Are office seeking and policy seeking theories of coalition formation at odds with each other?

2.Are office seeking and policy seeking theories of coalition formation at odds with each other? Coalition theory is one of the least studied but highly interesting areas of political science. Coalitions are very common in European politics, much more so than single-party majorities and therefore coalition bargaining is a very important topic to be discussed, even if it is just intra-party bargaining. Coalitions are often seen as unstable in government and it is true that …

…be defined by assumptions of the motivations of the actors. Until we know what the stakes are, it is hard to know which game is being played and how to win it. Bibliography: Budge and Laver - "Coalition theory and policy and party policy", St. Martins press, (1992). Gallagher, Laver, Mair - "Representative government in Modern Europe", 3rd Ed, McGraw Hill, (1995). Laver and Schofield - "Multi-party government", Oxford UP, (1990). Strom, K. - "Minority government", Cambridge UP, (1990).