Partisan Impact in Coalition Government

Traditional research on coalition governments mostly focuses on coalition formation processes, portfolio allocation, and the termination of coalition governments. The internal life of coalitions and the impact individual parties in coalitions have on policy outputs received little attention so far. This paper investigates policy-making dynamics within coalition governments. It particularly examines the impact the party holding the ministry of finance has on budget and social policies. I hypothesize that the party being in charge of the ministry of finance has a disproportionate impact on the design of budget and the policy output of cost intensive policy areas such as social policies. Though it is widely accepted that the ministry of finance is one of the key portfolios to hold while being in office, little empirical evidence about the real impact of the party holding this portfolio on policy outputs exists. This contribution thus examines this hypothesis using a novel data set generated by quantitatively analyzing party manifestos and ministerial speeches presenting the yearly budget and social policies. The paper includes coalition governments from three countries, Ireland, Germany, Austria, between the 1970s and 2010.