An actor-based approach to pre-electoral Coalition making

Official URL: https://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b3422550

This thesis examines the determinants of pre-electoral coalitions (PECs) and analyzes in which circumstances actors choose to form pre-electoral coalitions. Adopting prospect theory from behavioral economics, it explains the PEC formation with a focus on risk-taking, risk-aversion, and the domain of losses and gains. The first chapter employs a cross-national dataset that includes four different datasets to test the effect of the domain of losses on the PEC formation, which is a risk-taking behavior. Furthermore, this study operationalizes the ideological distance between political parties as the dependent variable. The empirical findings demonstrate that some of the proxies of the domain of losses have the expected impact on risk-taking behavior. The partial support in this chapter is accompanied by the qualitative analysis of the Turkish elections in 2018 and 2023. In these elections, both the incumbent and the opposition increased risk-taking behavior as a result of the placement of their reference point in the domain of losses. A paired comparison of these elections allows us to keep the effect of the institutions constant and to focus on the actors’ reactions to conjunctural factors.