COORDINATION IN POLITICAL NEGOTIATION SYSTEMS

Recent empirical studies describe the transformation of majority decision systems into consensual negotiation systems without shedding light on their coordination mechanisms. In political theory, the co-ordination of different political positions can be explained either by macro-political approaches or by a macro-micro-macro paradigm. While the one approach will tend to specify political or private/political majority models without making any behavioral assumptions, exchange theory, on the other hand, offers a macro-micro-macro approach that promotes an optimum allocation of formal resources within political negotiation systems. Whereas political actors are endowed with formal resources, private actors have only indirect access to political negotiation systems. In the past, studies on access linkages from private to political actors detected different patterns of social relationships which characterize a political system. Both elements, the institutional and the social resources, have been integrated into this present analysis of the coordination exercised in political coordination systems. A political exchange model is offered consisting of either a relational or an institutional component. The impact of social coordination patterns on collective negotiation systems is the central focus of the analysis.