The Relevance of Coalition Agreements for Party Institutionalization

The institutionalization of parties can be assessed through the institutionalization of inter-party relations. This paper puts forward an analysis of the evolution of formal inter-party relations as materialized by the adoption of coalition agreements. I argue that the degree of the adjustment of parties to the need for formalizing coalition practices is a useful tool to assessing their own degree of institutionalization. I will put forward the case of Romania, a young democratic state in which both parties per se as well as coalition practices had to develop from nothing after decades of authoritarian rule. Reluctant at first to formalise inter-party understandings and highly dependent on their leaders for negotiations and decision-making, in time, parties have been forced by the inherent demands of democratic institutions and practices to resume to signing contracts which contain both coalition functioning mechanisms and policies. In addition to coalition agreements, parties have also instituted the practice of signing agreements for parliamentary support for the government (without including their members in the cabinet). Although the existence of such agreements does not exclude back-channelling, the practice of informal deals and instances of party personalization by leaders, their evolution towards more and more consistency and the reliance of political leaders on such documents in order to limit unpredictability of partner-parties is proof of the on-going institutionalization of parties. In order to make a substantial contribution, I will analyse the evolution of all agreements that the 20 coalition cabinets (out of 26 in total) based their behaviour on between the year 1990 and 2016 (counted according to the ‘maximalist approach’ by Muller and Strom, 2000). This will be done according to their size, content and, most telling, degree of implementation of the rules agreed upon, as evaluated by privileged witnesses and cabinet members.