It is common practice in studies that analyze the relationship between the partisan composition of governments and policy outputs to rely on election manifestos as basis for measuring the input into governmental policymaking. While this is less problematic in majoritarian countries with one party governments, consensus democracies are usually governed by multi-party governments. This makes the realization of partisan preferences more complex as parties that enter government first have to negotiate a common platform for their governing coalition. In the negotiations that lead to this platform each party can be seen as a veto player with its own interests based on their respective election manifesto. The results of these negations, coalition agreements, represent an alignment of interests and list policies in which the participating parties have given up their veto power. Moreover, coalition agreements, contrary to election manifestos, describe the agenda of the incoming government, which makes them also relevant for the public’s perception of the government’s effectiveness. Thus, positions outlined in the coalition agreement can be expected to have a greater chance of being enacted than partisan preferences, making it necessary to conceptually differentiate between the two. While partisan preferences can be regarded as more central during the coalition formation and negotiation, coalition positions can be expected to be more important for actual policy-making. In addition, coalition agreements limit the role of agency in policymaking as ministers are bound to realize the agreed upon policies to ensure a positive public perception of the government. To get a better understanding of the role of coalition agreements for policymaking in multi-party government this paper will use qualitative content analyses of party manifestos, coalition agreements and interviews with party officials in three countries (Germany, the Netherlands, and Norway) to investigate (1) the relationship between the preferences in the manifestos and the positions in the coalition agreement, (2) the process how the positions in the agreement have been crafted, and (3) how the positions in the coalition agreement influence the portfolio allocation as well as the governments work also in relation to the election manifesto. This analysis will focus on a policy area with a medium level of political salience, namely higher education policy. While this area is more specialized and has traditionally been characterized by low political salience, it witnessed an increase in its political relevance also in the general population in recent years due to increasing participation rates in higher education and the move to knowledge economies.
