Voting behavior and the electoral context of government formation

Most studies of parliamentary elections only examine specific parts of the electoral process-generally either voter behavior, or party behavior in the post-election, coalition-formation process. However, there are substantive gains to be made by considering the election process as a whole: considering voting behavior and coalition formation together allows us to determine not only how individual characteristics influence vote choice, but how the distribution of these characteristics influences the distribution of executive authority. Combining models of voting behavior and models of coalition formation in a single empirical study can yield a more complete understanding of the link between individual voter behavior and resulting governing coalitions. This approach is demonstrated with an application to the Dutch 1994 parliamentary election.