Powers That Be? Political Alignment, Government Formation, and Government Stability

Arbeitspapier

We study how partisan alignment across levels of government affects coalition formation and government stability using a regression discontinuity design and a large dataset of Spanish municipal elections. We document a positive effect of alignment on both government formation and stability. Alignment increases the probability that the most-voted party appoints the mayor and decreases the probability that the government is unseated during the term. Aligned parties also obtain sizeable electoral gains in the next elections over unaligned ones. We show that these findings are not the consequence of favoritism in the allocation of transfers towards aligned governments.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: CESifo Working Paper ; No. 10047

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior ; Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue: General ; Intergovernmental Relations; Federalism; Secession
• Subject: government stability ; government formation ; political alignment ; inter-governmental relations

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Carozzi, Felipe ; Cipullo, Davide ; Repetto, Luca
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)
• (where): Munich
• (when): 2022

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/267280
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET