We present and test a model of how the partisan composition of government office affects position taking in the Council of Ministers. Our theoretical and empirical analyses focus on the policy effects of the coalition compromise, which we define as the ideological compromise among the parties that hold executive office, or in the case of minority governments among both executive and non-executive parties. The model examines the implications of ministers’ information advantages, the search costs faced by other politicians, and executive and legislative institutions that influence the magnitude of those search costs. The model predicts that coalition compromises have greater effects on positions in centralized executives and in the case of minority governments, in the presence of strong parliamentary oversight. We find strong support for these propositions with a uniquely comparable set of observations of over 3,000 government positions negotiated in the Council by the 27 member states.
