The paper examines which factors determine public policy-making and the policy output of coalition governments. The literature generally sees coalition governments as unitary actors whose policy output reflects the overall ideological complexion of the government. However, cabinet policy output can depart from the expected output due to various reasons: on the one hand, individual ministers can have a disproportional impact on the policy output if they are in charge of a key ministry (such as finance or welfare) and are not constrained by strict intra-cabinet decision-making processes. On the other hand, cabinet policy outputs may also deviate because one of the coalition partners has a special leverage on the survival of the coalition. This paper tests these claims using a novel dataset including the estimated policy positions of budget and social policy laws from Germany and Ireland over a period of 30 years.
