Agenda Control in Coalition Formation

Theoretical models of government formation in political science usually assume that the head of state is non-strategic. In this paper, we analyse the power of an agenda setter who chooses the order in which players are recognised to form coalitions in simple games. We characterise those sets of players which can be imposed in the equilibrium coalition and show that the only decisive structures where the agenda setter can impose the presence of any minimal winning coalition are apex games, where a large player forms a winning coalition with any of the small players.