
2020 | Heike Klüver and Jae-Jae Spoon
Does joining a government coalition as a junior partner affect a party’s future electoral success?
Participation in a government coalition as a junior partner can negatively affect a party’s future electoral success. Junior partners often struggle to fulfill their election promises or sufficiently differentiate themselves from the larger coalition partner, reducing their chances in subsequent elections. A comprehensive analysis of 307 parties that participated in 219 elections across 28 European countries between 1972 and 2017 shows that junior partners perform significantly worse than senior partners after their coalition involvement. A case study confirms that disappointed voters and unfulfilled campaign promises are key reasons for the losses of junior parties.
Photo: Lutsenko_Oleksandr / Shutterstock / Soest, Germany – August 3, 2019: Free Democratic Party (German: Freie Demokratische Partei, FDP) logo
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