

Abstract

This panel links proportional representation to accountability and representational distortions, focusing on how electoral outcomes translate into governing power, opposition capacity, and citizen evaluations. Paper 1 models coalition accountability as a two-stage process—incumbents’ reentry into government and subsequent portfolio allocation—using a Heckman selection approach to show how vote-share changes relate both to returning to office and to portfolio redistribution, with effects varying by the conflict type ending the prior cabinet. Paper 2 examines coalitionwise electoral inversions in Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies of Brazil (1998–2022) under open-list PR, constructing standardized election diagnostics (votes, seats, quotas, differentials) to identify inversion candidates and to compare arithmetically possible reversals with politically plausible and observed governing coalitions. Paper 3 shifts attention to parliamentary oppositions across 27 European democracies with PR or mixed systems, analyzing how fragmentation shapes the complexity of meeting quorum thresholds for oversight tools by tracking the number and ideological heterogeneity of opposition parties required for cooperation. Paper 4 studies reform demand under Serbia’s nationwide closed-list PR, combining existing polling with new nationally representative surveys and embedded experiments to test whether support for open lists or more districts tracks perceived party-centered accountability and weak territorial linkage, and how competing benefit and trade-off frames shift preferences.

Title	Details
Coalition Accountability. A Two-Stage Process from Electoral Performance into Government and Power	View Paper Details
Coalitionwise Electoral Inversions in Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies (1998–2022)	View Paper Details
PR with a Vengeance: Bulgaria’s Electoral System in a Comparative Perspective	View Paper Details
Proportional Representation Electoral Systems and Parliamentary Opposition Fragmentation	View Paper Details
When Proportional Feels Unaccountable: Citizen Demand for Reform Under Serbia’s Nationwide Closed-List PR	View Paper Details