Recipient of the 2022 Alumni Distinguished Leadership Award

Sona N. Golder, Ph.D. currently holds dual appointments as a professor in the Department of Political Science at The Pennsylvania State University and a professor in the Department of Comparative Politics at the University of Bergen. She has distinguished herself in research, scholarship, teaching, grant activity, publications, and professional service in the field of Political Science. Dr. Golder’s publications illustrate her commitment to advancing the field of Political Science through both research and teaching. Notably, Dr. Golder has published two important and well-regarded textbooks, Principles of Comparative Politics and Foundations of Comparative Politics, that show students how to take a scientific approach to answer core questions in comparative politics, rather than the standard approach of describing political institutions in a handful of countries around the world. Dr. Golder has been awarded over four million dollars in external and internal grants, received the MacCracken Fellowship, and won the Brian Barry Prize from the British Academy for excellence in Political Science scholarship. Dr. Golder’s excellence extends to exemplary service and mentoring in higher education. At Penn State, she chairs the College of Liberal Arts Promotion & Tenure Committee. She has served on over 15 doctoral committees and 5 Master’s committees. She continues to serve as a mentor for numerous graduate students and junior faculty who are women and people of color. Dr. Golder also served for several years as the lead editor of one of the discipline’s leading general journals, the British Journal of Political Science, and as an editor of the Politics of Institutions Book Series published by Oxford University Press. Dr. Golder also has developed and taught ten different courses in Political Science, including methods courses on Game Theory and Quantitative Analysis as well as substantive courses on Comparative Politics, European Politics, and Executive-Legislative Relations. As a leader in her field, Dr. Golder expands our knowledge and understanding of political institutions and behavior in advanced industrialized democracies. Using advanced quantitative methods to explain and critique international political processes, Dr. Golder is an amazing representation of what IMSA looks like 30+ years later, and how IMSA alumni continue to gravitate towards foundational knowledge of STEM, liberal arts, and social sciences to have an impact on the world through research, teaching, and service

The Logic of Pre-Electoral Coalition Formation

Political parties who wish to exercise executive power are typically forced to enter some form of coalition. Parties can either form a pre-electoral coalition prior to an election or they can compete independently and enter a government coalition afterwards. Although there is a vast coalition literature, there are no theoretical or empirical studies of coalitions that form prior to an election. This dissertation seeks to redress this imbalance in our knowledge of coalitions by explaining the variation in electoral coalition formation. The existing literature implicitly suggests that pre-electoral coalition formation is a simple function of electoral rules: the more disproportional the electoral system, the more likely a pre-electoral coalition is to form. I reframe the notions in the literature as testable hypotheses, using an original dataset comprising all legislative elections in 25 countries between 1946 and 2002. I find considerable support for the following hypothesis: pre-electoral coalitions are more likely to form in disproportional electoral systems if there are many parties. However, this result does not explain temporal variation in pre-electoral coalition formation, and it ignores the obvious distributional consequences that must be overcome when electoral coalitions are formed. I develop a more nuanced explanation of electoral coalition formation using a finite two-player complete-information bargaining game that generates implications concerning the probability of pre-electoral coalition formation. The plausibility of the model is examined in the context of in-depth case studies of pre-electoral coalition formation in the French Fifth Republic and in South Korea. Finally, I test the model\u27s hypotheses using a random-effects probit model with an original dataset containing information on potential coalition dyads in 20 industrialized parliamentary democracies from 1946 to 1998. The results support the hypotheses derived from the model. Ideological compatibility increases the likelihood of forming an electoral coalition, as do disproportional electoral institutions. Parties are more likely to form an electoral coalition if the potential coalition size is be large (but not too large) and if the coalition members are of similar electoral size. Finally, electoral coalitions are more likely if the party system is polarized and the electoral institutions are disproportional

The logic of pre-electoral coalition formation

(print) xv, 209 p. ; 24 cmIdentifying electoral coalitions -- Existing theories -- A theoretical model -- France and South Korea -- Empirical implications -- Pre-electoral agreements and government coalitionsItem embargoed for five year

Monetary Institutions and the Political Survival of Democratic Leaders

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/100146/1/isqu12013.pd

Good news: fielding women candidates doesn’t put parties at a disadvantage in elections

We know women are more likely to be elected under proportional representation, but it hasn’t been clear which aspects of PR benefit them. Sona N. Golder, Laura B. Stephenson, Karine van der Straeten, André Blais, Damien Bol, Philipp Harfst and Jean-François Laslier designed an experiment in which people could cast (fake) votes for (real) European Parliament candidates in three different ways. They found that having more women on the ballot does not – as some fear – put off voters

Domestic Institutions and Credible Signals 1

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/95160/1/j.1468-2478.2012.00746.x.pd

Replication Data for: Bargaining Delays in the Government Formation Process

In parliamentary democracies, the transfer of power from one government to the next is sometimes characterized by long periods of negotiations in which party leaders bargain over the composition and policy objectives of a new cabinet. Although these delays can have substantial political and economic consequences, surprisingly little is known about their determinants. Moreover, the few studies that exist reach contradictory conclusions. In this article, the author examines how factors relating to uncertainty and bargaining complexity influence the duration of the government formation process in 16 West European countries from 1944 to 1998. In line with the article’s theoretical expectations, the author finds that factors increasing uncertainty over the type of cabinet that is acceptable always lead to delays in forming governments but that factors increasing bargaining complexity, such as the number of parties and ideological polarization in the legislature, only do so when there is sufficient uncertainty among political actors. The present analysis helps to resolve the contradictory findings in the literature

Replication data for: The Logic of Pre-Electoral Coalition Formation, Ohio State University Press 2006

Why do some parties coordinate their electoral strategies as part of a pre-electoral coalition, while others choose to compete independently at election time? Scholars have long ignored pre-electoral coalitions in favor of focusing on the government coalitions that form after parliamentary elections. Yet electoral coalitions are common, they affect electoral outcomes, and they have important implications for democratic policy-making itself. The Logic of Pre-Electoral Coalition Formation includes a combination of methodological approaches (game theoretic, statistical, and historical) to explain why pre-electoral coalitions form in some instances but not in others. The results indicate that pre-electoral coalitions are more likely to form between ideologically compatible parties. They are also more likely to form when the expected coalition size is large (but not too large) and when the potential coalition partners are similar in size. Ideologically polarized party systems and disproportional electoral rules in combination also increase the likelihood of electoral coalition formation. I link the analysis of pre-electoral coalition formation to the larger government coalition literature by showing that pre-electoral agreements increase (a) the likelihood that a party will enter government, (b) the ideological compatibility of governments, and (c) the speed with which governments take office. In addition, pre-electoral coalitions provide an opportunity for combining the best elements of the majoritarian vision of democracy with the best elements of the proportional vision o f democracy

Replication data for: "Pre-Electoral Coalition Formation in Parliamentary Democracies" BJPS 2006

Political parties who wish to exercise executive power in parliamentary democracies are typically forced to enter some form of coalition. Parties can either form a pre-electoral coalition prior to election or they can compete independently and form a government coalition afterwards. While there is a vast literature on government coalitions, little is known about pre-electoral coalitions. I present a systematic analysis of these coalitions using a new dataset I constructed containing information on all potential pre-electoral coalition dyads in 20 industrialized parliamentary democracies from 1946 to 1998. I find that pre-electoral coalitions are more likely to form between ideologically compatible parties. They are also more likely to form when the expected coalition size is large (but not too large) and the potential coalition partners are similar in size. Finally, they are more likely to form if the party system is ideologically polarized and the electoral rules are disproportional