When are parties punished for serving in a coalition government?

Many empirical studies find that parties in government on average lose votes. However, few take into account this cost of ruling may not be uniform across parties. Those do present dissimilar results. We investigate whether characteristics and coalitions mediate the effect party incumbency local election Using a large panel data set municipal elections Netherlands enables us to control carefully for omitted variables. decreases with number coalition parties, after four or more consecutive terms office. These results are consistent grievance asymmetry theory. other remain unexplained by existing theories. One example is finding some (niche) actually gain seats incumbency. Thus, there seems need refined theorizing.