Abstract
Coalition formation is modeled as a cooperative games. Each party enters the game endowed with a weight that is a function of the proportion of the votes the party obtained in the elections, and an ideal policy position. Payoffs to parties are a function of the distance of the government's policy position from the party's ideal point, and the number of portfolios that the party receives in the coalition. The game analyzed is a variation on the `divide the dollar' problem. Unlike the divide the dollar game, however, ideological payoffs are also introduced into the analysis. It turns out that the ideological concerns of parties `induce' a core in the `divide the dollar' problem that would, otherwise, have a generally empty core. A comprehensive analysis of the new core concept, the `IVCORE', follows.
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