The Presthus Debacle: Intraparty Politics and Bargaining Failure in Norway

Bargaining failure has been neglected in the study of interparty coalitions. I examine the unsuccessful attempt by three Norwegian nonsocialist parties to defeat a Labor party minority government in June 1987 when the majority opposition twice failed to agree on a simple vote to that end. This failure of coalition bargaining was facilitated by incomplete information, intraparty constraints and misdelegation of authority, and by anticipation of the impending parliamentary recess. Despite these complexities, simple noncooperative games like the war of attrition can shed considerable light on this and other unsuccessful negotiations. The “Presthus debacle” demonstrates that political parties bring many different objectives to the bargaining table and that the trade-offs between these objectives vary according to organizational and institutional conditions.