Compromising for Worldly Rewards? The Short-Term Consequences of Coalition Agreements on Voters

Although in the majority of European democracies elections are followed by a coalition government compromise and despite there is growing evidence that the content of coalition agreements receives broad media and public attention, next to nothing is known on the consequences that coalition agreements have on voters. This paper examines the short-term consequences of coalition agreements on voters in European democracies. The paper proposes a novel theoretical argument and relies on survey panel data and original content analysis of coalition agreements. The results indicate that coalition agreements have important consequences on voters but less so for party identifiers and more so for political interested voters. These findings have important implications for our understanding of public opinion and provide important insights into the current difficulties and challenges of representative democracy.