Coalitions tend to be minimal winning.
Riker's 1962 principle. Coalitions add just enough members to win and no more, because every additional member dilutes the spoils — which predicts why landslide coalitions fragment quickly.
In practice
- A consortium bidding for a contract adds the two partners it needs to qualify and refuses the third, whose capability it does not need and whose share it would pay.
- A governing coalition with a majority of one is unstable and better paid per member than one with a majority of eighty.
- Subject
- Law & Politics
- Essay
- Competing accounts of how power works