One of the most crucial decisions in the process of coalition formation is the allocation of ministerial posts. Parties participate in government not least to maximize their share of office payoffs and to ensure their influence on policy outcomes by gaining control over important ministries. While a wealth of research has analyzed the ‘quantitative’ allocation of portfolios, we still know relatively little about the ‘qualitative’ distribution process of ‘who gets what’. Only recently, the distribution of individual portfolios has gained some attention. While these studies highlight the role of institutional rules, party size and ideology, a shortcoming in these analyses is their neglect of the actual bargaining process, treating the allocation of individual ministries as being independent of each other. This is not least due to the fact that coalition negotiations are secret and apart from the negotiation results, we know relatively little about what is going on in smoke-filled rooms. In this paper, we aim to open this black box. Based on anecdotal evidence from coalition talks in several European countries, we present several (rival) allocation mechanisms. Specifically, we distinguish between sequential and list-based allocation mechanisms. In sequential models parties choose their most preferred portfolios in sequence according to a specific rule (e.g. d’Hondt). In contrast, in list-based allocation each party creates a list of its most preferred posts. In a second step, coalition partners decide on the competitive portfolios (demanded by at least two parties) in a pre-defined manner (e.g. using a sequential model). For each of these allocation models, we derive the parties’ optimal strategies and the predicted negotiation outcomes. We then go on and compare these predictions with empirical data on the distribution of ministerial posts. We compare the models’ success rate in predicting ministerial portfolio allocation in ten European democracies in Central Eastern Europe (CEE).
