Coalition Agreements As Control Devices: Coalition Governance in Western and Eastern Europe

This book explores why political parties negotiate lengthy coalition contracts, and argues that these agreements are important control devices that allow coalition parties to keep their partners in line. The authors draw on a large dataset of 229 coalition agreements negotiated in 24 Western and Eastern European countries between 1945 and 2015.

Heike Klüver, Professor of Comparative Political Behaviour, Humboldt University Berlin,Hanna Bäck, Professor of Political Science, Lund University,Svenja Krauss, Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Government, University of Vienna

Heike Klüver is Full Professor and Chair of Comparative Political Behavior at Humboldt University Berlin. She previously held positions as Full Professor and Chair of Comparative Politics at the University of Hamburg, as Professor of Empirical Political Science at the University of Bamberg, as Assistant Professor at the University of Konstanz, and as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Nuffield College at the University of Oxford. She received her PhD from the University of Mannheim. Her research mainly focuses on political parties, coalition governments, and interest groups in European democracies, but she also works on topics related to political representation and political behavior more generally.


Hanna Bäck is Professor of Political Science at Lund University. She received her PhD from Uppsala University, and has previously held a position as Junior Professor at the University of Mannheim, and as Postdoctoral Fellow at Twente University and the European University Institute. Her research mainly focuses on political parties, legislators, and governments in parliamentary democracies, but she also works on topics related to political psychology and political behavior.


Svenja Krauss is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Government at the University of Vienna. She received her PhD from Humboldt University Berlin and was a DAAD lecturer before joining the University of Vienna. Her main research interests are coalition governments, political parties, and political behavior as well as political representation.