Committee coalitions

Some aspects of the «portfolio approach» (Laver and Shepsle 1996) have inspired me to study the committee coalitions formed in the municipal councils. While resting on different assumptions than those put forward here, Michael Laver and Kenneth Shepsle’s book (1996) on the importance of gaining control of specific ministerial portfolios is based on certain ideas of which some can be utilised at the municipal level too. They identify the perhaps most distinctive feature of their approach as «[t]he assumption that most important policy decisions are taken by the executive.» (Laver and Shepsle 1996:13). This is because of the agenda power delegated to the different portfolios through specialisation and division of labour. Thus, the process of policy formation on a certain issue is heavily influenced by the person in charge of the

relevant department. Their approach does not take into account whether politicians are pure policy-seekers or office-seekers «in disguise». They state that politicians,

regardless of their actual motives, aim to implement the policies with which they are associated with (Laver and Shepsle 1996:21).²⁷

As described above, the institutional structure of Norwegian municipalities differs fundamentally from the structure found at the national level, the most important difference being the lack of municipal parliamentarism. I still assume, however, that some positions related to the municipal council are more important than others. The mayoral position is the one of greatest importance. Of major importance are also the position of vice-mayor and the chairs of the different standing committees

(«Hovedutvalg/faste utvalg/komitéer») under the municipal council. A «chair» is defined as a leader of such a committee.

I assume then, that bargainings take place between the different parties when allocating the chairs of the committees. Hence the assumption that the party/group of parties controlling the important committee chairs makes up a coalition which indicates a pattern of co-operation in the municipality. Ideally, the vice-chair of a committee should also be considered as an important political position. I do not have available data on the party affiliation of vice-chairs. Therefore, I have excluded these when defining the positions it is necessary to control in order to be included in the committee coalitions. Obviously, this has implications for the distribution of the different types of committee coalitions observed. If the parties of the vice-chairs were included, the number of oversized coalitions would certainly have been more than the number of oversized committee coalitions observed here.

27 Laver and Shepsle elaborate their model of coalition formation by utilising a policy-based median concept to explain why government formation need not necessarily be chaotic. With regard to the scope of this thesis, this is somewhat irrelevant. I have earlier presented arguments supporting a view of party-based conflict dimensions in Norwegian local politics as being rather irrelevant. This view tends to be strengthened when the Axelrod-based predictions are tested below.

I define the standing committees of each municipality as important, with one exception. The Local Government Act authorises each municipality to establish a control committee. Most - but not all - of the municipalities have done so.

Nevertheless, the function of this committee are sometimes delegated to another committee. Further, the control committee seldom enjoys decisional or propositional powers. The importance of this committee is - at best - doubtful. However, if parties holding this chair only are excluded from the defined committee coalitions, this

obviously reduces the average size of the coalitions formed. I have therefore chosen to analyse both sets of coalitions arising from the differing definitions, and hereafter refer to them as «total committee coalitions» and «reduced committee coalitions».

With this in mind, I define committee coalitions as the group of parties controlling the chairs of the important political committees in the municipality, each party holding one or more of the chairs.To exemplify, in the municipality of Herøy, Ap controls the mayor, the vice-mayor and all the chairs, including the chair of the control committee.

The committee coalition consists of Ap only, and the total committee coalition and the reduced committee coalition are the same. A contrast to this example is the

municipality of Gran, where Ap controls the mayor and the chair of the committee for culture, environment and trade, while Sp controls the vice-mayor and the chairs of the two other important committees. H controls the chair of the control committee. Hence, the total committee coalition in Gran consists of Ap, Sp and H, while the reduced committee coalition consists of Ap and Sp.

I did not have access to information on voting or party splits, which means that I count all coalitions established as consisting of unitary parties. I assume that when a party controls a position, this is with the consent of a united (and rational) party. Thus, I assume that this assumption of Riker’s is met. This goes for the assumption that all parties have perfect and complete information as well. I have no information

concerning how each party voted in each election. However, when a chair is controlled by a party, this cannot have been achieved against the will of a majority. Thus, the assumption of an exclusive membership in the coalition is met, unlike in the case of the mayoral coalitions.

As for the assumption of bargainings as co-operative zero-sum games where side-payments are permissible, the concept of committee coalitions has been constructed so that it resolves one of the weaknesses of mayoral coalitions: the potential

side-payments of important political positions are now (partly) included. Whether this is done to a satisfactorily degree is obviously questionable. So is the assumption of membership being a necessary and sufficient condition for pay-off, because of the exclusion of any party that controls one or more of the vice-leaders of the committees without controlling any of the chairs. Apart from that, this assumption seems to be met.

Further, a comment should be made, concerning the implicit assumption that, when testing Riker’s theories, there has to exist a fixed and unambiguous decision rule for defining whether a coalition is winning or not. «Committee coalitions» is an analytical term only. Thus, the rule of decision is constructed analytically too: a committee

coalition is winning if it controls more than 50% of the representatives in the municipal council, enabling it to make decisions on behalf of the municipal council if any

concerted action is agreed upon by the parties composing the committee coalition.

With regard to Axelrod’s assumption, I refer to the discussion in section 2.1; to the degree that such a dimension exists, its influence on the formation of committee coalitions can be tested.

To sum up, I assume that these coalitions can function as an indication of the co-operational/conflictual climate in the municipal council, with regard to the size of the

group of parties actually co-operating. The validity of this concept in relation to Riker’s and Axelrod’s assumptions should be considered acceptable.