Coalition trading in Spain: Explaining state-wide parties' government formation strategies at the regional level

Abstract

In compounded polities, political parties need to coordinate their governing strategies across the central and the regional tiers of government. The coalition game is also more complex in these contexts, especially for the state-wide parties (SWP) that alternate in central office, as their need for cohesiveness across party levels is higher and the quest for vertical congruence across institutional levels is more pressing. This article aims at identifying the influence of the SWP situation at the central level on their government formation strategies at the regional level. By examining the Spanish case, we show that multi-level dynamics provide parties with incentives to trade government formation strategies at different levels. Particularly, when the SWP in the central government has a minority status, parliamentary support is more likely to be given to the investiture of non-state-wide parties (NSWP) in those regions where the latter are stronger. Furthermore, we observe that, as political decentralization advanced, SWP seem to have been more inclined to adopt a cooperative behaviour toward NSWP. Overall, our findings suggest that SWP's strategies are not simply interconnected across levels but rather regional government formation decisions are hierarchically subject to central-level considerations.