Heresthetics Models of Coalition Dynamics
Benjamin Nyblade
University of California, San Diego
Prepared for the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting
Philadelphia, August 2003
What are losers of coalition games to do? Parties that lose in coalition bargaining need not sit
passively as the opposition doing nothing. Rather, we should expect them to consider acting
strategically to improve their chances of winning in the next iteration of the coalition game. In
this paper I develop spatial coalition models that incorporate opposition party attempts to
improve their position relative to voters and other parties. I examine a pivotal coalition system
model, an alternational coalition system model, and an unconstrained coalitional model, based on
a standard Downsian unidimensional policy space. I then incorporate in these models the
Rikerian strategy of introducing a new issue dimension for the final multidimensional
heresthetics model. The conclusion focuses on comparative statics and empirical implications.