David Fortunato – författare

In order to cast a satisfying vote, understand politics, or otherwise participate in political discourse or processes, voters must have some idea of what policies parties are pursuing and, more generally, 'who goes with whom.' This Element aims to both advance the study of how voters formulate and update their perceptions of party brands and persuade our colleagues to join us in studying these processes. To make this endeavor more enticing, but no less rigorous, the authors make three contributions to this emerging field of study: presenting a framework for building and interrogating theoretical arguments, aggregating a large, comprehensive data archive, and recommending a parsimonious strategy for statistical analysis. In the process, they provide a definition for voters' perceptions of party brands and an analytical schema to study them, attempt to contextualize and rationalize some competing findings in the existing literature, and derive and test several new hypotheses.

In order to cast a satisfying vote, understand politics, or otherwise participate in political discourse or processes, voters must have some idea of what policies parties are pursuing and, more generally, 'who goes with whom.' This Element aims to both advance the study of how voters formulate and update their perceptions of party brands and persuade our colleagues to join us in studying these processes. To make this endeavor more enticing, but no less rigorous, the authors make three contributions to this emerging field of study: presenting a framework for building and interrogating theoretical arguments, aggregating a large, comprehensive data archive, and recommending a parsimonious strategy for statistical analysis. In the process, they provide a definition for voters' perceptions of party brands and an analytical schema to study them, attempt to contextualize and rationalize some competing findings in the existing literature, and derive and test several new hypotheses.

How does coalition governance shape voters' perceptions of government parties and how does this, in turn, influence party behaviors? Analyzing cross-national panel surveys, election results, experiments, legislative amendments, media reports, and parliamentary speeches, Fortunato finds that coalition compromise can damage parties' reputations for competence as well as their policy brands in the eyes of voters. This incentivizes cabinet partners to take stands against one another throughout the legislative process in order to protect themselves from potential electoral losses. The Cycle of Coalition has broad implications for our understanding of electoral outcomes, partisan choices in campaigns, government formation, and the policy-making process, voters' behaviors at the ballot box, and the overall effectiveness of governance.