The lecture is based on a paper with the following abstract:

“Building on the extant literature on coalition formation and policy-making as well as the literature on democratic responsiveness, we derive three models of coalition agenda-setting to understand how coalition cabinets divide the legislative agenda across member parties. Using expansive original data on several decades of legislative proposals and public opinion in seven parliamentary democracies we execute critical tests of these models. The data support a critical events model of agenda-setting where parties are able to leverage increases in popularity and proximity to opposition parties into greater control of the legislative agenda. These effects, however, are conditioned on institutional context.”

For further info, please contact Peter Bjerre Mortensen (peter@ps.au.dk).