Nos últimos anos, a maior parte da literatura sobre as relações executivo-legislativo em sistemas presidencialistas vem enfatizando o papel da formação de coalizões governamentais, através da distribuição de ministérios, na obtenção de maiorias legislativas. Contudo, essas coalizões formadas raramente são iguais, já que umas são maiores e, por causa disso, mais propensas à problemas coordenativos e de agência. Mas o que explica a decisão de um presidente de incluir mais ou menos partidos em seu gabinete? Com um banco de dados original contendo informações sobre 168 coalizões na América Latina entre 1979 e 2012, este artigo testa algumas das hipóteses correntes sobre o fenômeno. Entre outros, os resultados mostram que legislativos fortes e efetivos, presidentes que dispõem de maiores poderes legislativos e maior fragmentação partidária aumentam a probabilidade de ocorrência de coalizões sobredimensionadas em diversas especificações. / Research on executive-legislative relations in presidential systems have emphasized how presidents use cabinet appointments to form and manage government coalitions in the absence of majority legislative support. Yet not all coalitions look alike, as some are bigger and, consequently, more prone to agency and coordination problems than others. But what shapes presidents’ decision to include more or less parties in their coalitions? While several hypotheses exist in the literature, few have been tested in a systematic fashion, none focusing on why surplus coalitions form. This paper intends to fill this gap by examining an original time-series cross-sectional dataset comprising 168 unique coalitions in all 18 Latin American presidential countries since 1979. In particular, I find that strong and effective assemblies, presidents with great legislative powers and high levels of party fragmentation are associated with oversized coalitions in different model specifications.

Nos últimos anos, a maior parte da literatura sobre as relações executivo-legislativo em sistemas presidencialistas vem enfatizando o papel da formação de coalizões governamentais, através da distribuição de ministérios, na obtenção de maiorias legislativas. Contudo, essas coalizões formadas raramente são iguais, já que umas são maiores e, por causa disso, mais propensas à problemas coordenativos e de agência. Mas o que explica a decisão de um presidente de incluir mais ou menos partidos em seu gabinete? Com um banco de dados original contendo informações sobre 168 coalizões na América Latina entre 1979 e 2012, este artigo testa algumas das hipóteses correntes sobre o fenômeno. Entre outros, os resultados mostram que legislativos fortes e efetivos, presidentes que dispõem de maiores poderes legislativos e maior fragmentação partidária aumentam a probabilidade de ocorrência de coalizões sobredimensionadas em diversas especificações. / Research on executive-legislative relations in presidential systems have emphasized how presidents use cabinet appointments to form and manage government coalitions in the absence of majority legislative support. Yet not all coalitions look alike, as some are bigger and, consequently, more prone to agency and coordination problems than others. But what shapes presidents’ decision to include more or less parties in their coalitions? While several hypotheses exist in the literature, few have been tested in a systematic fashion, none focusing on why surplus coalitions form. This paper intends to fill this gap by examining an original time-series cross-sectional dataset comprising 168 unique coalitions in all 18 Latin American presidential countries since 1979. In particular, I find that strong and effective assemblies, presidents with great legislative powers and high levels of party fragmentation are associated with oversized coalitions in different model specifications.

Nos últimos anos, a maior parte da literatura sobre as relações executivo-legislativo em sistemas presidencialistas vem enfatizando o papel da formação de coalizões governamentais, através da distribuição de ministérios, na obtenção de maiorias legislativas. Contudo, essas coalizões formadas raramente são iguais, já que umas são maiores e, por causa disso, mais propensas à problemas coordenativos e de agência. Mas o que explica a decisão de um presidente de incluir mais ou menos partidos em seu gabinete? Com um banco de dados original contendo informações sobre 168 coalizões na América Latina entre 1979 e 2012, este artigo testa algumas das hipóteses correntes sobre o fenômeno. Entre outros, os resultados mostram que legislativos fortes e efetivos, presidentes que dispõem de maiores poderes legislativos e maior fragmentação partidária aumentam a probabilidade de ocorrência de coalizões sobredimensionadas em diversas especificações. / Research on executive-legislative relations in presidential systems have emphasized how presidents use cabinet appointments to form and manage government coalitions in the absence of majority legislative support. Yet not all coalitions look alike, as some are bigger and, consequently, more prone to agency and coordination problems than others. But what shapes presidents’ decision to include more or less parties in their coalitions? While several hypotheses exist in the literature, few have been tested in a systematic fashion, none focusing on why surplus coalitions form. This paper intends to fill this gap by examining an original time-series cross-sectional dataset comprising 168 unique coalitions in all 18 Latin American presidential countries since 1979. In particular, I find that strong and effective assemblies, presidents with great legislative powers and high levels of party fragmentation are associated with oversized coalitions in different model specifications.

This study is one of four exploratory studies concerned with coalitions of organizations that are formed to plan and develop social welfare programs within the local community. Although each study was conducted independently, taken together their major purpose was to develop some insights and knowledge into the behavior of organizations and the ways in which they interact as they work together to develop community programs. They are, then, exploratory studies of inter-organizational behavior. Each of the studies had a different focus. One study attempted to identify the present areas of agreement and disagreement regarding inter-organization behavior by systematically reviewing the literature over the past ten years. Another focused on the stages of development of the coalition, attempting to determine if organizational coalitions seemed to follow similar developmental patterns as has been reported in the literature on small groups. Another focused on the decision-making patterns in the coalitions by first reviewing the literature and constructing a decision-making model and then "testing" the model against a set of case histories. This study, following a grounded theory approach, attempted to identify a set of common variables or analytical categories which seemed to be present in a number of coalitions. Although each of these exploratory studies was conducted independently with a different emphasis and analytical focus, they each utilized the same set of case histories of coalitions. Consequently, each of the studies utilized a common set of data but viewed the data from quite different analytical perspectives.

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A coalition in a graph (Formula presented.) consists of two disjoint sets of vertices V 1 and V 2, neither of which is a dominating set but whose union (Formula presented.) is a dominating set. A coalition partition in a graph G of order (Formula presented.) is a vertex partition (Formula presented.) such that every set Vi of π either is a dominating set consisting of a single vertex of degree n–1, or is not a dominating set but forms a coalition with another set (Formula presented.) which is not a dominating set. In this paper we introduce this concept and study its properties.

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Network, organizational, and policy learning literatures indicate that when interest groups face failure they will seek out alternative ideas and strategies that will enhance their potential for future success. Research with regard to interest groups and legal change has found that interest groups, using arguments that were once accepted as the legal standard for Supreme Court decisions, were unwilling or unable to alter their arguments when the Court reversed its position on these legal standards. This research project examined the conflicting findings of these literatures. Using the Advocacy Coalition Framework as a guide, this project studied the separationist advocacy coalition in cases regarding state aid to elementary and secondary sectarian schools from 1971 to 2002. The legal briefs filed by members of the separationist advocacy coalition with the Court were examined using content analysis to track changes in their legal arguments. Elite interviews were then conducted to gain an understanding of the rationale for results found in the content analysis. The research expectation was that the separationist advocacy coalition would seek out and incorporate into their briefs new and innovative legal arguments to promote their policy goals. The research results demonstrated that prior to legal change interest groups did seek out and incorporate new legal arguments borrowed from other fora and sought to expand or reinterpret established legal arguments to better aid their policy goals. The changes that seemed to have the potential for adoption by the Court were quickly incorporated into the briefs of the other members of the coalition. Following legal change interest groups continued to analyze the decisions of the Court in order to seek out the best possible legal arguments to use in their briefs; however, the main focus of legal arguments examined and used by the coalition narrowed to those cited by the swing justice in the funding cases. Two innovative arguments were developed, but were either ignored or considered unsuitable, and were not used by the other members of the coalition. Counter to this project's research expectations new and innovative legal arguments were not adopted by the coalition. As the Court discontinued the use of various legal arguments the coalition quickly responded to these changes and dropped those obsolete legal arguments. Therefore, contrary to prior research, the interest groups and the coalition altered their arguments following legal change. Only those interest groups who no longer participated in coalition discussions reverted back to using pre-legal change arguments. Learning continued to occur in the coalition following legal change; however, the focus of analysis and the pool of arguments deemed worthy of use narrowed considerably. / Ph. D.