A consensus model of political decision-making

Abstract

In this paper, a model of political consensus is introduced. Parties try to reach consensus in forming a government. A government is defined as a pair consisting of a winning coalition and a policy supported by this coalition, where a policy consists of policies on given issues. A party evaluates all governments the party belongs to with respect to some criteria. We allow the criteria to be of unequal importance to a party. These criteria concern winning coalitions and policy issues. Parties may be advised to adjust their preferences, i.e., to change their evaluation concerning some government(s) or/and the importance of the criteria, in order to obtain a better political consensus.