Estimating the Influence of Coalition Partners on Coalition Agreements using Wordfish and Wordscores

This paper attempts to estimate the influence of coalition partners on coalition agreements using the automated quantitative content analyses programmes Wordfish and Wordscores. Using Dutch coalition agreements and party programmes from the 1990s and 2000s as sources, the programmes Wordfish and Wordscores are used to estimate the left-right position of coalition agreements and to calculate the distance between the left-right position of coalition agreements and the coalition partners that drafted these agreements. Subsequently the reliability and validity of the estimates is assessed and it is concluded that both the Wordfish programme and the Wordscores programme produce results that are neither highly reliable nor highly valid. Therefore, alternative avenues need to be explored to assess the influence of coalition partners on coalition agreements.