David Altman, 'The Politics of Coalition Formation and Survival in Multi-Party Presidential Democracies: The Case of Uruguay, 1989-1999," Party Politics, 6 (July 2000), 259-283.

First Paragraph:
This paper tries to fill a lacuna in our understanding of executive coalition formation under multi-party presidential regimes. Because the study of executive coalitions under this type of regime is in an incipient state, his work borrows relevant insights from the study of coalition-building under parliamentary regimes. This does not mean, however, that it simply applies theories of coalition behavior under parliamentary regimes to presidential ones. On the contrary, this paper begins to build a specific theory of coalition formation and termination under presidential regimes using evidence from Uruguay.

Figures and Tables:
Table 1: Ideological affinity between political fractions
Figure 1: Model of coalition formation and survival
Figure 2: Probability of belonging to the executive coalition for fractions of the president's party (PP) and others (OP)
Table 3: Probabilities of belonging to the executive coalition for fractions that belong to the president's party (Bpp) and those fractions that do not belong to it (Bop)
Figure 3: Probability of being part of the executive coalition based on the fairness of the agreement for a fraction that belongs to the presinet's party
Figure 4: Probability of being part of the executive coalition based on the fairness of the agreement for a fraction that does not belong to the president's party
Table 4: Cabinet composition and legislative support in the Lacalle government, 1990-95
Appendix: Party names and fractions

Last Paragraph:
Finally, Schofield and Laver's claim, that 'past analyses have demonstrated that differences between countries are at least as significant as those between theories' (1985: 143), may be applicable to presidential regimes. It could be argued that differences between multi-party presidential regimes are at least as deep as differences between western parliamentary regimes. Theories of coalition formation under presidential regimes must be tested on both a general and a country-by-country basis. Therefore, this piece only partially illuminates coalition formation; additional research is needed before more definite conclusions can be drawn.