Policy Priority Setting in Coalition Governance

Modern governments are equipped with large policy making apparatus that allows these governments to process all kinds of information in parallel. But such multitasking is possible only when matters stay relatively calm and decisions do not require intense and full cabinet attention. When issues rise as they hit newspaper headlines or are politically risky and controversial, governments need to shift to serial processing, addressing big issues one by one, or at most a few at a time. But the implication of this shift to serial processing of problem information is that hard choices for priorities must be made. Information about problem properties and their trends of getting better or worse is tantamount. Scientific expertise in all formats arrives at the desks of policy makers, small and big data flow ever faster. But the rationality involved in setting policy priorities is at least as much political as it is technical or analytical. Policy investment on major problems involves the most critical kind of calculation of risk and reward (Bertelli and John 2014). On such matters of political stakes and drama, information processing is pushed to disproportionality. The problem for coalition governments is that emerging ‘policy bubbles’ may pose a threat to one party as much as an opportunity for its partner in office. So they must steer between responsiveness and political conflict containment. How do coalition governments deal with major issues competing for attention and top priority? How do two or more parties in office together keep a balance between carrying out a planned policy agenda and the constant need for updating and shifting attention? How are policy themes prioritized over the successive years of an incumbent government and how can this type of serial processing of coalition policy issues be explained?